AUTOMATION

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“Does this count as an ‘act of God’?”

That's the question legal teams everywhere were asking when Covid hit the US last March. Clients wanted to search out force majeure clauses in thousands of real estate agreements and other contracts, wondering if the pandemic could render legal agreements null and void. Not only were there more docs to review than usual, but also lawyers had to find quick answers to critical, unprecedented issues...all while working from home.

With nowhere else to turn...some lawyers embraced the robots. The industry was on a slow path toward integrating more tech tools into its workflows, but 2020 was an inflection point for adoption, according to Chris Audet, a senior research director at Gartner who studies in-house legal teams. 

• “[In] the past, automation, AI, advanced analytics were voyeuristic. That was their [lawyers'] attitude toward it: ‘I’m kind of curious about it, I want to see how other teams maybe use it and I can evaluate it,’” Audet said. “That’s not the case anymore.”

Experts say what’s happening in the legal industry is indicative of the direction many knowledge work industries will go. 

Case study

Luminance, a UK-based AI-for-legal startup founded by University of Cambridge mathematicians in 2015, saw business grow 40% in 2020. Previously, its revenue largely came from M&A work; once Covid hit, clients tapped it for over 30 different specialties, including property portfolio analysis, contract negotiations, and compliance. 

• Luminance's product is a blend of supervised and unsupervised machine learning—meaning the model undergoes some training but also uses a learn-as-you-go approach, for “finding unknown unknowns,” Luke Taylor, a subject matter expert for the company, said. 
• Its clients include one-fifth of the world’s largest law firms and all Big Four accounting firms (PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and EY).

Zoom out: Automation is often tied to conversations about manufacturing and wage work, but knowledge work automation is no myth. Stanford University research found that, after cross-referencing more than 16,000 AI-related patents and 800 job descriptions, “knowledge” sectors with highly paid, well-educated workers may be more susceptible to automation than blue-collar jobs. 

“Whether it’s the white collar worker or...the laborer, everyone’s going to go through this, what I call ‘automation journey,’ whether they like it or not,” Suneet Dua, PwC’s US chief product officer, said. 

Click here to read the full piece.—HF

CRYPTO

Advanced fission vision

We’ve found our winner for wildest energy partnership of the week. Two US startups pledged this morning to bring nuclear-powered bitcoin mining online in the “early 2020s.” 

Mini-reactor, meet mining rigs

1. Oklo aims to build lil’ nuclear reactors (see artist rendering above). And while the California startup has made regulatory headway, it still must receive a license to actually operate its planned micro-reactors.  
2. Compass runs an online marketplace for crypto mining. Customers purchase equipment and select a host facility in the US, Canada, or Iceland. The company runs interference behind the scenes, procuring equipment, moving it around the world, and matching customers with crypto farms. 
3. The energy partnership will last 20 years, Oklo’s target lifetime for its plants. “There’s a natural inevitability to a shift and combination of bitcoin, advanced nuclear technology, and clean energy,” Oklo CEO Jacob DeWitte told the Brew. 

Two birds, one stone? 

Two of 2021’s defining crypto stories are a) the growing spotlight on mining’s carbon footprint and b) Chinese authorities booting operations from within their borders. The latter is triggering a global realignment of bitcoin network’s hash rate.

• “We consider nuclear to be an ideal power source for bitcoin mining because it's plentiful, reliable, inexpensive, and carbon-free,” Compass CEO Whit Gibbs told us. 

If the partnership fully comes to pass, it could be an early use case for Oklo’s technology. Along with crypto, DeWitte also highlighted data centers and indoor growing facilities as energy customers that “allow us to decouple site-dependent dynamics that sometimes slow the deployment of new projects.” Finally, the partnership could be good PR for bitcoiners, helping them make the case that mining can be decentralized and decarbonized.—RD  

SPONSORED BY BAKKT

Farewell, Bi-Fold

The ol’ trusty wallet. A little tattered, maybe, but it carries a lot of memories: An expired credit card, a gift card with who knows how much left on it, a loyalty card with points you always forget to use. Precious cargo, to be sure. 

