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An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

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Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#281

Post by brookst »

iso1631 wrote: post #41
epups wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a terribly dystopian idea in my opinion, as only the rich would then have access to actual lawyers The rich don't go to jail already. The crypto scammer paid a huge bail and got out on his private jet. That, to me, is far more dystopian than a cheap tool to help people appeal traffic tickets.

Every time I see this "traffic ticket" thing, it usually looks like 1) The driver was actually speeding and 2) The driver is trying to get off on a technicality Is that the case? In the US do you get "points" on your driving license so that if you are caught speeding several times in the space of a couple of years you get banned? In the UK being caught mildly speeding (say doing 60 in a 50), in the course of 3 years…

The US is similar, but we also have other dynamics. Some municipalities rely on traffic tickets for revenue, so they have a perverse incentive to create more infractions. Notable examples are automated ticketing at red light leading to shorter yellows[0], and speed traps where a small town on a highway sets unreasonably low speed limits[1].

0. https://www.salon.com/2017/04/05/this-may-have-happened-to-y...

1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/speed-trap-profits-could-come-e...

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#282

Post by deltarholamda »

dahart wrote: post #262
deltarholamda wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The legal system is no joke, and if there weren't regulations about who can practice law, you'd have all kinds of fly-by-night people getting paid to do it while getting their clients thrown in jail That sort of highlights the problem. The legal system is supposed to be about ensuring fair and impartial justice. What the legal system is actually about is providing jobs for people in the legal system. Lawyers make la…

> I've often said that if you really want to make a lawyer squirm, suggest that we have socialized law care. Most modern countries have some version of socialized or single payer health care, so why not make it the same for legal services? We do have socialized law in the US, in the form of public defenders. > Why should rich people get access to better legal service than regular people? Oh, is “better” what you’re t…

>Oh, is “better” what you’re talking about, not just access?

Public defenders are overworked and underpaid, and you know that. It's like having a RPN do your appendectomy. Fair and equal justice would have every lawyer be a public defender. It's not like if you go to the hospital you get to pick which doctor sews your finger back on after the bandsaw accident.

I'm not saying it's a good idea, but once you bring it into the conversation it makes both lawyers and socialized medicine advocates get a little uncomfortable.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#283

Post by lolinder »

jonathanwallace wrote: post #277
lolinder wrote: post #246

This company is either run by someone who doesn't understand the tech or is willfully fraudulent. ChatGPT and company are far from good enough to be entrusted with law. Having interacted extensively with modern LLMs, I absolutely know something like this would happen: > Defendant (as dictated by AI): The Supreme Court ruled in Johnson v. Smith in 1978... > Judge: There was no case Johnson v. Smith in 1978. LLMs hallu…

> there is absolutely no space for hallucination in a court of law I wish you were factually correct here. We've seen time and time again where courts are mockeries of the ideal because of the people in them and the faults they bring with them. E.g. see https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/21pdf/21-418_i425.pdf and the documented proof in the dissent contradicting the claims in the ruling.

That there exist mockeries of justice is not proof that we should allow them.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#284

Post by elicksaur »

Good. Totally fine with trying to use AI to give legal advice, but it should be done with a lawyer’s license on the line. A company that explicitly disclaims being a law firm and states is not giving legal advice should also not get to tweet that they are “representing” someone in court.

A good bar (pun intended) for the quality of the tech is if it is good enough that a licensed attorney trusts it to give legal advice with their livelihood at stake. If this product doesn’t work for DoNotPay, they can just walk away and do something else, as they are doing anyways here. If it doesn’t work for a lawyer, they’d get sued for malpractice and possibly disbarred, ruining their career. When someone trusts it to that level, have at it.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#285

Post by eloff »

lolinder wrote: post #246

This company is either run by someone who doesn't understand the tech or is willfully fraudulent. ChatGPT and company are far from good enough to be entrusted with law. Having interacted extensively with modern LLMs, I absolutely know something like this would happen: > Defendant (as dictated by AI): The Supreme Court ruled in Johnson v. Smith in 1978... > Judge: There was no case Johnson v. Smith in 1978. LLMs hallu…

I think you’re right here and it’s the same reason I see AI as a tool in the software profession. You can use it to speed up your work, but you have to have someone fully trained who can tell the difference between looks good but is wrong, versus is actually usable.

I’ve been using copilot for half a year now and it’s helpful, but often wrong. I carefully verify anything it gives me before using it. I’ve had one bug that made it to production where I think copilot inserted code that I didn’t notice and which slipped past code review. I’ve had countless garbage suggestions I ignored, and a surprising amount of code that seemed reasonable but was subtly broken.

