ROSS Intelligence

"Westlaw filed a suit alleging that ROSS stole its proprietary data to fast-track our technology development. These allegations are false. We did nothing wrong. Below, we release internal communications, agreements, and work product related to Westlaw’s claims...In 2017, we started work with a contractor called LegalEase to build datasets to train our artificial intelligence (AI) systems. We needed legal questions mapped directly to passages from case law that answer those questions. It was crucial that the passages mapped directly to case law in our database because we wanted to teach our system to give on-point answers directly from primary law...SEE FULL AGREEMENT HERE: https://lnkd.in/gC2qX3zC ..." Article link: https://lnkd.in/gvBdKrkv

"But West’s life turned south in 1899, when he suddenly left the company he had founded, without public explanation. No one knows, Jarvis said, whether he was pushed out or left of his accord. But within three weeks of leaving, he founded the Keefe-Davidson Law Book Company, along with two former West Publishing employees. In his new role, West spoke publicly against his former company. In 1908, he delivered a speech at the American Association of Law Libraries annual meeting in which he called for the elimination of unofficial case reporters –- the foundation of West Publishing’s business –- in favor of prompt issuance of official reports. He also derided the West digest system, saying it had outlived its usefulness. “Perhaps nothing has done more to prevent the permanency of digests than the false theory that cases and propositions dealing with changing conditions may be made to fit a rigid classification instead of permitting the classification to change gradually with the growth of the case law,” he said. West’s new company struggled, exacerbated by a royalty lawsuit against it that stretched over two years and ended in a victory for the plaintiff. In 1909, West’s financial woes forced him to take his youngest son, Bronson, out of Harvard, where he was a freshman. By 1912, West was forced to shut down his company. Tragically, the company’s failure led West’s older son, John Jr., who had joined the company after graduating from Harvard in 1906, to suffer a nervous breakdown. Admitted to a state hospital for treatment, the son hanged himself and died. These events drove West to leave St. Paul and settle in Pasadena, Calif., where he retired. He died in 1922 of heart disease...ROSS may be right that it more closely mirrors West’s early ambitions than does the company that still bears his name." https://lnkd.in/eNRma2wg

"I must confess I didn’t find these 3 examples to be very good ones to show the putative originality in Thomson’s creation of individual headnotes, putting aside the selection and arrangement of them collectively in the judicial opinions. In the headnotes, there’s a high percentage of words copied straight from the judicial opinion. It’s true that Thomson added some more words (ranging from 8 words in the third example to 21 words in the first example and to 18 words in the second example), but, in each example, the substantial majority of words in the headnotes are copied straight out the judicial opinions. And I am not sure copying words from 3 sentences in a judicial opinion and sticking them into 1 sentence is creative. Nor do I think substituting “official” for the particular party’s name is creative. But, ultimately, the jury will decide."

"Their [ROSS Intelligence's] homecoming here really helps us [Department of Computer Science, University of Toronto] grow and train more people out of the MScAC program. They've hired former graduates. They're currently hosting the internship portion of two students masters degrees, right now. So thank you so much, guys, for being such strong supporters of the program and department, and congratulations on your homecoming." *From the ROSS North office opening on June 5, 2017, where the then Mayor of Toronto, the Associate Chair of Research of the University of Toronto's Computer Science Department, and the President of the University of Toronto attended, provided a speech, and cut the ribbon: https://www.youtube.comwatch/?v=GwlNyjK6y6U

"I just want people to know that we're going to continue to do that. Having you here, I hope you cause lots of disruption here of the most positive kind. Thank you very much, and congratulations again to the University of Toronto and ROSS Intelligence." - then Mayor of Toronto, John Tory, June 5, 2017 *From the ROSS North office opening on June 5, 2017, where the then Mayor of Toronto, the Associate Chair of Research of the University of Toronto's Computer Science Department, and the President of the University of Toronto attended, provided a speech, and cut the ribbon: https://lnkd.in/gwUgE8hg

"In the case of transformational changes such as those represented by people like Geoff Hinton and his work in neural networks and others in this great department, the applications are multi-sectoral, as we are seeing in the work of University of Toronto researchers and their partners in fields like computational medicine, quantitative finance, and transportation, and now ROSS Intelligence is pioneering the very exciting applications in the legal profession." - Meric Gertler, President of the University of Toronto *From the ROSS North office opening on June 5, 2017, where the then Mayor of Toronto, the Associate Chair of Research of the University of Toronto's Computer Science Department, and the President of the University of Toronto attended, provided a speech, and cut the ribbon: https://lnkd.in/gPQgHQPf

"We have also pledged to provide ROSS completely free of cost to organizations furthering access to justice. Our idea to bring artificial intelligence to the law was sparked by our desire to unlock the law for the billions of people worldwide who currently can not afford it." *From the ROSS North office opening on June 5, 2017, where the then Mayor of Toronto, the Associate Chair of Research of the University of Toronto's Computer Science Department, and the President of the University of Toronto attended, provided a speech, and cut the ribbon: https://lnkd.in/gH2XqJ4V

"All but one of the generative AI copyright lawsuits is likely years away from being definitively resolved. However, a Thomson Reuters lawsuit against ROSS Intelligence...is scheduled to go to trial in late August 2024...I find ROSS’ fair use defense quite persuasive. If ROSS prevails, we will know no more about likely remedies in generative AI cases than we know today." https://lnkd.in/gAz-UQXJ

Four years ago today, on June 11, 2020, ROSS Intelligence announced we were launch partners with OpenAI on their first commercial product: an API. The rest, as they say, is history. Much more history to be made in the coming weeks, years, and decades. https://lnkd.in/gijNFUHV

“Not only could we not map this proprietary data to the case law in our database, our technology does not attempt to generate editorialized answers. Instead, it aims to recognize and extract answers directly from the law using machine learning...“It has always been our view that the editorialized content approach, in addition to being fallible and difficult to quality check, produces work that is stale the moment it is published...That is the old legal research playbook. We chose the AI way.” Source: https://lnkd.in/gAMYgGXg