I have spoken several times before concerning the Hacker Way philosophy. I have always focused on my work as a lawyer specializing in e-discovery. I have also included this philosophy in my teachings in this area of the law, including the use of AI in document review. See: the TAR Course;HackerWay.org and HackerLaw.org.
The video talk in this blog takes it outside of the legal community so it can have maximum impact. I think it is important for everyone to understand the credo behind Facebook and most other 21st Century software tech companies. No one else seems to be talking about it, or sharing the secret sauce behind their success. That is contrary to the fundamental Hacker principle of Openness, so, as an old Hacker myself, I am stepping in to fill the gap. That’s just what I do. (Stepping-In is discussed in Davenport and Kirby, Only Humans Need Apply,and by Dean Gonsowski,A Clear View or a Short Distance? AI and the Legal Industry, and A Changing World: Ralph Losey on “Stepping In” for e-Discovery. Also see: Losey, Lawyers’ Job Security in a Near Future World of AI,Part Two.)
Facebook’ corp headquarters photo with symbols added.
In this below eleven minute video I am taking this sharing and openness to the next step. Here I address the five principles and related ideas of the Hacker Way as applied to life in general, not just my legal specialties. Hope you find this provides some value to our fast evolving computer culture. Please leave some comments, either here or at my new Facebook site: HackerWay.org.
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If you have not already read Mark Zuckerberg’s original treatise on the Hacker Way, contained in his initial public offering Letter to Investors, I suggest you do so now. Also see my related ideas on history and social progress at Info→Knowledge→Wisdom.
The three videos in this blog on the Hacker Way are also included in the Welcome Page of the TAR Course.
The Hacker Way – often called the hacker ethic – has nothing to do with politics or criminal activities. It is the philosophy of the computer age. This credo has influenced many in the tech world, including the great Steve Jobs and Steve’s hacker friend, Steve Wozniak, the laughing Yoda of the Hacker Way. The Hacker approach is primarily known to software developers, but can apply to all kinds of work. Even a few lawyers know about the hacker work ethic and have been influenced by it.
The Hacker Way philosophy was described well by Mark Zuckerberg in his letter to investors for the initial public offering of Facebook:
The word `hacker’ has an unfairly negative connotation from being portrayed in the media as people who break into computers. In reality, hacking just means building something quickly or testing the boundaries of what can be done. Like most things, it can be used for good or bad, but the vast majority of hackers I’ve met tend to be idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world.
The Hacker Way is an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration. Hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete. They just have to go fix it — often in the face of people who say it’s impossible or are content with the status quo.
Hackers try to build the best services over the long term by quickly releasing and learning from smaller iterations rather than trying to get everything right all at once. To support this, we have built a testing framework that at any given time can try out thousands of versions of Facebook. We have the words `Done is better than perfect’ painted on our walls to remind ourselves to always keep shipping. . . .
Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline. Instead of debating for days whether a new idea is possible or what the best way to build something is, hackers would rather just prototype something and see what works. There’s a hacker mantra that you’ll hear a lot around Facebook offices: `Code wins arguments.’
Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic. Hackers believe that the best idea and implementation should always win — not the person who is best at lobbying for an idea or the person who manages the most people.
Mark goes on to explain in his letter how the Hacker Way translates into the five core values of Facebook.
Focus on Impact
Move Fast
Be Bold
Be Open
Build Social Value
Focus on Impact
If we want to have the biggest impact, the best way to do this is to make sure we always focus on solving the most important problems. It sounds simple, but we think most companies do this poorly and waste a lot of time. We expect everyone at Facebook to be good at finding the biggest problems to work on.
Move Fast
Moving fast enables us to build more things and learn faster. However, as most companies grow, they slow down too much because they’re more afraid of making mistakes than they are of losing opportunities by moving too slowly. We have a saying: “Move fast and break things.” The idea is that if you never break anything, you’re probably not moving fast enough.
Be Bold
Building great things means taking risks. This can be scary and prevents most companies from doing the bold things they should. However, in a world that’s changing so quickly, you’re guaranteed to fail if you don’t take any risks. We have another saying: “The riskiest thing is to take no risks.” We encourage everyone to make bold decisions, even if that means being wrong some of the time.
Be Open
We believe that a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater impact. That goes for running our company as well. We work hard to make sure everyone at Facebook has access to as much information as possible about every part of the company so they can make the best decisions and have the greatest impact.
