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Blockchain will change the world: but what will people do?

One clever man said: “lawyers are a song in general. Their profession is perhaps the closest to the development of code, except that people play the role of code. ”

Why this article is it-specialists - at the end of the article. For now - thoughts about the future (on the example of the legal industry, of course).

Blockchain - technology. Bitcoin is a revolution. But the revolution is contained in the chain of blocks. For example, in the book of M. Kaku “Physics of the Future” there is a lot about what awaits us tomorrow: even if it comes in decades.
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Blockchain does so that the view of the “wonderful, wondrous world” is changing before our eyes.




Here are several articles from Habr that discuss something from this:

But today, few people understand that automation always means temporary (?) Loss of jobs . And what will happen after a qualitative change in automation is not yet fully known. The process of automation, however, has also been described.

So, losing your job (if you add up the latest developments, and not only in the field of open systems, but also bigdata, artificial intelligence) may well be:
  1. sellers (in Japan and Sweden already have points of sale without those, and the vending business should also be taken into account), including retail networks in principle, that is, as an “extra” (?) intermediary;
  2. drivers : first of all, of course, taxis, but everyone else too. However, there are quite a lot of questions about “who will be selected by the autopilot if there is a possible accident - the driver or the pedestrian”, especially if you scroll through the tape about Google and Tesla.
  3. Lawyers : more on this below
  4. other professions : in my opinion, it is easier to say who technology will not affect.

It seems to me that those will be primarily:
  1. people of creative professions (artists in all senses, or, as they say in the humanitarian environment, are creators), although the texts are already written by AI;
  2. further, people who understand people (doctors, but first of all from the category of “thin directions”, as well as psychologists and those who work in similar areas), but “golden hands” are already trying to replace “da Vinci”;
  3. narrow specialists - and not because it is impossible, but because it is economically unprofitable. For example, robots sew shoes for a long time, as, for example, collect cars. But the manual assembly of both is still there. And it is paid very well. It is also not entirely clear how the world of tasters and barista, cynologists will change ...

However, a little more about lawyers.

Of course, today the work of many legal professions can be changed:
  1. notaries - with the help of just the blockchain, because: "the notary ... is designed to ensure ... the protection of the rights and legitimate interests of citizens and legal entities by notary actions provided by legislative acts ...". In essence, the Ukrainians have already made a step in this direction . Automation projects are born at all year after year.
  2. Judges - in general, smart contracts will play their part, first of all, only in this area is much more complicated. Why? Because the independence of the judiciary is one of the pillars of democracy from the United States to Russia. Everywhere he is understood in his own way, but in principle it is. Therefore, so far only a modernization of the sphere of pre-trial proceedings is seen. In addition, the work of experts, translators and others involved in the case can be significantly improved. However, this is a separate and big question.
  3. clerks - I do not know how else to designate this category, but in general and in general these are those lawyers, in whose work automation takes 75% or more percent. Sberbank wants to get rid of 3,000 of those already. And this is the realm of the blockchain and bots. I will quote to make it clearer: “A top manager of Sberbank, said that at the end of last year, the robot lawyer had already started performing the first job. He makes statements of claim. Now, almost all claims that are written against individuals will be drawn up by robots, and this system will work already in the first half of the year. ” Similar bots-lawyers are already “born” in the USA, Ukraine, Great Britain. However, here are materials from Habro and the it-community:
  4. experts (of course, most of them are not lawyers at all, just lawyers of all classes like no one depend on expertise) - it’s appropriate to put Vs., since expert systems together with AI can easily compete in many areas: ballistics, auto-expertise and etc. Perhaps somewhere it will be more difficult to do: say, in the intricacies of linguistic analysis. As a transition to success, I personally consider handwriting expertise. To evaluate the versatility of directions, again - a mini sample from Habr:
  5. guards - again, a collective image, but police patrol, prison overseers, escorts and the like - this is the necessary tool of the state, which, as you know, is based on a legal monopoly on violence. But with routine tasks, these specialties can be eliminated with the help of ... robots. For example, in 2017, on the streets of Dubai (which, by the way, will be one of the first cities served by blockchain technologies ), such “creatures” will appear, without any necessary AI, of course. I quote again: “It is noted that with the help of a robot, people will be able to report crimes to the police, using the touch screen on his chest, as well as pay fines and hand over the documents necessary for the authorities”.

