Reg tech

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Why is reg tech so disappointing?

Document assembly has been around for a good 15 years — they thought it was “Lawyer-killing disruptive technology” in 2006 and, well, the cockroaches — we cockroaches — are still here, ladies and gentlemen, and document assembly technology still doesn't work very well.

Why?

They say "any sufficiently sophisticated technology is indistinguishable from magic". Here, "sufficiently sophisticated" is measured relative to the eye of the beholders. When those beholders are denizens of the legal and compliance department - especially when they hail from the department's chief operating office - one doesn't have to be awfully sophisticated to appear magical, especially in a pilot or a proof of concept. Just airily drop in expressions like "blockchain", "chatbot", "natural language processing", "algorithm" and "AI" and you will sail through.

And so you do. Thus it should come as no surprise that reg tech really isn't that clever in the first place. It is sold by big-talking small-thinking, big-blagging startups who are faking it till they make it. If your reg tech was started by a guy who was an associate at Shearman it isn't going to be much chop. I mean, is it?

If you want to see real AI and real powerful algorithms at work have a look at a modern [[Digital Audio Workstation like Apple's Logic Pro X.

Doesn't disintermeditate - still requires external it (SAAS right), internal it, management, procurement, a orocess through which what value the product had will be bloated, deprecated, rigidised to the point where the tool isa chore. An imposition.

Doesn't provide user flexibility - policy will see to fast. The product will calcify, it being too hard, requiring to many approvals and too many business cases to develop.

Doesn't provide out of the box usable content - fast would require lawyers, and there are generally precious few of those, and they generally are refusniks and low-cost-location rent-a-seat types no can follow instructions but aren't any good at writing them.

What none of this does is put useful tools in the hands of the user.

Compare with the model of music apps. The tech is genuinely ground breaking, the user interface is designed to be manned by the user, the expectation is no service because the software is so intuitive you don't need it