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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

#321

Post by ethanbond »

freejazz wrote: post #300
ethanbond wrote: post #294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s nowhere near analogous because between every working algorithm are massive gulfs of syntactic and semantic failure zones. This is not the case with human language, which is the whole power of both language production and language interpretation. Is it more problematic than this person 1) not being represented, 2) having to pay exorbitant fees to be represented, or 3) having an extremely overworked and disinter…

"I’m not convinced." Yeah, no surprise. You seem completely unreasonable if you posit only these three options for freakin' traffic court...

What are the others? If you contest a ticket, you either have representation or you don’t. You can either afford good representation or you cannot.

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

#323

Post by freejazz »

ovi256 wrote: post #194
jonstewart wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One could also argue the real problem is the tech industry constantly ignoring regulations that were put in place for good reasons. Car dealerships are for sure a clear example of regulatory capture, but “legal advice from lawyers”, “medicine from doctors”, “insurance from companies that can prove they can pay out”, and “equities backed by actual assets” all exist for good reasons.

> all exist for good reasons Sure, but what's banned is surely not all medical or legal advice. I can browse case law or US code thinking about my case - somehow this does not need a legal license. At the other end of the continuum, talking to a lawyer about my case obviously needs him to be licensed. So now we're debating on which side of the cutoff using DoNotPay's robot must fall. The lawyers have made their mind…

Do you not understand the concept of advice? Browsing the law and coming to your own conclusion isn't "getting advice".

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

#324

Post by jonathanwallace »

lolinder wrote: post #283
jonathanwallace wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

100% Agreed.

Rhetorical question: Now what's the enforcement mechanism?

(Also, what's with the downvotes?!?!)

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

#325

Post by lukev »

deltarholamda wrote: post #236
tablespoon wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> One could also argue the real problem is the tech industry constantly ignoring regulations that were put in place for good reasons This is it. The tech company wants the ability to sell a shoddy product to its customers, and the legal system said no. And frankly, I don't know how anyone could honestly claim (without being ignorant or deluded) that feeding legal arguments into court, output from modern-day voice rec…

>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…

We do have "socialized law care" for criminal cases in the USA. That's what a public defender is. If you cannot afford a lawyer one will be provided by the court. That is a constitutional right.

Of course they are overworked, have insane case loads, and the best attorneys are disincentivized from becoming public defenders. The system definitely needs an overhaul.

But the concept that justice should in theory be available even if you can't afford it is well established.

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

#326

Post by vel0city »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #72
bayindirh wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whatever it is, it's getting better. Yeah, telling grammatically correct but factually wrong things, having biases, crashing into things, and whatnot. > And lots of people would rather have a glorified assistant than nothing. An assistant which can't be checked for accuracy, or for telling the truth. The future is bright!

> Yeah, telling grammatically correct but factually wrong things, having biases, crashing into things, and whatnot. If you don't think it's right more often, please go poke an older model. Especially look at the ability to stay on topic. > An assistant which can't be checked for accuracy, or for telling the truth. What do you mean "can't be checked"? And any kind of assistant can make mistakes. And calling it an assi…

Any kind of assistant can make mistakes. But a human assistant can be made to show their work and explain their reasoning to check their output. If ChatGPT says "this thing is totally legal" or "don't worry about that rash", how am I to validate it's "reasoning"? How do I know where it's drawing it's inference from?

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

#327

Post by tablespoon »

deltarholamda wrote: post #296
tablespoon wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'll admit that's possible, but you have to also admit that the current legal system (at least in the US, I don't know about elsewhere) is, shall we say, over-engineered? I'm getting "nuke the legacy system without bothering to really understand what it does" vibes here. > The jury system was supposed to cut through this sort of thing. Twelve regular folks could upend or ignore every law on the books if they though…

>I'm getting "nuke the legacy system without bothering to really understand what it does" vibes here Not really. Are you suggesting that it isn't pretty difficult to navigate the legal system? Saying something is wonky and needs to be fixed does not automatically mean "Anarchy Now!" My point was that I think I do understand what the system does, and what it does is (largely) provide lots of work for people in the leg…

>> I'm getting "nuke the legacy system without bothering to really understand what it does" vibes here

> Not really. Are you suggesting that it isn't pretty difficult to navigate the legal system? Saying something is wonky and needs to be fixed does not automatically mean "Anarchy Now!"

No, I'm suggesting that complexity may often have good reason. Without specific reform proposals, what you're saying registers similarly to "coding in programming languages is hard, so simplify it by coding in natural language!"

> You see this when buying a house. You end up writing a bunch of checks to companies and people and it's not clear exactly what actual necessary service they provide, but it's not like you can NOT do it. Their service is necessary because the real estate laws make it necessary.

Being ignorant of the value of a service doesn't make that service unnecessary. And honestly, I bet you could "NOT do it" -- if you could pay cash for the property. IIRC, a lot of that is actually required by whoever you get your mortgage from, because they know the value of it.

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

#328

Post by ma2rten »

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…

You could probably do much better than ChatGPT if you built a bot specifically for being a lawyer.

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

#329

Post by rebuilder »

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.

Laws are meant to be interpreted.

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

#330

Post by notahacker »

ethanbond wrote: post #321
freejazz wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I’m not convinced." Yeah, no surprise. You seem completely unreasonable if you posit only these three options for freakin' traffic court...

What are the others? If you contest a ticket, you either have representation or you don’t. You can either afford good representation or you cannot.

I mean, not contesting the ticket is likely to be a better option than delegating your chances of not being convicted of contempt of court or perjury to the truthfulness and legal understanding of an LLM...
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