Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

cbsnews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 174 posts

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#11

Post by jacquesm »

brendanashworth wrote: post #7
ausbah wrote: post #6

>The ultimate goal, according to Browder, is to democratize legal representation by making it free for those who can't afford it, in some cases eliminating the need for pricey attorneys. this is the core issue I have with companies and tech like this: they try to solve social issues with technology and business. the issue of accessible defense is an issue of institutional failure that rests on the shoulders of the st…

Working within the existing system, though, is typically the fastest way to address the grievance. AI is probably the most scalable approach to competent counsel, far easier (given ChatGPT) than training new lawyers and convincing them to become public defenders.

AI will give crappy representation to those that can't afford it who will then lose from those that can. This isn't the fastest way to address this particular grievance, it is the fastest way to ensure it won't get addressed at all.

The fact that you can't get a half decent lawyer to represent you unless you are willing to go bankrupt isn't a feature, it's a bug and this just further increases that divide.

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#12

Post by jacquesm »

heyitsguay wrote: post #10

While a pure ChatGPT-style bot would be prone to hallucinations and overconfidence, isn't law actually a fertile field for working out grounded chat LLMS?

The lawsuits I've been involved in typically hinged on pretty arcane stuff which I highly doubt is going to work well without an entity that can quite literally think on its feet. Just showing up is 90%, but what you do when you show up is the other 10 and if you botch that you may still lose a case.

'Sorry, that wasn't in my training set' won't cut it if the penalty is >> the price of your legal fees, an extended stay in jail or in some countries the death penalty. Obviously for criminal cases you'd be fairly mad to try this kind of construct but that's exactly the ones where the legal fees are absolutely crippling.

I've yet to have a case that I brought that went to trial end up under 50K in costs and that was with what I thought was fairly simple stuff with relatively unsympathetic defendants.

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#13

Post by Hithredin »

awb wrote: post #4

> the company's AI-creation runs on a smartphone, listens to court arguments and formulates responses for the defendant. The AI lawyer tells the defendant what to say in real-time, through headphones. Based on AI’s propensity for being confidently incorrect, I’m not sure I’d want to be repeating AI output in a court of law and representing it as truth.

But this xan be be a. ery good complement to an actual layer.

The layer would spend less time preparing (so cheaper) and will basically direct the IA and act as safeguard when the AI gets so confidently incorrect.

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#15

Post by paxys »

ausbah wrote: post #6

>The ultimate goal, according to Browder, is to democratize legal representation by making it free for those who can't afford it, in some cases eliminating the need for pricey attorneys. this is the core issue I have with companies and tech like this: they try to solve social issues with technology and business. the issue of accessible defense is an issue of institutional failure that rests on the shoulders of the st…

I disagree. Technology is the perfect solution for problems like these. So many societal issues today arise because systems developed centuries ago cannot keep up with a population that has grown exponentially since then. Tech's core feature is being able to scale. There will be more and more systemic reliance on automation and AI as time goes on, since that's the only sensible way out.

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#16

Post by undersuit »

I could see an AI lawyer being a great assistant for human lawyers. I dislike the idea of an AI lawyer being appointed to me if I cannot afford my own representation, especially as the county NN isn't going to have as much resources as Kirkland and Ellis's NN that's been trained on all the cases they downloaded from Lexus Nexus.

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#17

Post by bamboozled »

Hithredin wrote: post #13
awb wrote: post #4

> the company's AI-creation runs on a smartphone, listens to court arguments and formulates responses for the defendant. The AI lawyer tells the defendant what to say in real-time, through headphones. Based on AI’s propensity for being confidently incorrect, I’m not sure I’d want to be repeating AI output in a court of law and representing it as truth.

But this xan be be a. ery good complement to an actual layer. The layer would spend less time preparing (so cheaper) and will basically direct the IA and act as safeguard when the AI gets so confidently incorrect.

I think what's going to happen here is, almost every dispute will end in a court case, using AI (because it's cheaper).

It's going to suck so hard.

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#18

Post by ww520 »

awb wrote: post #4

> the company's AI-creation runs on a smartphone, listens to court arguments and formulates responses for the defendant. The AI lawyer tells the defendant what to say in real-time, through headphones. Based on AI’s propensity for being confidently incorrect, I’m not sure I’d want to be repeating AI output in a court of law and representing it as truth.

What if it turns out to be an actual lawyer doing the answer on the other side of the phone?

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#19

Post by hef19898 »

ausbah wrote: post #6

>The ultimate goal, according to Browder, is to democratize legal representation by making it free for those who can't afford it, in some cases eliminating the need for pricey attorneys. this is the core issue I have with companies and tech like this: they try to solve social issues with technology and business. the issue of accessible defense is an issue of institutional failure that rests on the shoulders of the st…

Nitpick: From a glimpse at the article, I think the defendant will represent himself, the "AI lawyer" running on the defendants smartphone will just give him hints. Not sure how it can be acceptable to have a third party listen into court proceedings in real time through a smartphone, but ok.

Re: AI-powered lawyer will be first of its kind to represent defendant in court

#20

Post by hef19898 »

ww520 wrote: post #18
awb wrote: post #4

> the company's AI-creation runs on a smartphone, listens to court arguments and formulates responses for the defendant. The AI lawyer tells the defendant what to say in real-time, through headphones. Based on AI’s propensity for being confidently incorrect, I’m not sure I’d want to be repeating AI output in a court of law and representing it as truth.

What if it turns out to be an actual lawyer doing the answer on the other side of the phone?

Wasn't there something on HN frontpage lately about "fake it until you automate it"?
Post reply on HN