Lots of coverage on IBM’s Watson’s victory on Jeopardy.  Does it mean we rethink the information/advice distinction?

Much focus has been on the implications for medicine and for technical support.  (By the way, for techies interested in the configuration, here is an interesting blog.)

More generally, Computerworld on the possibilities:

“Within a year, Siegel hopes that “Dr. Watson” will change all of that. Watson is expected to be able to take a patient’s electronic medical records, digest them, summarize them for the doctor and point out any causes for concern, highlighting anything abnormal and warning about potential drug interactions.” 

The New York Times on medicine:

For I.B.M., the future will happen very quickly, company executives said. On Thursday it plans to announce that it will collaborate with Columbia University and the University of Maryland to create a physician’s assistant service that will allow doctors to query a cybernetic assistant. The company also plans to work with Nuance Communications Inc. to add voice recognition to the physician’s assistant, possibly making the service available in as little as 18 months.

“I have been in medical education for 40 years and we’re still a very memory-based curriculum,” said Dr. Herbert Chase, a professor of clinical medicine at Columbia University who is working with I.B.M. on the physician’s assistant. “The power of Watson- like tools will cause us to reconsider what it is we want students to do.”

New York Times on Tech Support:

“I.B.M. executives also said they are in discussions with a major consumer electronics retailer to develop a version of Watson, named after I.B.M.’s founder, Thomas J. Watson, that would be able to interact with consumers on a variety of subjects like buying decisions and technical support.”

Where does this take access to justice?  Some thoughts:

• Entry Into Informational Websites.  As a general matter, I have been a bigger fan of menu driven gateways, than of search, because I think less skilled computer users find them easier, and I think that responses to search queries that give lots of documents, often with apparently inconsistent information, is really confusing, particularly to this population.  However, with a Watson type natural language interface, I would totally go with typing the query.   Note this great response (NYT)  as whether Watson is HAL.  “People ask me if this is HAL,” [Dr. Ferrucci] said, referring to the computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey.” “HAL’s not the focus, the focus is on the computer on ‘Star Trek,’ where you have this intelligent information seek dialog, where you can ask follow-up questions and the computer can look at all the evidence and tries to ask follow-up questions. That’s very cool.”
  
• Informational Phone Services.  We should be thinking seriously about whether the awful branching logic phone information services can be replaced by Watson-type natural language capable machines that diagnose the users needs and give the right information.   However, it appears that Watson did not use voice recognition.  (“Watson receives questions in text form at the same time that human contestants have the questions read to them. Watson physically presses the buzzer and uses a voice synthesizer to “speak” the answers.”)
• Implications for Mobile Technology (Particularly when Integrated with Voice Recognition).  The ability to deconstruct a spoken query (which Watson did not do on Jeopardy) would mean we could expand services to even non-smart phones.  This makes it much easier to move into preventive law, in which we help people before they get into a bad transaction.
• Insight into Definition of Legal Information/Advice. Could it be that the right way to distinguish between whether something is legal information (and not the practice of law) or something involving judgment (and therefore often labeled advice and therefore the practice of law,) is whether Watson can be programmed to find the answer the question?  (I emphasize that I am using Watson not computers in general, because computers like IBM’s earlier Deep Blue were programmed to look forward at strategic choices and make recommendations for next steps based on those simulations — which is a lot like judgment to me).  By the way, IBM’s general counsel is quoted in the ABA Journal as saying that Watson could do the work of associates, so maybe that undercuts my argument for the distinction, or maybe it underlines how most associates do not do real legal work, just lay the groundwork for it.

While the hardware and software needed for this system is still massive (the media stories talk about room sized — which made me feel I was back in1975), if we have learned anything from Moore’s law and its cognates, it is that what takes a room today, takes a chip tomorrow. (In the mid 80s, I signed a purchase order for $20,000 for a 600 Meg drive.  Today, a terrabyte is well under $200, and a consumer product, rather than the $30,000,000 it would be at the above price.)

I love to see us taking an early look at the options of the Watson technology, and also making sure that the systems we are building now are as compatible as possible with that onrushing tomorrow.  Could this be part of a TIG?  Of a Technology Summit?