Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a hot topic in industries from manufacturing to the medical profession. Developments in the last ten years have delivered AI technology, once a fiction reserved for the movies, to private corporations and even to everyday homes. Examples include:
- 2004 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) sponsors a driverless car grand challenge. Technology developed by the participants eventually allows Google to develop a driverless automobile and modify existing transportation laws.
- 2005 Honda’s ASIMO humanoid robot can walk as fast as a human, delivering trays to customers in a restaurant setting. The same technology is now used in military robots.
- 2011 IBM’s Watson wins Jeopardy against top human champions. It is training to provide medical advice to doctors. It can master any domain of knowledge.
- 2012 Google releases its Knowledge Graph, a semantic search knowledge base, likely to be the first step toward true artificial intelligence.
- 2013 BRAIN initiative aimed at reverse engineering the human brain receives $3 billion in funding by the White House, following an earlier billion euro European initiative to accomplish the same.
- 2014 Chatbot convinced 33% of the judges it was human and by doing so passed a restricted version of a Turing Test.
commits to a broad duty to defend the policyholder against any suits alleging claims that have a potential for coverage under the insurance policy. However, when a claim arises, insurers have a financial interest in trying to get off the hook. At times, policyholders need to turn to the courts for help reeling insurers in and forcing them to follow through with their commitments.
investigation of claimed losses, but policyholders often do not fully understand the investigation process or coverage issues it raises. They may not review the policy requirements to understand their obligations with respect to the claims process. This post addresses insurance coverage considerations when the insurer wishes to investigate your claim for loss under a property policy.
continues to devastate lives and communities across the United States. The extent and impact of opioid addiction are being examined and explained by experts in the field, and we aren’t trying to tackle that subject on an insurance blog. Instead, this post outlines the expanding breadth of opioid liability claims at every level of the industry, and insurance coverage considerations raised by these claims.
d by category in the named insured’s subcontract. But before concluding you’ve got additional insurance, there’s another opinion you should know about. Around the same time, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit came to the opposite conclusion holding that an Additional Insured endorsement did not cover the University of Rochester Medical Center, even though the subcontract specifically provided that the University would be an additional insured, and Harleysville Insurance Co. therefore had no obligation to defend or indemnify it in a suit filed by an injured construction worker.
devastating events, damages are estimated to top $5 billion. As Californians file insurance claims to cover their losses, coverage for flooding and mudslide damage has come into focus.
their responsibility to ensure the language is clear. Some states require the use of extrinsic evidence before resolving ambiguous language in favor of the policyholder, and many consider the reasonable expectations of the parties in interpreting policy language.
think about their days six minutes at a time. But as more in-house legal departments take on their company’s own defense, they are well advised to have time-keeping programs and procedures in place to recover the maximum amount from the insurance companies that have accepted a duty to defend or agreed to indemnify the company for defense costs.
Uncertainty and speculation abound; no one knows exactly how the law will be enforced, particularly with respect to companies domiciled outside the EU, with no EU footprint, who process and hold the personal data of EU residents. But while publications are awash with advice regarding compliance, few tackle the question whether your business is protected against loss in the event of a data breach or other unintentional failure to comply. We strongly suggest that your due diligence include a review of your insurance coverage for GDPR non-compliance, especially for fines, penalties and lawsuits (individual or class action). Qualified coverage counsel should assist in the review, but key areas of focus include:
meaning the policy is unenforceable from the outset, as if there had never been any coverage. But in