AI and the Court Reporter

AI is coming to every industry worldwide. Period. And that will happen whether it's embraced by court reporting -- or any particular industry -- or not. Futurists' warnings about the ultimate dangers of The Singularity are no joke. Wikipedia cites the technological singularity as: 'the hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unfathomable changes to human civilization.'

Scary Stuff?
Maybe. But long before our robot overlords snuff out court reporters (and every other human industry), there are incremental advantages of having AI around. And this is nothing new. I think of technology advancement as the reason why most pen writers either retired or switched to steno writers; and why steno writers are now computerized; and why those computerized writers are now augmented with laptops, augmented with dictionaries. And so on. The likely reason your untranslate rate is high -- IN ADDITION TO YOUR INCREDIBLE STENO SKILLS! -- is due to amazing software behind the scenes that utilizes -- you guessed it -- artificial intelligence.

In short, setting aside the science fiction of AI, I envision there is a lot of good it could do in the near term to help court reporters. AI could help by:

  • - sewing together audio with text easier
  • - reducing untranslates
  • - improving accuracy during dictation
  • -decreasing editing time
  • - suggesting scheduling changes to your calendar for maximum work life and transcript editing balance


There's are just my armchair futurist thoughts. What do you think?


Wednesday, February 5, 2020

Author
Todd Olivas

Todd Olivas is a court reporter and entrepreneur.
He founded TO&A in 2003.


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