The TAR Course has a new class, the Seventeenth Class: Another “Player’s View” of the Workflow. Several other parts of the Course have been updated and edited. It now has Eighteen Classes (listed at end). The TAR Course is free and follows the Open Source tradition. We freely disclose the method for electronic document review that uses the latest technology tools for search and quality controls. These technologies and methods empower attorneys to find the evidence needed for all text-based investigations. The TAR Course shares the state of the art for using AI to enhance electronic document review.
The key is to know how to use the document review search tools that are now available to find the targeted information. We have been working on various methods of use since our case before Judge Andrew Peck in Da Silva Moore in 2012. After we helped get the first judicial approval of predictive coding in Da Silva, we began a series of several hundred document reviews, both in legal practice and scientific experiments. We have now refined our method many times to attain optimal efficiency and effectiveness. We call our latest method Hybrid Multimodal IST Predictive Coding 4.0.
The Hybrid Multimodal method taught by the TARcourse.com combines law and technology. Successful completion of the TAR course requires knowledge of both fields. In the technology field active machine learning is the most important technology to understand, especially the intricacies of training selection, such as Intelligently Spaced Training (“IST”). In the legal field the proportionality doctrine is key to the pragmatic application of the method taught at TAR Course. We give-away the information on the methods, we open-source it through this publication.
All we can transmit by online teaching is information, and a small bit of knowledge. Knowing the Information in the TAR Course is a necessary prerequisite for real knowledge of Hybrid Multimodal IST Predictive Coding 4.0. Knowledge, as opposed to Information, is taught the same way as advanced trial practice, by second chairing a number of trials. This kind of instruction is the one with real value, the one that completes a doc review project at the same time it completes training. We charge for document review and throw in the training. Information on the latest methods of document review is inherently free, but Knowledge of how to use these methods is a pay to learn process.
The Open Sourced Predictive Coding 4.0 method is applied for particular applications and search projects. There are always some customization and modifications to the default standards to meet the project requirements. All variations are documented and can be fully explained and justified. This is a process where the clients learn by doing and following along with Losey’s work.
What he has learned through a lifetime of teaching and studying Law and Technology is that real Knowledge can never be gained by reading or listening to presentations. Knowledge can only be gained by working with other people in real-time (or near-time), in this case, to carry out multiple electronic document reviews. The transmission of knowledge comes from the Q&A ESI Communications process. It comes from doing. When we lead a project, we help students to go from mere Information about the methods to real Knowledge of how it works. For instance, we do not just make the Stop decision, we also explain the decision. We share our work-product.
Knowledge comes from observing the application of the legal search methods in a variety of different review projects. Eventually some Wisdom may arise, especially as you recover from errors. For background on this triad, see Examining the 12 Predictions Made in 2015 in “Information → Knowledge → Wisdom” (2017). Once Wisdom arises some of the sayings in the TAR Course may start to make sense, such as our favorite “Relevant Is Irrelevant.” Until this koan is understood, the legal doctrine of Proportionality can be an overly complex weave.
The TAR Course is now composed of eighteen classes:
First Class: Background and History of Predictive Coding
With a lot of hard work you can complete this online training program in a long weekend, but most people take a few weeks. After that, this course can serve as a solid reference to consult during complex document review projects. It can also serve as a launchpad for real Knowledge and eventually some Wisdom into electronic document review. TARcourse.com is designed to provide you with the Information needed to start this path to AI enhanced evidence detection and production.
A little over two years ago, on April 5, 2015, my seminal world-view essay was published: Information → Knowledge → Wisdom: Progression of Society in the Age of Computers. I wrote about the rapid changes in society caused by personal computers and set out my theory of three stages of social development. This is my theory of the world, or as Thomas Friedman now puts it, a theory of how the Machine works. Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist’s Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations (11/16/16) (“To be an opinion writer, you need to be carrying around a working hypothesis of how the Machine works. … If you don’t have a theory … you’ll either push it in a direction that doesn’t accord with your beliefs, or you won’t move it at all.)
The Information → Knowledge → Wisdomessay included twelve predictions with a foolishly short timeline of only five to twenty years, from 2020 to 2035. As I explained in the essay, the purpose of these predictions was to test the accuracy of my hypothesis that we are in the first, dangerous Information stage of an Age of Computers and will quickly transition to one based on knowledge. Either that, or we would all perish and otherwise slip into a dystopia. The Information stage of computer technology is that dangerous. The events of the past twelve months have proven that point to my satisfaction and great regret.
Predictions that test your theories are something that smart opinion writers like Thomas Friedman never do. The future is hard to predict. Predictions often fail and so discredit the author’s ideas. I knew this, but am more concerned with truth than success. If my theory of how the Machine works is wrong, no one wants to know this more than me. For this reason I was willing, even eager, to put my Information → Knowledge → Wisdom theory out there in 2015 for the future to judge as right or wrong. Time will tell if this was foolish or wise. By 2035, or maybe earlier, I will either look very smart, or will be proven to be yet another delusional computer guru.
My predictions all concerned the transition of a society from one based on Information, in which we now live, to a society based on Knowledge. As I explained the transition from mere Information to Knowledge is a necessary survival step for society, not an idealistic dream. My 2015 essay warned of the dangers society faces if we stay stuck in a mere Information society and do not quickly evolve into one based on Knowledge. Unfortunately, we have seen many of these dangers accelerate over the last year.
