Digital Lifescapes

Are you taking baby steps toward Artificial Intelligence (AI) adoption? If so, you're not alone with the enterprise business leaders stuck on the sidelines, while the early adopters gain more momentum. As employees across the globe experiment with Generative AI (GenAI), the most cautious corporate general counsels are issuing guidance that will be valuable to those unsure enterprise leaders. "To craft an effective policy, general counsel must consider risk tolerance, use cases and restrictions, decision rights, and disclosure obligations," said Laura Cohn, senior principal researcher at Gartner . Enterprise Generative AI Market Development Having GenAI guardrails and policies in place will better prepare most slow-moving enterprises for possible future legal requirements. Meanwhile, the market leaders are racing ahead of their peer group. Based on practices in AI policies instituted by companies and city governments, the cautious general counsel should direct organizatio...

Across the globe, the traditional legal profession is still very labor-intensive. Higher salaries and the limited use of automation has driven up the cost of performing even the most mundane routine tasks. That's going to change. The disruption has already begun. The intense pressure from senior executives on their legacy corporate legal department has pushed lawyers to consider robotic process automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and natural language processing benefits, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. In fact, they now predict that law robots (or lawbots) will handle a quarter of the typical enterprise internal legal support requests by 2023. The virtual legal assistant (VLA) will be commonplace. Legal Process Automation Market Development  "While VLAs, legal chatbots, and lawbots may seem like hype, their use in legal departments can yield significant benefits," said Zack Hutto, director at Gartner . "...

Are you ready for the Cognitive Systems era? If not, have you at least updated your business technology plan? Evolving the CIO role, and preparing a company for the impact of artificial intelligence (AI), is a high priority at many forward-looking enterprises. By 2022, intelligent machines and robots may replace some trained professionals for basic tasks within the healthcare, law and information technology (IT) sectors, according to the latest worldwide market study by Gartner. Artificial Intelligence Market Development "The economics of AI and machine learning will lead to many tasks performed by professionals today becoming low-cost utilities," said Stephen Prentice, vice president at Gartner . The effects that AI will have on the enterprise will depend on its industry, business, organization and customers. Mr. Prentice cited the example of a lawyer who undergoes a long, expensive period of education and training. Law firms must pay salary and benefits for each law...

According to the latest market assessment by eMarketer, growing online privacy concerns involve three primary stakeholder groups -- consumers, government and the collective advertising industry. Those concerns have been heightened by recent examples of disclosure failures and the apparent lack of consumer trust in many of the recognized industry players. People are becoming increasingly concerned about their online privacy. Government entities in the U.S. market and elsewhere are looking to address that anxiety through laws, regulations and new policy pressure on the digital advertising ecosystem. That last category -- which includes advertisers, ad agencies, media companies, websites, retailers, search engines and related vendors -- is looking to satisfy both government and consumer demands through self-regulation, and tools like Do Not Track (DNT) headers. "There are many key factors in the privacy debate, including control, transparency and value, along with the concept ...

The AT&T recent decision to implement broadband data caps and charge extra fees for heavy data usage on wireless devices poses grave implications for over-the-top (OTT) video service providers, according to the latest market study by iSuppli Corp . By discontinuing its unlimited access plan, AT&T is now seeking to limit data usage of smart phones. The data caps will make it difficult for any high-quality video streaming application -- without the permission and support of wireless operators. "iSuppli believes that most of the emerging streaming Internet models are mistaken in postulating that they could displace, over time, traditional television and movie delivery mechanisms without paying for related network costs," said William Kidd, director and principal analyst for financial services at iSuppli. Meanwhile, new broadband subscribers worldwide are projected to rise in 2010 by 63.5 million -- up 8.4 percent compared to total net additional subscribers of 58.5...

Futuresource Consulting released findings of its second annual home copying consumer research study. The research built upon the survey conducted last year, and key questions remained the same for annual benchmarking purposes. Around one third of all respondents in both the USA and UK admit to making copies of pre-recorded DVDs in the last 6 months, up from just over a quarter of respondents in 2007. As in 2007 it is 18-24 year old males who are most likely to be copiers. UK respondents showed a significant increase in copying TV shows on DVD when compared with 2007. In both territories, the most common way of copying is either from a DVD player to a DVD recorder, or using a single PC software application for burning DVD copies. In the last 6 months, DVD copiers have copied an average of 12 titles of all genres in the USA and 13 titles of all genres in the UK. In the last 6 months, the average number of movies copied in the UK was 13 new release and 9 catalog; in the USA the figures we...

