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

71–80 of 174 posts

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

#71

Post by Aerroon »

torstenvl wrote: post #63
Aerroon wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But the problem with law isn't the number of people, it's with the number of laws/binding contracts. If the US government can't even count the number of possible ways you can commit a crime then how is any of it supposed to work?

> can't even count the number of possible ways you can commit a crime This strikes me as a bizarre thing to say and I'm curious what meaning you ascribe to this statement. What would be the value of counting such a thing? Why would you want your tax dollars spent on such a task?

It's a way to show that the legal system is too complex. In the 80s the Justice Department tried to count the total number of criminal laws and they failed.[0] If the government can't even keep track of the number of them, then how is it reasonable to expect regular people to follow all of them?

[0] https://blogs.loc.gov/law/2013/03/frequent-reference-questio...

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

#72

Post by CuriousCosmic »

in3d wrote: post #51
logifail wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It’s more likely that the AI would free up public defendants from things like having to answer their clients’ questions, as they could just ask the AI, allowing them to be more effective Public defenders would be more effective if they didn't have to talk to their clients?

Sorry, I can’t ever write clearly on the phone, this site is very mobile-unfriendly. I meant that defendants would be able to talk to the AI about their case to learn as much as they want. A public defender can’t commit that much time to each of their cases.

The problem with this is "how do you assure the AI isn't bold face lying to the defendant".

For a natural text generation/chat system like ChatGPT, at the moment this is effectively impossible and frankly I don't see it being sufficiently fixed for something as complex as teaching law to a non-law-student any time in the near future.

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

#74

Post by iinnPP »

somenameforme wrote: post #32
paxys wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Tech often misses obvious downsides, especially human, in pursuit of unrealistic idealism. A good lawyer is not just knowledgeable of law, but of people. He needs to get 12 people in front of him to agree with him. And he may even be actively misleading them when he's defending a someone whom he knows to be guilty. This comes down to reading people, reading reactions, and understanding what each of those 12 people ne…

An overwhelming majority of Federal cases don't involve a jury and instead consist of:

1. A scaling army of prosecutors and "professional witnesses" which are compensated/promoted based on conviction rate.

2. A single "freely" provided and extremely overworked defense attorney with three times the caseload of the prosecutor and where every bit of help they give out takes from the time of the other defendants they "defend."

3. As a result of 1&2 you are pressured to sign a plea and threatened with triple and quadruple punishments for the same activities. All while being stuck in a cell (why else would you need a free attorney)? And we are not talking the difference of 3 months and a year. Instead we are talking about the difference of 5 years and 20 years.

4. The result is an overwhelming number of factually innocent people in prison for crimes they never committed. From people who sat down and said, what happens if it goes wrong vs what happens when I do 5 years of adult daycare?

So yes, any kind of AI is likely to improve the situation as the situation is currently completely unacceptable to anyone who has seen a family member go through it.

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

#75

Post by PartiallyTyped »

hef19898 wrote: post #19
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.

I don't think that this counts as a third party ... given that it runs locally. Lawyers make use of laptops all the time in the courtroom.

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

#76

Post by iinnPP »

CuriousCosmic wrote: post #72
in3d wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I can’t ever write clearly on the phone, this site is very mobile-unfriendly. I meant that defendants would be able to talk to the AI about their case to learn as much as they want. A public defender can’t commit that much time to each of their cases.

The problem with this is "how do you assure the AI isn't bold face lying to the defendant". For a natural text generation/chat system like ChatGPT, at the moment this is effectively impossible and frankly I don't see it being sufficiently fixed for something as complex as teaching law to a non-law-student any time in the near future.

So you make this as understood as possible and the lawyer can fill in the gaps and clarify.

It's not like a "jailhouse lawyer" will do any better. Though it might cost something you didn't expect, such as a new witness against you or a shower pal.

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

#77

Post by HPsquared »

vt100 wrote: post #59
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…

Tesla was a "forcing function" that caused other car manufacturers to build EVs. AI lawyer technology may be the catalyst needed to trigger reform of the legal system. It's clear that up until now there has been no reform forthcoming.

I think it's more likely that AI systems will act as a crutch, enabling even more overcomplicated procedures to grow and persist, until it's impossible for any mere human to understand.

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

#78

Post by AstixAndBelix »

Some work a lawyer does is menial word churning. Some work a lawyer does requires much more mental effort.

If I could feed thousands of documents to an algorithm and then ask him stuff like "in which pages the tax returns of the defendant are discussed?" or "how many times is the defendant's wife talked about in a negative connotation?" it would make work much easier.

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

#79

Post by aww_dang »

"I was apprehended under a level three predictive crime directive. My AI lawyer failed to cite the relevant statutes. Now I've been remanded to a medium security behavioral modification center. After incorrectly answering the AI managed multiple choice psychological evaluation questionnaire, I was denied parole. When released I'll have to start all over again with a social credit score of zero. My mother always said I would run afoul of the algorithm. If only I had listened..."
Post reply on HN