Surely you can continue (I would be grateful if you write in the comments which professions in your opinion primarily "suffer" from the blockchain , AI, smart contracts and automation in general). Yes, the selection above can be blamed for the fact that the time frames vary greatly for each item. But while I’m not interested in the specifics of numbers, but only in extremely general trends, such an approach can be allowed.

Nevertheless, the obvious conclusion is the following: lawyers must change in the next 5-30 years, and strongly. If you think about it, then there is absolutely nothing bad about it: automation is not keeping up with humanity for the first century.

The only question is: "what to do next?" . In Russia alone, over 100,000 companies specializing in law are registered. At the same time, the level of lawyers' salaries in the Russian Federation remains relatively stable and today fluctuates around 35,000 - 37,000 rubles. According to various sources, there are approximately 1,500,000 lawyers in Russia, 750,000 of whom work in the specialty. Total, according to the most modest estimates, 26 250 000 000 rubles or $ 437 500 000 per month. I think that the real turnover is at least twice as much.

A good optimization of business processes?

Perhaps, but where will all these people go? This question is still open. But there is confidence that in those moments where automation will be (so far) powerless:
  1. identifying unobvious relationships that often arise in the same judicial practice;
  2. development of non-standard contracts , for example, those appear when it comes to the same start-ups or when developing schemes of interaction between companies in different countries;
  3. negotiations , however, their format will change for sure, for example, for diplomats - this is still a huge field.

There are other directions, but more importantly, that in each of the designated blockchain can play a positive role. How? By creating a reputation system, since it is she who is the stumbling block in the legal sphere of interactions.

I already wrote about the “human blockchain” at the end of another article . The bottom line is that it is the open p2p-systems that allow to bring the concept of reputation in the field of specialists to the right to a new level: from a value mainly subjective to the category of objective evaluation criteria.

That is why the actual it-specialists in these modifications have their advantages:
  1. Most of the projects (I hope, I will post an analysis in the near future) in the field of blockchains focus on automating individual actions, time, financial flows, but they “forget” that they are automating. More precisely - whom: after all, everything is done for a person, isn’t it? This means that a new level of automation will be possible only when globally significant phenomena will be automated: reputation - just about that.
  2. AI and robots, “big data and machine learning,” are all good, but what happens when they take over? What exactly will people do? Who will write the laws that are not perfect today? How will the lawmaking, law enforcement and judicial process change in this connection? I think that these markets are estimated not even billions.
  3. Of course, the most important question that has already been asked: where will all these people go? Lawyers and not only. Judging by the analysis of the law schools of the USA, England, Russia - far from them the most stupid people of the Earth are studying there. However, there are not so many stupid people in the world as anyone would like to think.

Thus, all the processes described (albeit a little broad) are a huge scope for creating truly powerful IT projects that may well overshadow Google, Apple, Facebook, Ali and others who are leading the economy today.

PS At the end, as usual, links for those who want to expand their understanding of the topic:
  1. https://ethclassic.ru/2016/12/10/blockchain-squeeze-out-the-lawyers/ - again about s-contracts and lawyers.
  2. https://zakon.ru/blog/2016/8/12/umnye_kontrakty_i_sovremennoe_dogovornoe_pravo - about the same, but more officially.
  3. https://coinspot.io/favourites/blokchejn-v-2017-godu-god-umnyh-kontraktov/ - examples from the present time.
  4. http://itsynergis.ru/smart-contract-prosto - that they can automate in principle.
  5. https://bitnovosti.com/2016/08/05/how-will-blockchain-change-banking/ - blockchain and banking.
  6. http://bit.samag.ru/uart/more/62 - interesting opinions about the blockchain as a whole
  7. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJR1b8MRDs44wStYJNCPHjw - the channel, where there is a section on blockchain-innovations.

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/324568/

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