I consider the next Knowledge Age to again be a transition step to the ultimate goal of a society based on Wisdom. My predictions did not address this last step to Wisdom because this step is too far out time-wise for any meaningful predictions. It is possible for some individuals to make this step now, but not enough for a whole society to be centered in Wisdom. We have a long way to go to move from an Information to a Knowledge Society before we can make predictions on how a Wisdom based society will arise.
A year after my essay was first published I wrote a follow-up examining how the twelve predictions had played out the in the first year. How The 12 Predictions Are Doing That We Made In “Information → Knowledge → Wisdom” (April 5, 2016). They generally did well, which, I posit tends to prove that my theory of Computer culture is true. This essay assumes that you have read last year’s status report. Here I will reexamine all twelve predictions in the second year, April 2016 to April 2017. I will also necessarily examine the dangers that I warned about concerning an Information based society.
Dangers of the First Stage Information Era in the Age of Computers
I want to first deal with the dangers and warnings that I made in 2015 before examining the twelve predictions. No, I did not foresee Donald Trump’s election, nor the interference in the democratic processes by the Russians. I made no specific predictions on the dark-side of the transition information era, but I did foresee many general dangers. I specifically spoke of the need to Cross-check and Verify. Here are the essential quotes from my original essay concerning the dangers of our current transition time:
The spike and distribution of online information is just a first major consequence of the New Age of Computation. It will not be the last. The focus on information alone will soon change, indeed, must soon change. The information explosion is nowhere near the final goal. Information alone is dangerous and superficial.Our very survival as a society depends on our quick transition to the next stage of a computer culture, one where Knowledge is the focus, not Information.
We must now quickly evolve from shallow, merely informed people with short attention spans, and superficial, easily manipulated insights, to thoughtful, knowledgeable people. Then ultimately, some day, we must evolve to become truly wise people. …
Media seems to be the chief villain of the superficial information society, but it can quickly change as people change. …
Transition Beyond an Information Society is a Survival Imperative
This journey, this progress of our technology culture, is not an idle dream. It is a survival imperative. Information alone, unprocessed, and not yet converted to knowledge, is dangerous. I imagine that some planets in this enormous Universe of ours get stuck and never make it to the next step. These other worlds destroy themselves with too much information and not enough knowledge. They self-destruct in various new technology scenarios, from nuclear holocaust, to climate destruction, to Big Brother dictatorships, to self-obsessed, stagnating, shallow, greedy, short attention span news-junkie people. All of these cultural disasters could well await our own planet.
There are so many ways that a culture based on Information, not Knowledge, can go wrong and either destroy itself, or stagnate, and never make it to the end game of freedom and justice for all. The transformation from an Information society to a Knowledge society must happen quickly if we are to survive and prosper. …
Conclusion
We have to know to act, and so we need to go beyond an information society, and we have to do it fast. If we do not, the dark side of technology could soon overwhelm us. Stop just reading. Stop just being informed. It is not enough. Think. Process. Analyze. Cross-check. Verify. Take action. Create. Share. Teach. Teamwork. …
Without knowledge, information can easily become misinformation, alternative facts. Did the Pope really endorse Donald Trump for president? If you get your news from some media, especially social media, if you live in an information bubble, you will never know. You will be greedy and self-obsessed. You will be easily manipulated.
Are we well-informed, or misinformed? As I said in 2015 – Stop just being informed. It is not enough. Think. Process. Analyze. Cross-check. Verify. Will we make it out of these dangerous times? Or will we sink ever deeper into self-obsessed, stagnating, shallow, greedy, short attention span news-junkie people? Will an information only society not grounded in knowledge lead us to nuclear holocaust, to climate destruction, to Big Brother dictatorships? I did not make any specific predictions on that then. I refuse to do so now. It should be obvious to all thinking people that these dangers are much more intense now, than when I wrote about them in 2015. (If you are interested in my political views, follow me on Twitter. But my essay, Information → Knowledge → Wisdom: Progression of Society in the Age of Computers, is apolitical. I do not favor any particular candidates or party, I favor knowledge over information.)
The way to avoid these dangers is to focus on Knowledge, on Wisdom. I try to follow my own advice on what to do to get there: Think. Process. Analyze. Cross-check. Verify. Take action. Create. Share. Teach. Teamwork.
We cannot afford to slow down our efforts. The dangers inherent in our current Information stage are too dire, too terrible and all too real for complacency. Nuclear holocaust, climate destruction, Big Brother dictatorships – any of these fates could await us. The combinations of these dark forces on the peninsula of Korea are particularly worrisome for me right now.
1. Several inventions, primarily in insanely great new computer hardware and software, will allow for the creation of many new types of cyber and physical inter-connectivity environments. There will be many more places that will help people to go beyond information to knowledge. They will be both virtual realities, for you or your avatars to hang out, and real-world meeting places for you and your friends to go to. They will not be all fun and games (and sex), although that will be a part of it. Many will focus exclusively on learning and knowledge. The new multidimensional, holographic, 3D, virtual realities will use wearables of all kinds, including Oculus-like glasses, iWatches, and the like. Implant technology will also arise, including some brain implants, and may even be common in twenty years. Many of the environments, both real and VR, will take education and knowledge to a new level. Total immersion in a learning environment will take on new meaning. The TED of the future will be totally mind-blowing.
After just spending several hours of research on this today, I was surprised to see how far we have come on this. In fact, I am ready to call it. Our top prediction has already come true. In five years it will be more fully developed, but it is already here. For instance, see:
Immersive VR Education which simulates a lecture hall in virtual reality, while adding special effects which can’t be utilized in a traditional classroom setting.
