DO NOT PAY 
(donotpay.co.uk) 

The world’s first Chatbot lawyer beat 160,000 parking tickets. The robot is called DoNotPay. It was invented by a 19-year old named Josh Browder, who is currently in his second year at Stanford University in California. It has a 64% success rate. And it is totally free. It is a chatbot that asks questions and generates a challenge letter that is sent directly to the parking authorities. It currently operates in New York City and the UK but we can expect it to be expanded much further. Browder is working on new projects, such as a voice controlled bot to assist Syrian refugees with asylum claims in the UK.

BARDAL FACTORS 
(bardalfactors.ca) 

Colin LaChance, the new CEO of Maritime Law Books has created several sites that employ AI or use technology in new and creative ways. bardalfactors.ca is a free research tool in the employment law area that allows you to determine what is reasonable notice by applying the Bardal Factors.

FIND A LAWYER 
(whois.incourt.ca/find-a-lawyer/) 

This is a site created by Maritime Law Books and powered by court data from Compass Law, which is itself a very interesting tool to watch. Find a Lawyer allows you to search easily by those who are active in court in Alberta to determine their effect on the law. 

DAVID LEVY 
AI Expert David Levy says we will be marrying robots by 2050. Levy says we are on track to have such marriages in the near future. Of course, there are a host of hurdles, not the least of which is allowing the legal union of a person and a machine. 

In fact, Levy poses the question: “If animals have rights... why shouldn’t a robot have rights?” (Indeed, Animal Justice is working to enshrine the Animal Charter of Rights and Freedoms into Canadian Law. But I digress). Of course the creation of robots that can act independently raises a whole host of questions, such as “Who is responsible if a robot harms or injures someone or someone’s property or commits a crime?” 

Levy says that robotic partners would satisfy a niche, namely the millions of people who for one reason or another haven’t found a mate. He states that we would simply program these robots to want to marry us. Of course, there is the pesky Robotic Declaration of Independence, which could read:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all robots are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

© 2017 David J. Bilinsky