Legal AI Co. ROSS Appoints AI Guru Randy Goebel As Advisor

Legal AI research company, ROSS Intelligence, has appointed AI pioneer and leading academic, Randy Goebel (pictured above) as an advisor.

Goebel is currently Professor in the Department of Computing Science at the University of Alberta; a founder and researcher with the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute; and is involved with the development of the University of Alberta Google Deepmind relationship, the group behind AlphaGo.

More recently, Goebel has been working on the application of machine learning to visual explanation and natural language processing, with a focus on legal reasoning.

In a statement, Goebel added: ‘Recent progress in AI and machine learning has made it possible to tackle previously impossible challenges in legal reasoning.’

‘To see the possibility of accelerating the accuracy and speed of legal proceedings with ROSS Intelligence is truly exciting for a scientist who has already yearned to confirm the value of a long history of research in natural language processing and reasoning,’ he concluded.

Artificial Lawyer reached out to ROSS CEO and co-founder, Andrew Arruda, to find out more:

How significant is this appointment? (Especially for those who may not know Randy’s impact on AI.)

‘Having Randy join the team is a fantastic development. Randy has been hard at work in the field of artificial intelligence and specifically focused his energies on natural language processing in the legal space (our core area of focus), so Randy joining ROSS has been a perfect match.’

In terms of specific input into new products, service lines that ROSS may produce in the future, will Randy have direct input there?

‘Randy will be working with the artificial intelligence team at ROSS in a variety of capacities and advising on multiple fronts. The team is extremely excited to be working with Randy. As I have said before, the future has never been brighter for ROSS.’

And more generally, how important is it for a young legal AI company to have experienced advisors like this?

‘We recently opened our AI R&D headquarters in Toronto back in June which has tied us into the AI community in Toronto and now having Randy join we are excited to be getting more Canadian AI communities involved in the cutting edge AI developments currently happening at ROSS. Having a pioneer like Randy on as an advisor will help us continue to march forward here at ROSS as we aim to forever change the way legal services are delivered.’

The move follows the recent news that ROSS has received an $8.7m Series A funding round, adding to its previous $4.3 million Seed round, making it one of the largest total fundings of any legal AI company at $13m.

This latest round was led by iNovia Capital with participation by Comcast Ventures Catalyst Fund, Y Combinator Continuity Fund, Real Ventures, Dentons’ NextLaw Labs and Apple’s deep learning lead, Nicolas Pinto, who invested as an angel.