But do you know what it doesn’t carry? Your digital assets. That’s the beauty of Bakkt: The digital wallet of the future.

Bakkt lets you manage a variety of digital assets all in one place—from loyalty and rewards points to gift cards and cryptocurrency…even what’s left on that gift card in your wallet.

Your digital assets have a safe and happy home, and you can trade ‘em, send ‘em, or spend ‘em as you see fit. You can even spend at your favorite retailers with the Bakkt® Visa® Debit Card.

And crypto? Bakkt makes it easy, secure, and cost-effective to buy and sell bitcoin with no transaction or trading fees*.

Keep your old wallet for the memories. Manage the rest with Bakkt.

TECH POLICY

How to fund the future

The pissing contest among spacebound billionaires offers a chance to reexamine an old question: Where should ambitious tech and science funding come from, the public sector or private sector? 

According to an Aspen Economic Strategy Group (ESG) paper released this morning, both are important, but the US government can and should be spending a lot more on science and tech R&D. 

The argument: The US government underinvests in science and tech compared to other countries like Germany and South Korea, and increasing investment would more than pay for itself. For every $1 that is invested in R&D, society earns—conservatively—an average return of $5, per the paper. Societal returns = things like standard of living increases or greater competitiveness on the global market.

• In 2018, the US’ public R&D expenditure as a share of GDP was 0.66%, about $135 billion in dollar terms, down from 1.18 % three decades ago, and near its lowest level in 60 years. 

“We're just basically leaving money on the table—it’s like we have this incredible return machine, [but] we just don't invest in it,” Benjamin Jones, an economist and an entrepreneurship professor at Northwestern University, and the author of the paper, told Emerging Tech Brew. 

Big picture: Silicon Valley is often portrayed as a place willed into existence by a handful of Randian heroes, but the reality is that it’s founded on a sturdy foundation of government R&D spending. Jones’s Aspen ESG paper argues for a revitalization of that foundation.

Click here to read the full piece.—DM 

BITS & BYTES

Stat: Electrify America, the Volkswagen-owned EV charger company, plans to double its number of fast charging stations in the US and Canada by late 2025.

Quote: “I'm of the opinion it would be better for everyone at the company—and, frankly, humanity—if Google were broken up."—A senior Googler, who has reportedly been with the company for 10+ years, to Business Insider 

Read: A look inside the World Wide Web Consortium: an “angry, geeky, often petty” battle over consumer data and user privacy. 

Rev up: The revenue event of the summer, Gong #celebrate, is comin’ in hot on July 21. Some of the biggest names in business will be spilling the tea on trends and tactics shaping the revenue industry. Save your seat here.*

SPONSORED BY HPE

Data’s everywhere, but making good use of it is the tricky part. Take medical research. All sorts of patient data is vital to improving treatments via AI, yet sharing such data is prohibited by law. That’s where “swarm learning” comes in—a method of sharing insights without sharing the actual data. A potential game changer? You bet. Read more from HPE here.

WHAT ELSE IS BREWING

• House Representatives from both parties called for increased regulation of facial recognition tech at a hearing yesterday. 
• Ring’s end-to-end encryption for video streams is now available in the US and is rolling out globally. 
• Discord acquired Sentropy, an AI software company that specializes in fighting online harassment. 
• Blue Origin received FAA approval for its inaugural human spaceflight on July 20.
• Gogo, the in-flight wi-fi company, changed its name to Intelsat. 

TRIVIA

Washington and tech grow more intertwined by the day. How well do you know the tech-government goings on? 

Take our quiz to find out. 

ICYMI

Catch up on the top Emerging Tech Brew stories from the past few editions: 

• Biden turns up the heat on Big Tech and ISPs with exec order
• From Sin City to Smart City: Inside Las Vegas's plan to digitize
• Nearly one quarter of Americans have used a VR or AR headset

✢ A Note From Bakkt

* Click here to learn about Bakkt’s spreads for bitcoin transactions.