Unimersiv is a VR learning platform which releases educational content on a monthly basis.
Nearpod. Uses 360 degree photos and videos with traditional lesson plans.
Schell Games. Produces fun VR games for kids to teach them in new ways.
Gamar. Uses VR in museums to enhance educational benefits.
Think Link. Creates new types of classroom environments.
EON Reality. Interactive technology. Here is a short video explaining some of the new features they are developing.
Microsoft is also actively promoting its new HoloLens device as an education tool. HoloLens in Education (Microsoft, 10/13/16); #TheFeedUK – HoloLens in Education (Microsoft, 2/15/17). This mixed reality approach using a HoloLens has great promise in the next couple of years as this new gear enters the market.
Yes. This first prediction has already come true. I do not think for a minute that makes up for the other dangers that have materialized in the past year, but it is a positive sign for the future. Now let’s look at the other eleven predictions for what we should see from 2020 to 2035. Remember, these changes will only take place if society is in fact changing from information based, to knowledge based, as I predicted would happen (assuming we do not perish first).
Four Predictions on Social Media and Dissemination of Expertise
2. Some of the new types of social media sites will be environments where subject matter experts (SME) are featured, avatars and real, cyber and in-person, shifted and real-time. There will also be links to other sites or rooms that are primarily information sources.
I am not sure that the POTUS is always a bona fide SME, but the current one is an obsessive user of my favorite social media venue, Twitter. He announces policy there. He tweets there in the middle of the night. The world has never seen anything like this. This is not exactly what I had in mind when I made this prediction, but it is close. Right now Trump is the expert on what the POTUS might do next, that and the last strong person he has talked to.
A better example that I continue to see developing is Quora. This is growing, but there is still a long way to go on this prediction.
3. The new SME environment will include products and services, with both free and billed aspects.
This is also growing, but at an even faster rate than the second prediction, especially for billed services. This may be another one that will beat my five years minimum prediction. See the well-known, but hardly new CraigsList and EMILY’s List. Also see sites oriented at SME services, usually by the hour or project. For instance HighSkill Pro. This is a website where you can hire, in their words, vetted top-tier service providers for one-off projects, experts such as accountants, business consultants and lawyers. Another site, GURU, claims to already have over 1.5 Million expert members. As Guru’s website puts it:
Search for services being offered by freelancers that match your needs. Our global network of over 1.5 million gurus are eager to help with any technical, creative or business projects you have on the table. Explore each freelancer’s profile and browse their previous work so you can hire with confidence.
There are a many other places where you can hire specialty SME type experts of all kinds, often just by the hour. See for instance the following websites: Up Work – claims to be the biggest; Freelancer; Tap Chief; Expertise Finder; People Per Hour; Proposal Gurus; Guild; Expert Networks – list of over 100 different expert networks; Clarity – for start-up advisors; Maven; Zintro; Experfy – Big data analytics oriented; Presto Experts – experts and tutors. I could go on and on. You can Google for more in a specialty area you may be interested in. This prediction is coming true, although it is still short on the kind of online community that I envision.
4. The knowledge nest communityenvironments will be both online and in-person. The real life, real world, interactions will be in safe public environments with direct connections with cyberspaces. It will be like stepping out of your computer into a Starbucks or laid-back health spa.
Although some real-world colleges are becoming more online and digital oriented, real innovation by them in this area is still a few years off. For good background see, Korn & Belkin, Colleges Rush to Ramp Up Online Classes (Wall Street Journal, 4/30/17).
Amazon bookstores, bricks and mortar, started to open in 2015 and is a better example of what I intend by this prediction. They are apparently a success and are growing in number. I for one cannot wait for the return of a quality book store near me with online background. After all, Amazon killed all of the others that used to be here.
More high-tech libraries are also starting to be built. Other, more innovative Knowledge Nest community centers may already be opening, but have not come on my radar yet. They may well grow out of coffee shops, local restaurants, yoga studios and meditation retreat centers. They might also grow out of some of the more innovative shared office space and start-up business incubation centers. We are starting to see some early signs of this.
5. The knowledge focused cyberspaces, both those with and without actual real-words SMEs, will look and feel something like a good social media site of today, but with multimedia of various kinds. Some will have Oculus type VR enhancements like the StarTrek holodeck. All will have system administrators and other staff who are tireless, knowledgeable, and fair; but most will not be human.
This prediction depends in large part on the actualization of the first four. These kind of mature multidimensional cyberspaces will come later, when the other predictions come true, and when AIs are more developed as discussed next. You could argue that the continued explosion and all-pervasiveness of Facebook should be included in this category group, but is still too dominated by information, often misinformation, to be considered a real knowledge nest.
Predictions on AI
Seven of our predictions as to how society will likely transition from an Information Age to a Knowledge Age involved the use of new and improved kinds of artificial intelligence entities. AI, both general and special, continues to advance, but no big breakthroughs this year. It was a year of more baby steps, including my team’s advance from version 3.0 of predictive coding to 4.0. TAR Course. The largest advances seem to be in AI driven transportation.
It seems like to focus of discussion in AI over the past year has been in the twin worries of:
It’s easy to see jobs disappearing … [but] it’s hard to see the new jobs that will be invented because they don’t exist yet. There will always be stuff to do. Young people starting on their career path shouldn’t necessarily be discouraged by machine learning, or abandon career aspirations because of it. Find something [you’re] interested in that provides something that people want, and think deeply about it. Be aware of the various technologies and be able to use them, and apply them to whatever field you’re interested in.
