Artificial intelligence (AI) software has beaten a group of lawyers from top international firms in an insurance claim accuracy test.

A group of students from the University of Cambridge founded an AI start-up that builds systems that predict legal decisions. These systems were recently pitted against more than 100 partners and associates from major corporate law firms in London. Both the lawyers and the AI were given a set of facts regarding payment protection insurance mis-selling cases and asked to predict whether the UK Financial Ombudsman would allow a claim. The AI software predicted the outcome with almost 87% accuracy, while the lawyers were correct only 62% of the time.

This is not the first time that a machine has been pitted against lawyers. Similar research conducted showed the success of AI and algorithms to predict the outcome of US Supreme Court decisions and decisions of the European Court of Human Rights more accurately than its lawyer counterparts.

AI development is disrupting the legal world, but it need not be a threat to those lawyers willing to embrace it. AI is not set to replace lawyers, but rather to assist in providing better services to clients.

The Economist recently published data on AI replacing certain jobs in the next 20 years. According to this data, lawyers do not feature on the list, and dentists and clergy have the lowest probability of being affected by AI.

Those who fear the disruption of AI in their career should consider becoming a preaching dentist.