This is a Guest Post by David Gingell, CMO of legal AI company, Seal Software. The piece was inspired by a recent article in Artificial Lawyer about IBM Watson Legal’s view of how AI and bloc…
AI + Blockchain Convergence: We Told You So….
Two of the hottest technology areas are on course to converge in the not-too-distant future.
Blockchain has been around since 2009 and was first defined as part of the code for Bitcoin. Since then it has moved rapidly from being the basis for cryptocurrencies to being seen as the next frontier for digital transformation in pretty much every vertical you can think of, from education to legal, utilities to insurance, healthcare to pharmaceuticals and of course in financial services.
Whilst interest in cryptocurrencies is still high (and the price of bitcoin keeps rising – it hit an all-time high last week of $6,000), mainstream businesses have been turning their attention to how to harness the power of a distributed ledger and single source of truth construct – which is essentially what the blockchain is, to reduce friction in business processes, make them more secure and non-repudiated.
As mentioned, legal is an obvious function that can benefit from this technology and the rise of smart contracts within both law firms and in-house legal has been widely discussed. The idea that the elements of a contract can be stored on the blockchain and the terms automatically executed based on certain events happening (time periods, volume pricing levels, confirmed flight delays for example) is very appealing.
In a parallel technology stream, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a noisy neighbour. Garnering way more headlines than blockchain and its progeny, bitcoin, AI has become mainstream and is rapidly being imbued in the national conscience and on the political agenda.
Source/More: Guest Post – Seal Software: AI + Blockchain Convergence, We Told You So – Artificial Lawyer