Build Social Value
Once again, Facebook exists to make the world more open and connected, and not just to build a company. We expect everyone at Facebook to focus every day on how to build real value for the world in everything they do.
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Focus on Impact
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Move Fast
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Be Bold
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More on Impact
In e-discovery, like anything else, you have to focus and prioritize. You cannot do everything at once, at least not if you are going for impact. Scatter-brained is a recipe for failure. Any writer of appellate briefs will tell you that. Focus on the key issues if you want to persuade. Put aside the rest. You have to pick and choose your battles, your time, energy, and money. All tasks are not created equal. Some are more important than others.
For instance, in e-discovery look for the smoking guns first, the documents with the highest probative value. Check out the ESI of the key custodians first. Do phased discovery and start your search and production in the data sectors and custodians most likely to give you the biggest bang for your buck. Most of the time with phased production you never need to go beyond the first phase. The low hanging fruit you find up front is usually more than adequate to try the case in a just, speedy and inexpensive manner.
In all kinds of project management, not just discovery, you should focus first on the problems and issues that could have the biggest impact, and then move on to secondary problems. A business manager, just like a wise project manager in an e-discovery review, knows what to focus on and when. Empty suits in the board room lack this kind of focus and ability to prioritize. Perhaps they just do not understand what is important, and what is not. Maybe they are too preoccupied with next quarter’s profits to see the big picture.
Back to e-discovery, the big picture, from the highest elevation, shows that the core problems are the high costs of e-discovery and the low skills of practitioners in using new technologies. Vendors have addressed the cost issue since I last wrote on this back in 2013. I applaud the price cuts we have seen. But vendors had failed on teaching the correct methods for the use of their software. They are still stuck on version 1.0 and 2.0 Vendors, please make your experts get with the program. Have them take the TAR Course and modify your software to rub the latest methods.
More on Fast
Acting fast is second nature to most e-discovery experts by now. The 2006 Amendments to the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure put a premium on speed. We all know you have to work fast to get your act together before the initial 26(f) conference. You have to be prepared to discuss and disclose your e-discovery plan, including your preservation efforts and plan for search and review. Evolving case law on litigation holds also requires you to act fast, to send out written notices quickly, to collect key ESI quickly.
Obviously most search, review, and production projects also require you to act very fast to meet tight time deadlines. How many files per hour can your CAR go, your Computer Assisted Review? You have got to be fast to succeed in e-discovery. Yet, at the same time, you must act reasonably and minimize mistakes. This means that you must have quality control methods built into your CARs. You have to know when to double-check your efforts. There are straightaways in e-discovery where you can go fast, such as irrelevancy culling, and there are curves, such as privilege review. You have to know when and where to slow down so you don’t go flying off the curves.
Some analyses and conversations need to happen quickly, right at the beginning of a case. Determination of key players and key player interviews and preservation instructions come to mind. So to do conversations with IT to suspend automatic deletions and old computer recycling. So many things in e-discovery are front-loaded that all who practice in this field are used to this kind of time pressure. We know how to act fast, yet tempered, and not hurried. We expect the same from our vendors. Most of the project managers of vendors seem capable of acting fast, but, alas, not so most of the empty suits they report to.
Fast does not mean you abandon quality control or appropriate beta testing. Apparently Facebook itself has had to learn this lesson. See Facebook Puts the Brakes on ‘The Hacker Way’. The Wired article by Ryan Tate points out that since going public Facebook has started slowing down product releases:
It’s testing new tools more thoroughly prior to release and then parsing goodies out slowly to help smoke out even more problems. Facebook’s move toward greater testing is a sign of maturation at the company…
I agree this is a sign of maturation, but I do not agree with Ryan Tate that this means Facebook has put the brakes on the Hacker Way. Tate’s article misstates the Hacker Way as being built solely around the adage “move fast and break things.” But as Mark Zuckerberg’s Letter to Investors shows, that is only a small part of this new work ethic.
Moreover, I do not think Facebook has backed off, in fact the speed of product development after going public has increased dramatically. As Tate’s article admits:
In some regards, Facebook is moving faster than it ever has before. Since going public, it has launched a search engine, a mobile “operating system,” a camera app, a pages app, a “poke” app, an app store, an ad exchange, an online store, a gift card, a video sharing system, at least two major news feed updates, and plenty more. The teenaged Zuckerberg, in full hacker glory as a Harvard underclassman, would have approved of the breakneck product release pace.
