Artificial intelligence
More particularly, why artificial intelligence won't be sounding the death knell to the legal profession any time soon.
Computer language isn't nearly as rich as human language
It doesn't have tenses
- machine language deals with past (and future) events by somewhat ingeniously using the present tense: Instead of saying
The configuration on May 1, 2012 was XYZ
a machine language says:
Where Date = May 1 2012, let configuration = XYZ.
This is to say "let status on [xyz] date equal x". Which is a way of rendering the past using the present tense. but this means a computer does not need to conceptualise itself as something different to its present state, which means a computer doesn't need to conceptualise itself at all. computers aren't self-aware, and unless and until computer syntax undergoes some dramatic revolution (and it could happen: we have to assume human language went through that revolution at some stage) - computers will not ever be self-aware. -