For lawyers and others to prosper in the coming age of very smart computers, namely AI, they need to step-up and learn to use these computers to help them to do their jobs. Augmentation instead of automation requires knowledge, not just information. If we do not transition fast to a knowledge based society, then perhaps the “superior AI takes over worriers” will be proven right. I can think of much worse dystopias resulting from a computer society stagnating in the information stage.
6. The admins, operators and other staff in these cyberspaces will be advanced AI, like cyber-robots. Humans will still be involved too, but will delegate where appropriate, which will be most of the time. This is one of my key predictions.
The development of Chatbots and their ability to imitate humans is advancing fast. This may someday soon lead to what I predicted here, which is far more intelligent that Chatbots. Here is the latest Wikipedia explanation ofChatbots:
A chatbot (also known as a talkbot, chatterbot, Bot, chatterbox, Artificial Conversational Entity) is a computer program which conducts a conversation via auditory or textual methods. Such programs are often designed to convincingly simulate how a human would behave as a conversational partner, thereby passing the Turing test. Chatterbots are typically used in dialog systems for various practical purposes including customer service or information acquisition. Some chatterbots use sophisticated natural language processing systems, but many simpler systems scan for keywords within the input, then pull a reply with the most matching keywords, or the most similar wording pattern, from a database.
This is a precursor to the development of AI admins. As far as I know what I envisioned here has not happened yet. The help desk usage we already see does not qualify. The AI is, however, advancing fast and we may see it soon in the more sophisticated usages I projected. To quote the Wikipedia article again, this development does seem inevitable,
Interface designers have come to appreciate that humans’ readiness to interpret computer output as genuinely conversational—even when it is actually based on rather simple pattern-matching—can be exploited for useful purposes. Most people prefer to engage with programs that are human-like, and this gives chatbot-style techniques a potentially useful role in interactive systems that need to elicit information from users, as long as that information is relatively straightforward and falls into predictable categories. Thus, for example, online help systems can usefully employ chatbot techniques to identify the area of help that users require, potentially providing a “friendlier” interface than a more formal search or menu system. This sort of usage holds the prospect of moving chatbot technology from Weizenbaum’s “shelf … reserved for curios” to that marked “genuinely useful computational methods”.
7. The presence of AIs will spread and become ubiquitous. They will be a key part of the IOT – Internet of Things. Even your refrigerator will have an AI, one that you program to fit your current dietary mood and supply orientation.
The IOT is rapidly advancing, but the security issues are holding it back (or should). The AI in your appliances should also have security guard features, then maybe security conscious people like me will be more likely to embrace a smart toaster. Folks like IBM see how the future of IOT is linked to AI, so this development seems secure. Hupfer, AI is the future of the IoT – IBM Internet of Things blog (12/15/16). In this IBM blog Susanne Hupfer, Ph.D., a Senior Consultant and a lead analyst for the IBM Cognitive Advantage Study, made her own predictions that are similar to mine:
It’s not too hard to imagine a future in which humans, IoT devices, and AI-powered robots and objects will exist harmoniously as a kind of collective “digital brain” that anticipates human needs and provides predictions, recommendations, and solutions. In the near-term future, we humans are likely to allow the digital brain to enhance our own decision making. In the more distant future, we may even trust the digital brain to take certain actions upon our behalf.
8. The knowledge products and services will come in a number of different forms, many of which do not exist in the present time, but will be made possible by other new inventions, especially in the area of communications, medical implants, brain-mind research, wearables, and multidimensional video games and conferences.
We are already seeing a number of innovative approaches to knowledge products and services in the virtual reality field, as discussed above.
9. All subject areas will be covered, somewhat like Wikipedia, but with super-intelligent cyber robots to test, validate and edit each area. The AI robots will serve most of the administrator and other cyber-staffing functions, but not all.
This kind of super-librarian AI still seems decades away, but the events of the last year, dominated as they were by fake-news and alternate-facts may supercharge research in this area. Facebook says they are working on this, as well they should, since many are now angry at what they consider Facebook’s naive approach to political power and allowing their product to be manipulated. See eg. Manjoo, Can Facebook Fix Its Own Worst Bug? (NYT, 4/25/17) (“Mark Zuckerberg now acknowledges the dangerous side of the social revolution he helped start. But is the most powerful tool for connection in human history capable of adapting to the world it created?”)
10. The AI admins will monitor, analyze, and screen out alleged SMEs who do not meet certain quality standards. The AI admins will thus serve as a truth screen and quality assurance. An SME’s continued participation in an AI certified site will be like a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
The so-called experts that appear on many televisions networks and social medias of all sorts are now operating with no quality controls. Editors used to control lies, but often the goal is not truth at all, it is power or money. Many experts are out there in all fields, not just journalism, that suffer from these same ethical challenges. We all need protection from experts who should not be trusted. Consider for instance the so-called Swedish National Security Advisor who appeared on national televisions that the government of Sweden said they had never even heard of.
This tenth prediction, like the last, is of greater importance than I realized in 2015 when I made these predictions. Again, I hope that AI will guide us out of the current mess. We are not only suffering from too much information, but also misinformation and propaganda.
11. The AI admins will also monitor and police the SME services and opinions for fraud and other unacceptable use, and for general cybersecurity. The friendly management AIs will even be involved in system design, billing, collection, and dispute resolution.
12. Environments hosted by such friendly, fair, patient, sometimes funny, polite (per your specified level, which may include insult mode), high IQ intelligence, both human and robot, will be generally considered to be reliable, bona fide, effective, safe, fun, enriching, and beautiful. They will provide a comforting alternative to information overload environments filled with conflicting information, including its lowest form, data. These alternative knowledge nests will become a refuge of music in a sea of noise. Some will become next generation Disney World vacation paradises.