This will still require a human lawyer (and/or intern, depending on the stakes) to check its output carefully. I am not now, nor have I ever been afraid that AI is coming after my job. When it does, we’re dangerously close to general AI and a paradigm shift of such magnitude and consequence that it’s called The Singularity. At which point we may have bigger worries than jobs.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#286

Post by DangitBobby »

LelouBil wrote: post #206
bilekas wrote: post #188

Maybe I'm not fully understanding here but isn't the defendant entitled to represent themselves? Couldn't the defendant just do what the lawyer had planned? The complaining letters make it out that you cannot participate in law if you're not a bar member..

No, the problem is that you need to be licensed to give legal advice. And the chatbot is not a licensed lawyer.

It's also not a person.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#287

Post by [deleted] »

criddell wrote: post #267
lolinder wrote: post #246

This company is either run by someone who doesn't understand the tech or is willfully fraudulent. ChatGPT and company are far from good enough to be entrusted with law. Having interacted extensively with modern LLMs, I absolutely know something like this would happen: > Defendant (as dictated by AI): The Supreme Court ruled in Johnson v. Smith in 1978... > Judge: There was no case Johnson v. Smith in 1978. LLMs hallu…

It would be kind of funny to hear an argument made by an LLM that has digested all the sovereign citizen bs.

[deleted]

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#288

Post by drakythe »

gfodor wrote: post #259
lolinder wrote: post #246

This company is either run by someone who doesn't understand the tech or is willfully fraudulent. ChatGPT and company are far from good enough to be entrusted with law. Having interacted extensively with modern LLMs, I absolutely know something like this would happen: > Defendant (as dictated by AI): The Supreme Court ruled in Johnson v. Smith in 1978... > Judge: There was no case Johnson v. Smith in 1978. LLMs hallu…

If this is the case, the lawyers should have nothing to fear, and the plaintiff nothing to lose but a parking ticket. I say we stop arguing and run the experiment.

As noted by several lawyers when some of the details of this experiment were revealed: The AI already committed a cardinal sin of traffic court in that it subpoenaed the ticketing officer.

Rule 1 of traffic court: If the state's witness (the ticketing officer) doesn't show, defendant gets off. You do not subpoena that witness, thereby ensuring they show up.

If the AI or its handlers cannot be trusted to pregame the court appearance even remotely well then no way in hell should it be trusted with the actual trial.

You want to run this experiment? Great, lets setup a mock court with a real judge and observing lawyers and run through it. But don't waste a real court's time or some poor bastard's money by trying it in the real world first.

A reminder that "Move fast and break things" should never apply where user's life or liberty is at stake.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#289

Post by lolinder »

eloff wrote: post #285
lolinder wrote: post #246

This company is either run by someone who doesn't understand the tech or is willfully fraudulent. ChatGPT and company are far from good enough to be entrusted with law. Having interacted extensively with modern LLMs, I absolutely know something like this would happen: > Defendant (as dictated by AI): The Supreme Court ruled in Johnson v. Smith in 1978... > Judge: There was no case Johnson v. Smith in 1978. LLMs hallu…

I think you’re right here and it’s the same reason I see AI as a tool in the software profession. You can use it to speed up your work, but you have to have someone fully trained who can tell the difference between looks good but is wrong, versus is actually usable. I’ve been using copilot for half a year now and it’s helpful, but often wrong. I carefully verify anything it gives me before using it. I’ve had one bug…

Yes! I think the legal system would and should look differently at a tool like this in the ear of a licensed lawyer, and AI tools will be invaluable for legal research. I just don't think the output of an AI should be fed directly into a non-lawyer's ear, any more than I think a non-programmer should try to build a startup with ChatGPT as technical co-founder.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#290

Post by hwillis »

pintxo wrote: post #268

Absolute precision? Have you read any law lately? Legal texts are (to me) surprisingly imprecise. One wonders why we have not developed something explicit like mathematical notations for legal stuff. I mean, comma/and/or separated lists in full text? Not even parenthesis? That’s not precision.

> One wonders why we have not developed something explicit like mathematical notations for legal stuff.

1. Laws are written or at least voted on by representatives, and they don't vote for things that they don't think they understand. Also, they're pretty regularly swapped out and often totally bonkers. Especially at the state level.

2. Things change. Look at how the right of search and seizure is applied to digital data and metadata.

3. Most importantly, the imprecision is intentional. "Beyond all reasonable doubt" has no definition because it is up to the person rendering judgement. The courts decide the bounds of the law, and within those bounds people decide how to apply them.

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