David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer of Google has posted a response to Microsoft's hostile takeover bid for Yahoo! "The openness of the Internet is what made Google -- and Yahoo! -- possible. A good idea that users find useful spreads quickly. Businesses can be created around the idea. Users benefit from constant innovation. It's what makes the Internet such an exciting place. So Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation. Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies -- and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacen...

One major factor that has had an impact upon the ability of Asian vendors to address 2G and 3G mobile phone handset markets has been their lack of significant intellectual property (IP) portfolios, according to a recent ABI Research market study. As a result, they have been subject to average royalty rates far in excess of those paid by their IP-enabled competitors -- such as Nokia, Motorola, and Sony Ericsson. To avoid repeating their experiences in the 3G market, Asian vendors such as Samsung, Toshiba, Matsushita, Sony, NEC, and Mitsubishi, along with NTT, have captured significant portions of the IP relevant to the 4G technology space. ABI Research director Stuart Carlaw says, "In terms of patent filing volume relating to core 4G technologies, eight of the top 15 companies are Asian vendors. More important, Samsung, and Matsushita are the most active by far." ABI also believes that patent holding alone does not necessarily dictate a strong position. This must be coupled w...

According to an SNL Interactive report, XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite Radio have offered details of the programming choices a merged company would offer, promising to provide consumers with "a la carte" packages starting at $6.99 per month. I'm left wondering, why didn't the FCC or the U.S. Department of Justice push for this type of requirement before approving the AT&T merger with BellSouth -- or any of the prior mergers that reduced the potential for competition, while further consolidating the American communications and media landscape? SNL says that the proposed packages seem to lend credence to the satellite radio company's claims that their proposed merger would result in lower prices and expanded consumer choice, a contention merger opponents such as the National Association of Broadcasters dismiss. Under the proposed pricing plans, which the companies said they planned to include in their reply comments filed with the FCC on July 24, custo...

At the beginning of July the U.S. wireless industry association, CTIA, filed an amicus curiae brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit supporting a stay of the International Trade Commission's (ITC) sweeping order that prevents new and upgraded wireless products that incorporate certain Qualcomm semiconductors from being imported into the United States. The Qualcomm chips in question have been found to infringe upon a Broadcom patent. Regardless, the CTIA brief was offered "in support" of an Emergency Motion filed by Qualcomm Incorporated, Verizon Wireless and other petitioners. In the "friend of the court" brief, the CTIA argues that "the ITC has not only exceeded its statutory authority by barring non-liable parties from importing certain products, but in doing so will inflict significant harm upon American public safety, innovation and economic productivity." A section of the brief reads; "The downstream exclusion or...

U.S. regulators have denied a request by the cable television industry to delay new rules designed to open up the market for cable TV set-top boxes -- and in the process have started to unravel the longtime duopoly of Motorola (owner of General Instrument) and Cisco (owner of Scientific Atlanta). According to a Reuters report, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) said it would not postpone an order that requires cable companies to separate the security functions from set-top boxes and put them into a CableCard that can be easily used in TVs and set-top boxes made by other manufacturers (not owned by the duopoly). "In a new era with a competitive set-top box market, consumers will enjoy greater choice and reap the benefits of exciting and innovative features -- such as the ability to watch Internet videos or view slideshows of family vacations on their TV sets," FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said in a prepared statement. I believe that Chairman Martin should have gone farth...

IDC predicts that regulation around net neutrality will be decided in favor of facilities-based broadband service providers like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast -- in a decisive move by the combined telecom and big media lobbyists who are are actively shaping U.S. government policy. IDC believes that keeping the Internet free from net neutrality regulation will ultimately benefit large scale Internet incumbents like Google, eBay, and Amazon. Here's their rationale. Core to the net neutrality debate is the issue of control and monetization of broadband networks by facilities-based broadband providers, according to IDC. In contrast, I believe that the real issue is big media companies maintaining their "gatekeeper" influence, with a perpetuated status quo that favors both a bias of perspective and a scarcity of alternative opinion. Led by an explosion in Internet video, IDC forecasts that the U.S. consumer Internet generated IP traffic is going to be three times heavier in ...

The OpenNet Initiative (ONI) is a collaborative partnership of four leading academic institutions -- the Citizen Lab at the Munk Centre for International Studies, University of Toronto; the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School; the Advanced Network Research Group at the Cambridge Security Programme, University of Cambridge; and the Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford University. Their aim is to investigate, expose and analyze Internet filtering and surveillance practices in a credible and non-partisan fashion. They intend to uncover the potential pitfalls and unintended consequences of these practices, and thus help to inform better public policy and advocacy work in this area. To achieve these aims, the ONI employs a unique multi-disciplinary approach that includes: - Development and deployment of a suite of technical enumeration tools and core methodologies for the study of Internet filtering and survellance; - Capacity-building among networks of local advoca...