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It's the finance and legal professions that are most at risk with the current level of AI and machine learning. Contrary to what most finance and legal professi

It's the finance and legal professions that are most at risk with the current level of AI and machine learning. Contrary to what most finance and legal professionals believe, there is low creativity in their vocations - and that is exactly what AI and machine learning does best: wrote procedural operations from a complex set of rules. This will be very interesting to see how our "captains of corruption" (the fucks that actually run this planet) react when they are pushed to the curb.

Iterated 13y ago
What part of finance do you think will go first ? Finance is highly subjective, and while I don't think it isn't at risk of being taken over by AI, I think it will be quite a while before a machine can make the proper subjective decisions a finance professional makes.
- JulianMorrison 13y ago
  Uh, they already do, high frequency trading.
- hazov 13y ago
  Insurance underwriting probably will become more and more automated, the exceptions are the cases with large values involved, in the short run, definitely this will be automated some day as well, or insurance in which only a small part of the population pay for insurance and the sample is small too do any meaningful statistics. Anyway there'll probably always be people behind the algorithms doing the modeling or programming at least.
theorique 13y ago
As a finance professional (HF equities trader), I find this surprising. We are using computers more and more in this world. Of course, if a person has no familiarity or skill with computers - for analytics, monitoring, and so forth - they are likely to be left behind.
tbrownaw 13y ago
As always, the fun part is the interface between the rules engine and the real world. How good is AI at gathering requirements from people who don't quite know what they want? The other fun part is what happens when AI is good enough to replace the gophers who do most of the grunt work, but not yet good enough to replace the experts who figure out what the customers really want. If this stage lasts long enough for the experts to retire, where do new experts come from?
rollo_tommasi 13y ago
Even if this is true, it will be the low-level grunts and support staff who feel the burn, not the high-level people who actually run the show. Operating at the pinnacle of those professions requires the ability to form strong personal relationships with the right people - not a skill that can be replicated by machines just yet.
gamblor956 13y ago
I laughed until I realized you were serious. AI can't even get basic speech processing correct. The combined computer processing power in the world cannot yet accurately emulate the thought processes of the average human mind. It will be decades before it can tackle the "creativity" needed to draft complex transactional legal documents, let alone litigation-related documents. I can't comment on finance, but law is not about "wrote procedural operations from a complex set of rules." The law is relatively simple--it is, and always has been, the application of the law that is complex, and this is why lawyers get paid so much. (This same logic generally applies to programming -- the syntactic rules of a language are simple, but the application of those rules is highly complex.) Indeed, anything beyond the simplest legal work requires a very highly contextual understanding of both the applicable law and the facts of the situation which is currently beyond the capabilities of current software or hardware (and that includes currently available or near-available quantum optimizers). AI will replace legal work about the same time as it replaces programming.
- ujeezy 13y ago
  Low-level legal work, such as discovery, is already disappearing. For example: http://www.blackstonediscovery.com http://www.blackstonediscovery.com
- fraqed 13y ago
  What about legalzoom.com and similar services? All those wills, patent applications, incorporations, etc. were once performed by legal assistants, paralegals and junior lawyers. Now someone just fills in some forms and ticks off various options. Or think of online insurance quotes, tax preparation and basic accounting again mostly junior level jobs to be sure but this is only the beginning!
  - dragonwriter 13y ago
    Before legal zoom, and even after it, those things were available in hard copy volumes of model contracts, wills, etc. complete with instructions and optional sections for different uses. The online services streamlined the UX a bit, but it's simply not the case that prior to them all of those documents were prepared individually by professionals. And I suspect that both the books and the online services displaced people doing their own documents without professional assistance as much as taking business from pros.

Iterated 13y ago

What part of finance do you think will go first ? Finance is highly subjective, and while I don't think it isn't at risk of being taken over by AI, I think it will be quite a while before a machine can make the proper subjective decisions a finance professional makes.

JulianMorrison 13y ago
Uh, they already do, high frequency trading.
hazov 13y ago
Insurance underwriting probably will become more and more automated, the exceptions are the cases with large values involved, in the short run, definitely this will be automated some day as well, or insurance in which only a small part of the population pay for insurance and the sample is small too do any meaningful statistics. Anyway there'll probably always be people behind the algorithms doing the modeling or programming at least.

theorique 13y ago

As a finance professional (HF equities trader), I find this surprising. We are using computers more and more in this world. Of course, if a person has no familiarity or skill with computers - for analytics, monitoring, and so forth - they are likely to be left behind.

tbrownaw 13y ago

As always, the fun part is the interface between the rules engine and the real world. How good is AI at gathering requirements from people who don't quite know what they want? The other fun part is what happens when AI is good enough to replace the gophers who do most of the grunt work, but not yet good enough to replace the experts who figure out what the customers really want. If this stage lasts long enough for the experts to retire, where do new experts come from?

rollo_tommasi 13y ago

Even if this is true, it will be the low-level grunts and support staff who feel the burn, not the high-level people who actually run the show. Operating at the pinnacle of those professions requires the ability to form strong personal relationships with the right people - not a skill that can be replicated by machines just yet.

gamblor956 13y ago

I laughed until I realized you were serious. AI can't even get basic speech processing correct. The combined computer processing power in the world cannot yet accurately emulate the thought processes of the average human mind. It will be decades before it can tackle the "creativity" needed to draft complex transactional legal documents, let alone litigation-related documents. I can't comment on finance, but law is not about "wrote procedural operations from a complex set of rules." The law is relatively simple--it is, and always has been, the application of the law that is complex, and this is why lawyers get paid so much. (This same logic generally applies to programming -- the syntactic rules of a language are simple, but the application of those rules is highly complex.) Indeed, anything beyond the simplest legal work requires a very highly contextual understanding of both the applicable law and the facts of the situation which is currently beyond the capabilities of current software or hardware (and that includes currently available or near-available quantum optimizers). AI will replace legal work about the same time as it replaces programming.

ujeezy 13y ago
Low-level legal work, such as discovery, is already disappearing. For example: http://www.blackstonediscovery.com http://www.blackstonediscovery.com
fraqed 13y ago
What about legalzoom.com and similar services? All those wills, patent applications, incorporations, etc. were once performed by legal assistants, paralegals and junior lawyers. Now someone just fills in some forms and ticks off various options. Or think of online insurance quotes, tax preparation and basic accounting again mostly junior level jobs to be sure but this is only the beginning!
- dragonwriter 13y ago
  Before legal zoom, and even after it, those things were available in hard copy volumes of model contracts, wills, etc. complete with instructions and optional sections for different uses. The online services streamlined the UX a bit, but it's simply not the case that prior to them all of those documents were prepared individually by professionals. And I suspect that both the books and the online services displaced people doing their own documents without professional assistance as much as taking business from pros.