The following is the executive summary for my upcoming post carrying the same title:

Imagine you have a readily-available smart assistant app, one that can quickly provide you with valuable, substantive insight about many different products and services. There are no complicated user interface routines to master. Simple, easy-to-understand information is delivered in such a way that at the time of purchase, there are no substantive questions left unanswered. The information flow continues after the purchase is made. Typically, consumers rely on sellers to provide important post-purchase information, but that arrangement does not have to be accepted as a preordained, inalterable fact. Instead, the smart assistant app can also monitor and periodically deliver to its user important information (e.g., recall, warranty updates, product liability litigation) in the form of notifications, which most of us are already familiar with by virtue of our smartphone apps.

I first introduced the concept of the smart assistant app in my Siri: What’s Next post (October 31, 2011). Less than a couple of months later, the “CLAI” moniker was introduced in my Computational Law Applications and the Unauthorized Practice of Law (January 14, 2012) post. The CLAI was (and remains) the term used to refer to artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled computational law apps.

In this upcoming new post, I significantly broaden the scope of how CLAIs can be used. I begin by showing how CLAIs can be used to dissolve the persistent state of information asymmetry that exists between sellers and buyers, a state perpetuated by the impenetrable layers of information (legalese and non-functional information) surrounding products and services. In doing so, the CLAIs help tilt the equilibrium more favorably towards the buyer, eroding the seller’s subjective leverage mechanisms (through, for example, marketing strategies) and injecting objective decision markers for the benefit of the buyer (and ultimately the seller as well). I then move on to describe the role CLAIs can play as information brokers in various applications, focusing specifically on Internet of Things (IoT) and their cybersecurity envelope (a topic I will be presenting at the University of Minnesota Law School’s Technology Law Review Symposium next month). Following that section is a discussion of how CLAIs can be used to reference not only cybersecurity laws and regulations, but also relevant standards, guidelines, best practices, methodologies, procedures, and processes. I conclude with a discussion of how the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS) Cybersecurity Requirements for Financial Services (23 NYCRR 500) can be used as a cybersecurity referential blue print for CLAIs.