Fast does not mean reckless. But the more skilled you become, the faster you can move and still remain safe, still remain within acceptable quality control parameters. Knowing just how fast you can go is an artifact of experience, of age, and it looks like Facebook is gaining that experience.
More on Bold
Who wants to hire a mousy lawyer? Nobody! Timid and lawyer are two words that should never go together. Yet for most AmLaw 100 law firms today, they do, at least when it comes to e-discovery. For a law firm to be bold, they need to do what my law firm did, and others have done. They need to hire outside attorneys who are already skilled, and they need to make a full commitment to these attorneys and what they bring to the table. The e-discovery experts should be provided with authority to make a real e-discovery team, not just design a marketing ploy. In that way law firms can keep improving and can build a truly effective law firm for the 21st Century.
If a law firm is satisfied with the status quo, they will not invest in e-discovery. They will be happy with their empty suits. That is, until the hacker led firms start to eat their lunch. Law firm management needs to be bold, to go all-in for e-discovery. They need to hire full time specialists. It does not work to simply ask a few lawyers in the firm to dabble part time.
Timid, halfway, band-aid measures do not work in any complex endeavor, including e-discovery. You have got to go either all-in, or all-out. The days of a law firm setting up a marketing type e-discovery department by sending out a few of its attorneys to CLEs, and then posturing them as experts, are long gone. It takes bold all-out efforts. Again, you need to look beyond this year’s profits to the long term viability of the firm.
[C]ontinue to be marketing groups more than anything else. I continue to see that most lawyers at firms with putative internal EDD practice groups either do not know those groups exist or do not use them. Firms ought to do a better job of taking control of EDD, at least for those clients who lack the wherewithal to take on EDD themselves. Firms seem unwilling, however, to make the initial and on-going investments needed for that to happen.
How many of the AmLaw 100 law firm’s have bona fide e-discovery practice groups? How many even have one lawyer who does nothing but e-discovery? That is the true litmus test for bold management, a test which most firm’s fail. It bears repeating: timid and lawyer are two words that were never meant to go together. Be bold law firm managers. Be a mighty mouse, not timid rat. Go all-in with e-discovery and insure the future prosperity of your firm.
As to vendors, you must also be bold, willing to take a chance, willing to lead, not just tag along with the changes sweeping the industry. Stop trying to milk your outdated products for all they are worth. Get rid of your old products instead of just adding a few minor enhancements each year. Shorten your new product cycles. Invest in research. Listen to your knowledgeable users. Made bold moves, big moves. Get rid of the empty suits in your boardroom. Go with bona fide hackers. And, as always, please get rid of the damn Control Sets in your predictive coding software methods. They are an ugly illusion, unlike the beautiful one below by Akiyoshi Kitaoka, a Professor of Psychology in Kyoto.
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
RT @JacksonLewisPC: Travel Ban Update: Grandparents and Other Close Relatives - In a one-paragraph ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court, ... http… 18 hours ago
The Posse List ranked this blog as the Number One 'go to' blog on e-Discovery out of the 407 that they follow. They say: "Absolutely delicious detail on everything you need to know on software and the search and review of electronic evidence using artificial intelligence."
Ralph Losey is a practicing attorney and shareholder in a national law firm with 50+ offices and over 800 lawyers where he is in charge of Electronic Discovery. All opinions expressed here are his own, and not those of his firm or clients. No legal advice is provided on this web and should not be construed as such.
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. He is also the founder of Electronic Discovery Best Practices, and the founder and CEO of e-Discovery TeamTraining, an online education program that arose out of his five years as an adjunct professor teaching e-Discovery and Evidence at the UF School of Law. Ralph is also publisher and principle author of this blog and many other instructional websites.
Ralph is a specialist who has limited his legal practice to electronic discovery and tech law since 2006. He has a special interest in software and the search and review of electronic evidence using artificial intelligence, and also in cybersecurity. Ralph devotes about a month per year on scientific research and experiments in the field of legal search. He is a participant in the 2016 and 2015 TREC Recall Track and prior to that competed successfully in the EDI Oracle research.
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. Ralph also received the "Most Trusted Legal Advisor" industry award for 2016-17 by the Masters Conference. His full biography may be found at RalphLosey.com.
