Three new government-backed research projects will investigate how businesses can make best use of AI in insurance and law as well as analysing consumer attitudes to AI. The projects backed by £3 million through the Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund will focus on:
– Unlocking the Potential of AI for Law – how AI can be put to use in legal services and how to unlock its potential for good. According to a statement out today (28 November), the project will bring academics, lawyers, businesses and programmers together to develop the skills, training and codes of practice to deliver these benefits. The team will gather best practices across the world, outline data challenges, identify where and how AI can legitimately resolve disputes.
– Innovating Next Generation Services through Collaborative Design – to consider future uncertainties about the roll-out of new AI technologies in accounting and legal services by using insight, existing studies, developments in AI and service design, as well as analysing the potential barriers to AI-based business model innovation. The project will work with mid-size firms across law and accountancy.
– Technology Driven Change and Next Generation Insurance Value Chains – how AI can be applied to processes such as underwriting and claims processing, speeding up the process for customers. Working with business, the project will consider how AI technologies can transform delivery of insurance services and save consumers money.
Professor Armour from the University of Oxford is leading the research into unlocking the potential of AI for law. Professor Armour’s research will look into the use of AI in the legal system. The statement out today says: “His research seeks to identify how constraints on the implementation of AI in legal services can be relaxed to unlock its potential for good. As well as governing economic order, the legal system is more fundamentally a structure for social order. As a result the stakes for AI’s implementation in UK legal services are high. If mishandled, it could threaten both economic success and governance more generally.”
The research has been commissioned by Business Secretary Greg Clark, who said: “The UK is the home of AI – from Alan Turing’s pioneering work to today’s growing use of AI throughout the economy. Artificial Intelligence is changing how we work, live and play. Through our modern Industrial Strategy, we want to build on our history of innovation to develop and deploy AI to create new opportunities and improve services across the whole economy.
“The Next-Generation Services Challenge seeks to take on the biggest industrial and societal challenges of our time. Services account for almost 80% of the UK economy, with financial and professional services alone employing around 2.2 million people and valued at £190 billion.
“Today’s announcement builds on the government’s commitment to help drive forward innovation in the public sector and help it seize the opportunities of AI. The government recently announced £10 million of funding through the Regulator’s Pioneer Fund to support bodies to create a regulatory environment that gives businesses the confidence to use emerging technologies.”
These projects will run for up to three years and commence in December 2018.
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