In this edition of the Priori Digest, a weekly look at what’s happening in law and technology, we feature the moral machine, the looming AI Cold War and the beginning of our weekly lawyer joke series. To get the digest straight to your inbox, sign up here. Enjoy!
What we’re reading
- A case involving Dutch cheese has led to the European Court of Justice -- the EU’s highest legal authority -- to rule that the taste of food cannot be protected by copyright
- The looming AI Cold War between the U.S. and China that threatens us all
- The Supreme Court will determine whether the U.S. Government is a ‘person’ eligible to petition the Patent Trial and Appeal Board
- Researchers at the MIT Media Lab designed an experiment called Moral Machine, that aimed to explore the moral dilemmas faced by autonomous vehicles. It compiled nearly 40 million individual decisions from respondents in 233 countries. What it showed is that the ethical considerations regarding whether you think the self-driving car should spare the baby or the grandma are determined by where you are from
- Should lawyers make the move to coworking spaces? While this piece argues in favor of it, maybe lawyers will also need these
What we're looking at
- This incredible video of Google Assistant booking a haircut and a dinner reservation
- Your honor, in closing...
What in the weird
- There aren’t many weirder industries than the dead celebrity hologram industry
- Christies recently sold a painting creating by AI for over $400,000
By the numbers
- 6.4 million: Harvard Law School’s Library Innovation Lab (with our friends at Ravel) has successfully managed to scan and digitize all U.S. case law since 1658 -- 6.4 million cases in total
- 34 billion: IBM purchased Red Hat, an open source software company that gives away its primary product free of charge, for an eye-watering $34 billion
- 19: The number of venture rounds in 2018 of over $100 million for companies based in New York City
