Year: 2024
What’s New? December 2024
Autumn Budget infotech initiatives As part of its first Budget, the government announced £20.4 billion of investment for research and development projects in the UK, in an effort to drive economic growth. A portion of this will undoubtedly fund artificial intelligence (AI) projects, and to help lay the framework for AI development the government: “will […]
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Whatever happened to Twitter? Or, how not to treat your X
In 2022, Twitter peaked at 368 million active users. It was the platform of choice for journalists, politicos and commentators across most disciplines, enabling users to curate their own news feeds and engage in informed debate, without significant interference from advertising or unwanted attention. Twitter was not, by some measure, the largest social media site, […]
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AI in the workplace: challenges for legal advisers
The rise of AI integration in business operations offers numerous benefits, such as reducing workload by processing large amounts of data. However, these systems also present significant challenges for legal advisers, spanning legal, ethical, regulatory, and practical concerns. Therefore, it is crucial for legal advisers to carefully navigate these challenges when considering AI integration in […]
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What’s New? September 2024
The King’s Speech The newly elected Labour government has had its hands full both on the domestic and international front since Sir Keir Starmer KC took office, but the King’s Speech gave some hints as to the direction of travel regarding technology regulation. Although the widely anticipated UK AI Bill has been kicked into the long grass, […]
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Data scraping for AI development
Machine learning and AI has been used in business for well over a decade and adoption of generative AI is now ubiquitous. As AI use and development reaches its teens, we might not be surprised that it expects freedom and wants to go in its own direction (in truth it probably already has) and that […]
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Challenging electronic evidence in court
The march of information technology continues and lawyers need to keep abreast of its reach and implications. The recent publicity attracted by the rise of machine-learning artificial intelligence, as well as the scandal of the Post Office’s prosecution of numerous postmasters and postmistresses, makes the issue especially topical. What do we mean by electronic evidence? […]
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What’s New? June 2024
First international treaty on AI The Council of Europe recently adopted a framework convention which aims to ensure the respect of human rights, the rule of law, and democratic legal standards, in the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems. The treaty is the outcome of two years’ work by an intergovernmental body, the Committee on […]
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The Post Office Horizon IT scandal: convictions quashed but the legal causes remain
In a previous article in the Newsletter, “The Post Office Horizon scandal: the law says computers are reliable”, I set out an outline of the facts leading up to the second trial against the Post Office by Justice for Subpostmasters Alliance set up by Sir Alan Bates, recently and deservedly appointed a Knight Batchelor in […]
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What’s New? April 2024
EU AI Act passed The European Parliament approved the Artificial Intelligence Act (EU AI Act) on 13 March 2024. It has been hailed as the world’s first comprehensive and binding piece of legislation on AI, although many of its provisions won’t be enforced for at least a year or two. Rather than attempting to regulate specific technologies, […]
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Copyright and copywriting: AI challenges
Since ChatGPT was released to the public in November 2022, countless articles have been written about how generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) will improve the efficiency of white collar workers, including legal professionals, and perhaps eventually lead to job losses. Ironically, it’s the very people writing about the revolutionary potential of this technology who have been […]
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How ICLR is leveraging free law
The idea that the law should be freely accessible to all the people is nothing new, but it is technology that has enabled that aspiration to be realised. ICLR has taken advantage of that to provide, alongside its reported case law subscription service, a freely accessible version of both unreported judgments and legislation. Recent developments […]
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