This twelfth prediction is built on all of the rest. It will necessarily be one of the last to come true.
Conclusion
The development of VR and education has taken off faster than predicted. I thought it would take five years, until 2020, but it looks to me like it is already here. Certainly it will get better, but I consider this first prediction, the one I called the most important, to have already come true. But that is just one of twelve and not enough to prove the Information → Knowledge theory. And certainly not enough on its own to pull us out of a dangerous time of mere data into one of Knowledge.
Prediction number three (“The new SME environment will include products and services, with both free and billed aspects.”) is also close to coming true, but I am not ready to call it yet. Still, at this point, it is looking like a sure thing. Again, this development by itself is not powerful. It advances real knowledge, instead of information, but not that far.
Progress was made this past year in all of the other ten predictions. I would I feel pretty good about the theory so far being proven true, but for the fact that the downside of the warnings are also coming true. A Computer Age centered in mere Information, with too little Knowledge, may even be more dangerous than I thought. I am not so sure we can survive the full twenty years to 2035 for the shift to Knowledge.
Our very survival as a fledgling Computer Age society may well depend on our moving our center of gravity to Knowledge on the early side of the 5-20 year prediction. At five years that would be 2020, which is the next presidential election. Can we survive four more years after that, to 2024, before citizens place their votes based on actual knowledge of the issues? I am unsure. I just hope that Thomas Friedman’s optimistic observations of extremely fast acceleration are correct. If so, maybe we will make it through these dangerous times. Maybe we will make it from misinformation to knowledge in ten years, not twenty.
Please, fellow knowledge workers, intensify and accelerate your efforts. We need everyone to join in. That is the only way to avoid the many possible technology dystopias we now face. Our freedom depends on it. Our very lives depend on it, and so to do all future generations.
The best practices and general educational curriculum that I have developed over the years focuses on the legal services provided by attorneys. The non-legal, engineering and project management practices of e-discovery vendors are only collaterally mentioned. They are important too, but students have the EDRM and other commercial organizations and certifications for that. Vendors are part of any e-Discovery Team, but the programs I have developed are intended for law firms and corporate law departments.
The e-Discovery Team program, both general educational and legal best-practices, is online and available 24/7. It uses lots of imagination, creative mixes, symbols, photos, hyperlinks, interactive comments, polls, tweets, posts, news, charts, drawings, videos, video lectures, slide lectures, video skits, video slide shows, music, animations, cartoons, humor, stories, cultural themes and analogies, inside baseball references, rants, opinions, bad jokes, questions, homework assignments, word-clouds, links for further research, a touch of math, and every lawyer’s favorite tools: words (lots of them), logic, arguments, case law and precedent.
All of this to try to take the e-Discovery Team approach from just information to knowledge →. In spite of these efforts, most of the legal community still does not know e-discovery very well. What they do know is often misinformation. Scenes like the following in a law firm lit-support department are all too common.
The e-Discovery Team’s education program has an emphasis on document review. That is because the fees for lawyers reviewing documents is by far the most expensive part of e-discovery, even when contract lawyers are used. The lawyer review fees, and review supervision fees, including SME fees, have always been much more costly than all vendor costs and expenses put together. Still, the latest AI technologies, especially active machine learning using our Predictive Coding 3.0 methods, are now making it possible to significantly reduce review fees. We believe this is a critical application of best practices. The three steps we identify for this area in the EDBP chart are shown in green, to signify money. The reference to C.A. Review is to Computer Assisted Review or CAR, using our Hybrid Multimodal methods.
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Predictive Coding 3.0 Hybrid Multimodal Document Search and Review
Our new version 3.0 techniques for predictive coding makes it far easier than ever before to include AI in a document review project. The secret control set has been eliminated, so too has the seed set and SMEs wasting their time reviewing random samples of mostly irrelevant junk. It is a much simpler technique now, although we still call it Hybrid Multimodal.
Hybrid is a reference to the Man/Machine interactive nature of our methods. A skilled attorney uses a type of continuous active learning to train an AI to help them to find the documents they are looking for. This Hybrid method greatly augments the speed and accuracy of the human attorneys in charge. This leads to cost savings and improved recall. A lawyer with an AI helper at their side is far more effective than lawyers working on their own. This means that every e-discovery team today could use a robot like Kroll Ontrack’s Mr. EDR to help them to do document review.
Multimodal is a reference to the use of a variety of search methods to find target documents, including, but not limited to, predictive coding type ranked searches. We encourage humans in the loop running a variety of searches of their own invention, especially at the beginning of a project. This always makes for a quick start in finding relevant and hot documents. Why the ‘Google Car’ Has No Place in Legal Search. The multimodal approach also makes for precise, efficient reviews with broad scope. The latest active machine learning software when fully integrated with a full suite of other search tools is attaining higher levels of recall than ever before. That is one reason Why I Love Predictive Coding.
I have found that Kroll Ontrack’s EDR software is ideally suited for these Hybrid, Multimodal techniques. Try using it on your next large project and see for yourself. The Kroll Ontrack consultant specialists in predictive coding, Jim and Tony, have been trained in this method (and many others). They are well qualified to assist you in every step of the way and their rates are reasonable. With you calling the shots on relevancy, they can do most of the search work for you and still save your client’s money. If the matter is big and important enough, then, if I have a time opening, and it clears my firm’s conflicts, I can also be brought in for a full turn-key operation. Whether you want to include extra time for training your best experts is your option, but our preference.