Ralph is the proud father of two children, Eva Losey Grossman, and Adam Losey, a lawyer with cyber expertise (married to another cyber expert lawyer, Catherine Losey), and best of all, husband since 1973 to Molly Friedman Losey, a mental health counselor in Winter Park.
1. Electronically stored information is generally subject to the same preservation and discovery requirements as other relevant information.
2. When balancing the cost, burden, and need for electronically stored information, courts and parties should apply the proportionality standard embodied in Fed. R. Civ. P. 26(b)(2)(C) and its state equivalents, which require consideration of importance of the issues at stake in the action, the amount in controversy, the parties’ relative access to relevant information, the parties’ resources, the importance of the discovery in resolving the issues, and whether the burden or expense of the proposed discovery outweighs its likely benefit.
3. As soon as practicable, parties should confer and seek to reach agreement regarding the preservation and production of electronically stored information.
4. Discovery requests for electronically stored information should be as specific as possible; responses and objections to discovery should disclose the scope and limits of the production.
5. The obligation to preserve electronically stored information requires reasonable and good faith efforts to retain information that is expected to be relevant to claims or defenses in reasonably anticipated or pending litigation. However, it is unreasonable to expect parties to take every conceivable step or disproportionate steps to preserve each instance of relevant electronically stored information.
6. Responding parties are best situated to evaluate the procedures, methodologies, and technologies appropriate for preserving and producing their own electronically stored information.
7. The requesting party has the burden on a motion to compel to show that the responding party’s steps to preserve and produce relevant electronically stored information were inadequate.
8. The primary source of electronically stored information to be preserved and produced should be those readily accessible in the ordinary course. Only when electronically stored information is not available through such primary sources should parties move down a continuum of less accessible sources until the information requested to be preserved or produced is no longer proportional.
9. Absent a showing of special need and relevance, a responding party should not be required to preserve, review, or produce deleted, shadowed, fragmented, or residual electronically stored information.
10. Parties should take reasonable steps to safeguard electronically stored information, the disclosure or dissemination of which is subject to privileges, work product protections, privacy obligations, or other legally enforceable restrictions.
11. A responding party may satisfy its good faith obligation to preserve and produce relevant electronically stored information by using technology and processes, such as data sampling, searching, or the use of selection criteria.
12. The production of electronically stored information should be made in the form or forms in which it is ordinarily maintained or in a that is reasonably usable given the nature of the electronically stored information and the proportional needs of the case.
13. The costs of preserving and producing relevant and proportionate electronically stored information ordinarily should be borne by the responding party.
14. The breach of a duty to preserve electronically stored information may be addressed by remedial measures, sanctions, or both: remedial measures are appropriate to cure prejudice; sanctions are appropriate only if a party acted with intent to deprive another party of the use of relevant electronically stored information.
Posted by Ralph Losey 
Mark goes on to explain in his letter how the Hacker Way translates into the five core values of Facebook.
We believe that a more open world is a better world because people with more information can make better decisions and have a greater impact. That goes for running our company as well. We work hard to make sure everyone at Facebook has access to as much information as possible about every part of the company so they can make the best decisions and have the greatest impact.
Who wants to hire a mousy lawyer? Nobody! Timid and lawyer are two words that should never go together. Yet for most AmLaw 100 law firms today, they do, at least when it comes to e-discovery. For a law firm to be bold, they need to do what my law firm did, and others have done. They need to hire outside attorneys who are already skilled, and they need to make a full commitment to these attorneys and what they bring to the table. The e-discovery experts should be provided with authority to make a real e-discovery team, not just design a marketing ploy. In that way law firms can keep improving and can build a truly effective law firm for the 21st Century.
George Socha, e-discovery commentator of EDRM fame, 
How many of the AmLaw 100 law firm’s have bona fide e-discovery practice groups? How many even have one lawyer who does nothing but e-discovery? That is the true litmus test for bold management, a test which most firm’s fail. It bears repeating: timid and lawyer are two words that were never meant to go together. Be bold law firm managers. Be a mighty mouse, not timid rat. Go all-in with e-discovery and insure the future prosperity of your firm.
A little over two years ago, on April 5, 2015, my seminal world-view essay was published: 
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.
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, 
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. 
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.
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.
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. He is also the founder of 
Ralph is a specialist who has limited his legal practice to electronic discovery and tech law since 2006. He has a special interest in software and the search and review of electronic evidence using 
