Roughly 20 years ago, a series of advertisements appeared in national newspapers stating that ’Computers can understand language’. When, in a newspaper column I expressed mild scepticism about the claim, I was invited into the premises of a law-enforcement agency for a demonstration of how a new kind of artificial intelligence technology might assist in the then-raging War on Terror by identifying suspicious messages amid a blizzard of intercepted communications.

It was my first introduction to Autonomy, a company founded in 1996 to develop artificial intelligence software based on pattern-recognition techniques and Bayesian inference, a mathematical technique for updating the probability of a hypothesis as more information becomes available. The demonstration was impressive. While I would still quibbled with the word ‘understand’ (that’s a topic for another day), it was my first introduction to the ability of pattern-recognition software to handle natural language in a way that uncannily mimicked human intelligence. As such, it was a dramatic leap forward from the previous generation of AI, the clunkily programmed robotic ’expert systems’.

Looking back, it was also a sneak preview of the paradigm shift which occured when large-language models such as ChatGPT, also based on pattern-recognition learning rather than ’if-then’ logic, burst on the scene in 2022.

My interest in AI, which had waned during the 1990s, was piqued (alas not to the extent of investing financially). I began following Autonomy and its founder, Dr Mike Lynch - especially when he became close to a household name following the company’s sale to the foundering US hardware giant Hewlett-Packard in 2011. As a Law Society Gazette journalist I naturally took a great interest in 2015 when HP used the English civil courts to pursue a record fraud claim against Lynch over the $11bn price it paid. 

When Autonomy Corporation Ltd. and others v. Lynch and another came to court in 2019, it was my first experience of a Rolls Building mega-trial, complete with ranks of counsel behind computer screens (then still a relative novelty in courtrooms) and video links to California. Mr Justice Hildyard’s ruling, when it eventually came in 2022, found that HP had ‘substantially succeeded’ in its claim. The judgment itself set new records, running to over 1,500 pages.

But this was only the first phase in Lynch’s courtroom travails, which include a lengthy battle against extradition by the US ahead of a dramatic criminal trial in California, featuring Lynch’s personal testimony to the jury. It ended with acquittal on all charges in June. 

Understandably, after 12 years of legal battle, Mike Lynch and his family needed a holiday. Alas that ended in tragedy in the early hours of yesterday morning. What caused the sinking of the yacht Bayesian, thus renamed following its acquisition by a company controlled by Lynch's wife, has already been subject to massive speculation. This is far too early. However one certainty is that yacht skippers worldwide will be looking hard at their procedures for rapidly sealing hatches and vents when a risk of swamping occurs. 

Bacause Bayesian was UK-flagged, we have a good chance of arriving at the truth. Inspectors from the Marine Accidents Investigation Branch, an agency of the Department for Transport, have arrived at the scene of the accident. Their investigation will be meticulous and their report will pull no punches. It will be drawn up under the provisions of the Merchant Shipping (Accident Reporting and Investigation) Regulations 2012, which state that: 'The sole objective of the investigation of an accident ... shall be the prevention of future accidents through the ascertainment of its causes and circumstances. It shall not be the purpose of an such investigation to determine liability nor, except so far as is necessary to achieve its objective, to apportion blame.'

Neither is the report admissible 'in any judicial proceedings whose purpose, or one of whose purposes is to attribute or apportion liability or blame'.

However to predict that this tragedy will draw a line under Michael Richard Lynch's appearances in court proceedings would be foolhardy in the extreme. 

Michael Cross has reported on AI technology and policy since the 1980s. He is an experienced yacht skipper with more than 6,000 miles in his logbook. 

 

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