It seems that every few months the topic of AI and job security is revitalised and although I did briefly comment on a recently trending article, I realised that I actually have a bit more to say. My experiences managing Codex Edge and our business model is very telling in this debate on whether AI will replace jobs.
CODEX EDGE BUSINESS MODEL
If you are unfamiliar, Codex Edge creates platforms and services that are designed to help people find talent. From Atlas, which is a proprietary search engine that help recruiters find Lawyers to Compass, which is bespoke legal talent research done in house, we use data to help you find/recruit talent.
Atlas uses technology to collate huge amounts of public data from across the internet. The initial idea behind Atlas was to write an algorithm and develop the software that kept this data up to date, embracing AI to power it, with very minimal effort on our part. However, we quickly found that the data that AI was identifying was incoherent, jumbled and sometimes simply incorrect. For example, AI had no ability to distinguish between an art lawyer and a lawyer who once volunteered at Tate Modern. It is the classic case of being able to distinguish between Turkey the country and turkey recipes.
As a business, we realised that, in order to make our datasets usable, we needed human intervention to go through all the data gathered by AI and manually categorise and segment it. Does this slow us down as a startup? Yes. Despite my best efforts to incite my staff to work more, unlike computers, humans want to go home and need breaks, food and sleep.
However, this exact practice, namely of having a team of researchers go over all the data that is identified by our AI and then manually sort through it, is what sets us apart and why people keep telling us that we are the most accurate tool in the legal recruitment space. Moreover, the easiest to use because the data comes, excuse my language, predigested.
Of course, there are examples of technology edging beyond humans for some tasks. For example, DoNotPay – the chatbot based “Lawyer” fighting parking tickets, uses complex algorithms to successfully challenge over a quarter of a million parking fines.
Within Law, or any arena where there is a right and a wrong, artificial intelligence stands to simplify our everyday lives. However in order for these algorithms to improve, more decisions are needed, more scenarios need to be experienced, more humans need to input more data.
Technology can and does enhance work, however until true artificial intelligence exists – where initial data doesn’t rely on humans – I really don’t believe that technology will fully replace humans. As all the work at Codex Edge has proven, it works best when technology and people work together to counteract each other’s weaknesses.
Keeping in mind that, like anything in life, even data mixed with human intervention still has its flaws, but, from my perspective, it is how you handle these flaws that sets you apart as a business, which is probably a topic for another article.
If you are a recruiter in the legal space and want to test out our data for yourself, give us a call to book your free demo!
