Flora Lipo reports… Well it didn’t take long did it! The Insider has learned that a top UK law firm is reeling under a sex scandal after one of the firm’s equity partners (male) was caught in flagrante engaging in a sexual act with one of the firm’s new robotic litigation assistants.
The firm has obtained a super injunction preventing us from naming either the partner or the firm however looking through the Insider archives we see that last year US tech startup Polar Foil Inc (corporate motto: “We Make AIs So Cool They Are Hot!”) signed a deal to supply a machine-learning based expert system to the [redacted] law firm in London. The system was codenamed AI For Poll (POLL = Prepare Observe Listen Learn) and was intended for use in litigation support and ediscovery applications.
We spoke to AI law expert Olaf Priol who said the firm faced an interesting dilemma when it came to taking action against the partner. “Is it sexual misconduct? In which case presumably both the partner and the AI’s relationship with the firm should be terminated. Did the partner take advantage of his seniority over the AI? In which case it constitutes sexual harassment. Is it more of a technical issue? For example, it could be construed as computer misuse/unauthorised access to computer systems. Or is it more akin to improper personal use of office equipment?”