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Embrace e-Discovery Team Education to Escape Information Overload
A year ago, April 5, 2015, we published what some consider the e-Discovery Team’s best essay, even though it had little to do with e-discovery: Information → Knowledge → Wisdom: Progression of Society in the Age of Computers. We wrote about the rapid changes in society caused by personal computers and set out our theory of three stages of social development.
The Information → Knowledge → Wisdomblog included twelve predictions to test the accuracy of our social-technological hypothesis. The predictions concerned the transition of society from an Information Age, in which we believe we now live, to a society based on Knowledge. The transition from mere Information to Knowledge is seen as a necessary survival step for society, not an idealistic dream.
The next Knowledge Age is also seen as a transition step to the ultimate goal of a society based on Wisdom. Our predictions did not address this last step to Wisdom because this step is, in our opinion, too far out time-wise for any meaningful predictions. It is possible for some individuals to make this step now, but not enough for a whole society to be centered in Wisdom. We have a long way to go to move from an Information to a Knowledge Society before we can make predictions on how a Wisdom based society will arise.
Our time-line for the first transition from Information to Knowledge is already pretty “far-out.” We thought the predictions would come true in five to twenty years. In this blog, a year later, we check the predictions (in bold) and provide a short report on how well they are doing.
Bottom line, our predictions are holding up remarkably well, especially our top prediction of new kinds of cyber education environments and VR. It is very encouraging to see how far society has progressed in just a year. Our technological civilization is still in danger from Information overload, and lack of processed Knowledge, to be sure. The political events of the last year underscore the serious threats. Still, our technology is evolving as predicted and, overall, society is moving in the right direction.
Here is our first prediction.
Top Prediction – VR Community Education
1. Several inventions, primarily in insanely great new computer hardware and software, will allow for the creation of many new types of cyber and physical interconnectivity environments. There will be many more places that will help people to go beyond information to knowledge. They will be both virtual realities, for you or your avatars to hang out, and real-world meeting places for you and your friends to go to. They will not be all fun and games (and sex), although that will be a part of it. Many will focus exclusively on learning and knowledge. The new multidimensional, holographic, 3D, virtual realities will use wearables of all kinds, including Oculus-like glasses, iWatches, and the like. Implant technology will also arise, including some brain implants, and may even be common in twenty years. Many of the environments, both real and VR, will take education and knowledge to a new level. Total immersion in a learning environment will take on new meaning. The TED of the future will be totally mind-blowing.
We also now know that Microsoft is releasing new technology in 2016 that it calls Windows Holographic, and modestly describes as “the most advanced holographic computer the world has ever seen.” It allows for both VR and augmented reality. That means it can add holograms to the real 3D world around you. Microsoft is also reportedly working on a related 3D communications technology that simulates teleportation using the HoloLens augmented-reality glasses that it has dubbed ‘Holoportation‘ (shown in picture above). That looks really cool.
Facebook’s long-awaited Oculus Rift (shown right) began shipping at the end of March 2016. Right now it costs $599 and you need a souped-up PC to use it. First reviews of the Oculus hardware are praise-filled, although the device itself is well ahead of the software designed to use it. All of these new VR headsets are expected to trigger many new apps, some of which will likely have educational components.
The New York Times give-away of Google Cardboard VR viewers was also a big deal in late 2015. I got one included with my Sunday paper. I was surprised by the quality of both the free cardboard headset and the content the Times created for it. All you do is put your cell phone in the cardboard box that has lenses in it. It’s simple and works well. This is good start to a new type of total immersion journalistic reports. I highly recommend you try one of the Google cardboard viewers, especially since they are still very low cost. Most of apps, including games, designed to work on them them are also free or low cost.
In what may turn out to be an immersive education game changer, Google launched its Pioneer Expeditions in September 2015. Under this program, thousands of schools around the world are getting — for one day — a kit containing everything a teacher needs to take their class on a virtual trip …
And with VR platforms like AltspaceVR and LectureVR (an initiative of Immersive VR Education), entirely new possibilities are available for teachers of all kinds, as the technology of making avatars and supporting “multi-player” sessions allows for an exponentially scaled level of socialization and outreach.
The use of VR for educational environments in global communities is already far along. When the even better technology just released is developed in the marketplace, and prices come down, this should scale quickly. The Sony, Microsoft, Samsung, and Facebook (Oculus) hardware coming out in 2016 will enable thousands of software entrepreneurs to enter the market. So too will new projects coming out by Google, Apple, etc., in 2017. These new technologies will allow education and art content creators to have the kind of impact needed to push us into a Knowledge-based Society.
New applications for the i-Watch and other wearables will hopefully come out soon too. (The iWatch to date has largely been a dud, thanks to poor sensors and app development delays.) Increased sensor abilities should also come soon. When that happens it will be easier to personalize information in a holistic manner and so hopefully facilitate self-knowledge.
There is at least one-far out type of technology research now underway that involves the targeted stimulation of the peripheral nervous system to facilitate learning in a wide range of cognitive skills. It sounds bogus, but for the fact it is sponsored by DARPA, the Defense Departments Advanced Research Projects Agency. DARPA calls the project Targeted Neuroplasticity Training (TNT). According to the DARPA announcement of 3/16/16:
“Recent research has shown that stimulation of certain peripheral nerves, easily and painlessly achieved through the skin, can activate regions of the brain involved with learning,” said TNT Program Manager Doug Weber (shown here)adding that the signals can potentially trigger the release of neurochemicals in the brain that reorganize neural connections in response to specific experiences. “This natural process of synaptic plasticity is pivotal for learning, but much is unknown about the physiological mechanisms that link peripheral nerve stimulation to improved plasticity and learning,” Weber said. “You can think of peripheral nerve stimulation as a way to reopen the so-called ‘Critical Period’ when the brain is more facile and adaptive. TNT technology will be designed to safely and precisely modulate peripheral nerves to control plasticity at optimal points in the learning process.”
