Oct 02, 2024 | AI

Leann Blanchfield, head of Editorial, Thomson Reuters, said now is the most exciting time in her 30+ years with the company.

In the latest episode of TechConnect, Blanchfield shared how the power of generative AI – and the dramatic leap it’s making in how professionals across industries can access large quantities of data – is transforming the legal industry and beyond. Blanchfield credits the more than 1,500 attorney editors on her team, who create and enhance content, with harnessing the power of generative AI for legal research.

Human expertise is just one component of how Thomson Reuters is capitalizing on the potential of generative AI. Three elements are critical, as David Wong, chief product officer, Thomson Reuters, noted in his comments about the launch of CoCounsel 2.0 at ILTACON: “We have the data, the expertise, and the tech. Few have all three in such quantity and depth.”

In the new TechConnect episode, Wong focused on the role of human domain experts, noting they’re key to the process of creating and validating data used by AI models for professional research.

“There’s a lot of both prompt engineering, fine tuning, and system refinement that’s necessary to get quality to a usable spot,” Wong said. “Experts, experienced researchers and experienced lawyers can help to gauge whether or not the systems are correct. We couldn’t have an objective, quantified measure of quality on these systems without the editors, without those experts.”

Wong and Blanchfield discussed the importance of human experts in ensuring the accuracy and reliability of AI.

“Maintaining accuracy is at the heart of what the editorial team does,” Blanchfield said. “It’s the number-one priority across every editorial team. We maintain our content to be accurate and trusted.”

Wong acknowledged it’s challenging for the team to process and update unstructured, constantly changing data in real time. He said that Thomson Reuters ensures that its AI models are customized and meeting the varying needs of various jurisdictions through a combination of software and algorithms that take advantage of the LLMs.

“So when you ask a question of Westlaw AI-Assisted Research, for example, we are running an end-to-end algorithm which runs search, retrieves data, re-ranks, interprets and then ultimately passes that information to a large language model to synthesize and produce the answer,” Wong said. “It’s a very complicated system which involves multiple types of technology, multiple types of information retrieval. Processing unstructured, dynamic data and customizing AI models requires integrating multiple technologies and algorithms to optimize performance.”

Hear more of Wong and Blanchfield’s insights on integrating AI into professional tools and ensuring that information is trustworthy in the latest episode of the TechConnect series, which brings diverse and dynamic perspectives from all corners of the technology world with thought-provoking questions and conversation.