AI Now Posing Threat To Those In The Law Profession, Proves To Be Faster And More Accurate

It's probably not surprising at this point, but it’s worth noting anyway that a recent test of an artificial intelligence has confirmed that it is way better than humans in another important area of society: Law. Specifically, the AI was able to perform faster and with more accuracy when reviewing legal documents, handily trouncing its human counterparts.

The company responsible for this new development is LawGeex, a startup that aims to merge law and technology in ways never seen before, Futurism reports. The firm conducted a study that pitted an AI against 20 real lawyers in reviewing non-disclosure agreements, with the goal being to spot risks hidden in the legal jargon.

In terms of how the test was set up, this is basically the kind of event that lawyers deal with on a daily basis, where they look through documents to determine their validity and how the fine print will affect clients. As such, accuracy is immeasurably important in order to avoid problems.

By the end of the study, the AI proved to be 10 percent faster than the human lawyers, and considerably more accurate. This is based on an overall scale, though, and not by individual. As everyone should know, at this point, not all lawyers are the same.

For context, the average performance of the AI was 94 percent accuracy in identifying the risks. In comparison, the lawyers only scored 85 percent on average.

When looking at the extreme end of the spectrum, however, the best performers on the human side got 97 percent. That’s about as high as you could ask for. Then again, the AI did score 100 percent using the same parameters, which is telling in several ways.

In this particular instance, it’s been proven that a machine will outperform a human each and every time. Even more startling is the fact that in common practices, reviewing these kinds of legal documents won’t even be at the top of a lawyer’s to-do list. Having to do other things would reduce their performance considerably. The same can’t be said of an AI.