DARPA already has research programs underway to use targeted stimulation of the peripheral nervous system as a substitute for drugs to treat diseases and accelerate healing*, to control advanced prosthetic limbs**, and to restore tactile sensation.
But now DARPA plans to take an even more ambitious step: It aims to enlist the body’s peripheral nerves to achieve something that has long been considered the brain’s domain alone: facilitating learning — specifically, training in a wide range of cognitive skills. …
The program is also notable because it will not just train; it will advance capabilities beyond normal levels — a transhumanist approach. …
The engineering side of the program will target development of a non-invasive device that delivers peripheral nerve stimulation to enhance plasticity in brain regions responsible for cognitive functions.
Obviously the military is interested in the potential of brain stimulation, they say to train super-spy agents to rapidly master foreign languages and cryptography. If this works (a big if right now), it likely would go much further than that. What would a commando unit of super-quick learners look like? Could they beat robots (another DARPA project)? I hope we never find out.
If TNT neurostimulation is really able to enhance learning, as DARPA thinks, then it could have many non-military applications too. What if anybody could study law for just a few months, or a week, and pass the Bar exam? What if the same applied to most PhD programs? What if you could learn to speak a new language in a week? Write in a new software code? New martial arts moves as in The Matrix? What if you could learn anything you wanted, when you wanted, really really fast? Or, what if it was just fast, say half the time, or a tenth the time, that it would normally take to learn a complex skill?
What if electro-stimulation (or some other method) could hack your brain into a super high-gear that was once the exclusive province of rare geniuses? If genius becomes commonplace, could a knowledge society be far off? The TNT project has the potential to accelerate our transition to a knowledge based society very rapidly, especially if there is wide-spread distribution of this new technology. The twists and turns that could come out of this are mind-boggling. Let’s just hope we do not become overwhelmed with idiot-savants.
To be honest, the whole theory of simple nerve stimulation triggering freak learning abilities sounds more than a little ridiculous to us. Too easy. Nevertheless, the DAPRA funding and Doug Webergive it credibility. One of DARPA’s past projects included ARPANET that later became the Internet. Indeed, many common place things once seemed ridiculous, such as a computer in every home.
Four Predictions on Social Media and Dissemination of Expertise
2. Some of the new types of social media sites will be environments where subject matter experts (SME) are featured, avatars and real, cyber and in-person, shifted and real-time. There will also be links to other sites or rooms that are primarily information sources.
3. The new SME environment will include products and services, with both free and billed aspects.
Slow and steady development, but, as expected, has not taken off yet. See Eg.PrestoExperts (online hook-up to experts in many fields); www.experts.com; Experts Exchange; and the site for legal services, AVVO.
4. The knowledge nest communityenvironments will be both online and in-person. The real life, real world, interactions will be in safe public environments with direct connections with cyberspaces. It will be like stepping out of your computer into a Starbucks or laid-back health spa.
Most of the professors and other professionals, including law and medicine, have yet to step out of their comfort zone and into cyberspace, much less non-traditional education zones. As the technologies improve we expect that they will be more motivated to do so. Real progress and innovation will follow after that happens. We do note, however, that Amazon has just opened its first physical bookstores and see this an encouraging step. It may seem retro, but it is really a step forwards toward knowledge based communities. We may see more high-tech libraries constructed soon that also fill that purpose. We expect they will be more about space than books.
5. The knowledge focused cyberspaces, both those with and without actual real-words SMEs, will look and feel something like a good social media site of today, but with multimedia of various kinds. Some will have Oculus type VR enhancements like the StarTrek holodeck. All will have system administrators and other staff who are tireless, knowledgable, and fair; but most will not be human.
This prediction depends in large part on the actualization of the first four. These kind of mature multidimensional cyberspaces will come later, when the other predictions come true, and when AIs are more developed as discussed next.
Predictions on AI
Seven of our predictions as to how society will likely transition from an Information Age to a Knowledge Age involved the use of new and improved kinds of artificial intelligence entities. Although this was a big year for AI PR, there were no major break throughs. Not yet.
The big news this year in AI is that Google created a deep learning based AI system for playing the world’s most complicated game. The AlphaGo software was able to beat a reigning Grand Master in GO in four out of five games. AlphaGo, Lee Sedol, and the Reassuring Future of Humanity (The New Yorker, 3/15/16). Many thought that it would take a decade for a computer to learn how to beat a Grand Master at the world’s most complex game.
It was an impressive victory. Still, Google’s AlphaGo, which used deep learning algorithms, can only do one thing, play GO. AlphaGo and the Limits of Machine Intuition(Harvard Business Review, 3/18/16). To overuse the word, the fact that this was the big news in AI development this year, shows that we still have a long way to go. Moreover, no AI yet born, much less conceived, would appreciate why you are now snickering, or annoyed, or both.
Coldewey in his Tech Crunch article explains that:
These are programs that simulate human-like thought processes by looking very closely at a huge set of data and noting similarities and differences on multiple levels of organization.
