Usually, when constructing, coaching and deploying AI, enterprises prioritize accuracy. And that, little question, is necessary; however in extremely advanced, nuanced industries like regulation, accuracy alone isn’t sufficient. Greater stakes imply greater requirements: Fashions outputs have to be assessed for relevancy, authority, quotation accuracy and hallucination charges.
To sort out this immense process, LexisNexis has advanced past commonplace retrieval-augmented technology (RAG) to graph RAG and agentic graphs; it has additionally constructed out "planner" and "reflection" AI brokers that parse requests and criticize their very own outputs.
“There’s no such [thing] as ‘excellent AI’ since you by no means get 100% accuracy or 100% relevancy, particularly in advanced, excessive stake domains like authorized,” Min Chen, LexisNexis' SVP and chief AI officer, acknowledges in a brand new VentureBeat Past the Pilot podcast.
The purpose is to handle that uncertainty as a lot as potential and translate it into constant buyer worth. “On the finish of the day, what issues most for us is the standard of the AI final result, and that may be a steady journey of experimentation, iteration and enchancment,” Chen mentioned.
Getting ‘full’ solutions to multi-faceted questions
To guage fashions and their outputs, Chen’s group has established greater than a half-dozen “sub metrics” to measure “usefulness” based mostly on a number of elements — authority, quotation accuracy, hallucination charges — in addition to “comprehensiveness.” This explicit metric is designed to guage whether or not a gen AI response absolutely addressed all features of a customers' authorized questions.
“So it's not nearly relevancy,” Chen mentioned. “Completeness speaks on to authorized reliability.”
As an illustration, a person could ask a query that requires a solution protecting 5 distinct authorized concerns. Gen AI could present a response that precisely addresses three of those. However, whereas related, this partial reply is incomplete and, from a person perspective, inadequate. This may be deceptive and pose real-life dangers.
Or, for instance, some citations could also be semantically related to a person's query, however they could level to arguments or situations that have been in the end overruled in courtroom. “Our legal professionals will take into account them not citable,” Chen mentioned. “In the event that they're not citable, they're not helpful.”
Transferring past commonplace RAG
LexisNexis launched its flagship gen AI product, Lexis+ AI — a authorized AI device for drafting, analysis and evaluation — in 2023. It was constructed on a regular RAG framework and hybrid vector search that grounds responses in LexisNexis' trusted, authoritative data base.
The corporate then launched its private authorized assistant, Protégé, in 2024. This agent incorporates a data graph layer on high of vector search to beat a “key limitation” of pure semantic search. Though “superb” at retrieving contextually related content material, semantic search “doesn't at all times assure authoritative solutions," Chen mentioned.
Preliminary semantic search returns what it deems related content material; Chen’s group then traverses these returns throughout a “level of regulation” graph to additional filter essentially the most extremely authoritative paperwork.
Going past this, Chen's group is creating agentic graphs and accelerating automation so brokers can plan and execute advanced multi-step duties.
As an illustration, self-directed “planner brokers” for analysis Q&A break person questions into a number of sub-questions. Human customers can evaluation and edit these to additional refine and personalize closing solutions. In the meantime, a “reflection agent” handles transactional doc drafting. It may “routinely, dynamically” criticize its preliminary draft, then incorporate that suggestions and refine in actual time.
Nonetheless, Chen mentioned that every one of this isn’t to chop people out of the combination; human specialists and AI brokers can “be taught, cause and develop collectively.” “I see the long run [as] a deeper collaboration between people and AI.”
Watch the podcast to listen to extra about:
How LexisNexis’ acquisition of Henchman helped floor AI fashions with proprietary LexisNexis information and buyer information;
The distinction between deterministic and non-deterministic analysis;
Why enterprises ought to establish KPIs and definitions of success earlier than dashing to experimentation;
The significance of specializing in a “triangle” of key parts: Value, pace and high quality.
You can even pay attention and subscribe to Past the Pilot on Spotify, Apple or wherever you get your podcasts.