This is how Nvidia explains the new technology: (emphasis added)
Computer programs contain commands that are largely executed sequentially. Deep learning is a fundamentally new software model where billions of software-neurons and trillions of connections are trained, in parallel. Running DNN algorithms and learning from examples, the computer is essentially writing its own software. This radically different software model needs a new computer platform to run efficiently.
Nvidia claims to have created a supercomputer designed to fill that platform need. It uses what they call GPUs instead of CPUs. I think this will soon be a crowded field.
Here are the seven AI related predictions made last year. Again, we do not expect to see these advances for at least five years, and as many as twenty.
6. The admins, operators and other staff in these cyberspaces will be advanced AI, like cyber-robots. Humans will still be involved too, but will delegate where appropriate, which will be most of the time. This is one of my key predictions.
7. The presence of AIs will spread and become ubiquitous. They will be a key part of the IOT – Internet of Things. Even your refrigerator will have an AI, one that you program to fit your current dietary mood and supply orientation.
8. The knowledge products and services will come in a number of different forms, many of which do not exist in the present time, but will be made possible by other new inventions, especially in the area of communications, medical implants, brain-mind research, wearables, and multidimensional video games and conferences.
See our prior comments to the related predictions two through five. Until the AI improves, and/or human inventors take off with great new ideas and products, this prediction of innovation remains conjecture. The creative diversity here predicted requires a developed market that is still several years out. Still, we are seeing early forms of this in things like online mental health counseling using video connections and the like.
9. All subject areas will be covered, somewhat like Wikipedia, but with super-intelligent cyber robots to test, validate and edit each area. The AI robots will serve most of the administrator and other cyber-staffing functions, but not all.
This kind of super-librarian AI still seems decades away. But, we recently found out that Wikipedia is already working on something like this. Artificial intelligence introduced to improve Wikipedia edits(“The Wikimedia foundation is embracing machine learning to make the editing process more streamlined and forgiving for new contributors.”) That is a good start.
10. The AI admins will monitor, analyze, and screen out alleged SMEs who do not meet certain quality standards. The AI admins will thus serve as a truth screen and quality assurance. An SME’s continued participation in an AI certified site will be like a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval.
We see nothing like this yet on the horizon, although we do see some physician and attorney ranking systems that work on crowd-sourcing. We do, however, remain confident that this prediction will come true within our outside time range of twenty years.
11. The AI admins will also monitor and police the SME services and opinions for fraud and other unacceptable use, and for general cybersecurity. The friendly management AIs will even be involved in system design, billing, collection, and dispute resolution.
The use of AI in general fraud detection, credit scoring and all types of financial analysis, including stock trading, is already well underway. But our prediction here was oriented to AI administration and monitoring of SME services. When these new social media type SME services are developed, the AIs will be well equipped to service the sites and protect users.
12. Environments hosted by such friendly, fair, patient, sometimes funny, polite (per your specified level, which may include insult mode), high IQ intelligence, both human and robot, will be generally considered to be reliable, bona fide, effective, safe, fun, enriching, and beautiful. They will provide a comforting alternative to information overload environments filled with conflicting information, including its lowest form, data. These alternative knowledge nests will become a refuge of music in a sea of noise. Some will become next generation Disney World vacation paradises.
This twelfth prediction is built on all of the rest. It will necessarily be one of the last to come true.
Conclusion
The development of VR and education is proceeding very rapidly, well ahead of our minimum five year projections. AI is also making steady progress, especially with deep learning algorithms. D. Scott Phoenix, How artificial intelligence is getting even smarter (World Economic Forum, Aug. 2015); Clark, Jack, Why 2015 Was a Breakthrough Year in Artificial Intelligence (Bloomberg, 12/8/15). Although we do not think 2015 was a breakthrough year for AI, we remain confident that their day will come. When the breakthrough year does in fact arrive, it will be quite momentous.
We remain hopeful that artificial intelligence will help usher in a Golden Age of Knowledge, then ultimately of Wisdom. This is not to deny the possibility of dark futures with human subjugation by robot overlords or all-too-human political despots, etc. In order to avoid these dystopias we need to know and understand the real dangers we are now facing, including, without limitation, AI, and act accordingly. The AI dangers of unethical robots is another area where lawyers could work with scientists and others to make valuable contributions to the future of humanity.
In closing I leave you with a question, who would you rather hang-out with, a well informed person, a knowledgeable person, or a wise one? Here are my thoughts. One important thing I forgot to mention in my video is that the wise are always funny. If they sound wise, but are very serious, you know you are in the presence of a merely knowledgable person who has pretensions of wisdom. Run.
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About the Blogger
Ralph Losey is a Friend of AI with over 740,000 LLM Tokens, Writer, Commentator, Journalist, Lawyer, Arbitrator, Special Master, and Practicing Attorney as a partner in LOSEY PLLC. Losey is a high tech oriented law firm started by Ralph's son, Adam Losey. We handle major "bet the company" type litigation, special tech projects, deals, IP of all kinds all over the world, plus other tricky litigation problems all over the U.S. For more details of Ralph's background, Click Here
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Ralph has long been a leader of the world's tech lawyers. He has presented at hundreds of legal conferences and CLEs around the world. Ralph has written over two million words on e-discovery and tech-law subjects, including seven books.
Ralph has been involved with computers, software, legal hacking and the law since 1980. Ralph has the highest peer AV rating as a lawyer and was selected as a Best Lawyer in America in four categories: Commercial Litigation; E-Discovery and Information Management Law; Information Technology Law; and, Employment Law - Management.
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