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

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

npr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

331–340 of 708 posts

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

#331

Post by gunshai »

elicksaur wrote: post #284

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 advi…

No, bad. I may also disagree with some of the tactics DoNotPay used to represent themselves. But in a larger sense Lawyers cost money a lot of money. it's wonderful living in a time where the cost of filing suits is so low compared to defending against said suits.

AI lawyers can help lower those barriers to entry. the court in question is fucking traffic court. please lower the barrier to entry for defense and allow normal not rich folks to get on with their lives.

the costs involved in legal are so ridiculous, our society basically encourages blind folding ourselves to most business ethical standards in hopes that our product demands a high enough margin to then pay for what ever legal fuck ups that cost too much to figure out on the front end.

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

#332

Post by alistairSH »

iso1631 wrote: post #60
wardedVibe wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is that in large swaths of the US, taking away their license is not that different from house arrest. Breaking the speed limit by 10mph is completely unenforced. I've yet to be on the highway without someone going 20 over, and no enforcement.

Same in the UK, you have to get lifts or taxis everywhere, unless you live in big cities (London has great public transport, but so does New York. The weekly bus that my sister gets doesn't really help her to travel to work as dozens of different schools all over the county) It's a very good reason not to speed. So it's just a fine that Americans get for speeding? Are fines at least proportional to wealth? Or can a r…

No, fines are not proportional to wealth (at least in most states). They're either flat fees or pegged to speed. Points on license as well, so ~3 tickets inside a year and you lose your license or have to take a course to keep it.

Most tickets are given by live officers. Cameras do exist, but typically only in dense urban areas. Which opens another can of worms, as police are biased.

We also have lists of secondary offenses the officer can cite only after citing you for speeding (or some other primary offense). Things like a failed light bulb, or some other minor safety issue. These are disproportionately used against PoC.

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

#333

Post by rhino369 »

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.

Because you have to apply the law to fact and facts lack mathematical precision.

"No vehicles in the park" would require someone to categorize everything in the world into vehicle or !vehicle. Does a wheel chair count?

It's easier to lay out the principle and let judges determine edge cases as they play out.

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

#334

Post by gfodor »

drakythe wrote: post #288
gfodor wrote: post #259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 c…

agree to your last point, but a traffic ticket beta test does not fail that test

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

#335

Post by lbriner »

lolinder wrote: post #278
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.

I'm not so much concerned about precision of language (although that does matter in some contexts) as I am in precision of facts and precedence.

This shows how little experience you have of the legal system. Everyone who doesn't know expects the law to be precise, everyone who works in it knows how imprecise it is and sometimes that is deliberate because of all the variables involved that might mitigate or aggrevate the charge, assuming there even is a charge.

The difference between tax evasion and tax avoidance might be the smallest proveable piece of evidence. A word, an email, an assumption, an ommission etc.

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

#336

Post by asciimov »

renlo wrote: post #314
asciimov wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's too bad programmers don't also have some sort of licensure as well. It would be helpful in keeping humans employed in creating and maintaining code, instead of letting AI run off with all our jobs.

What do you believe licensure would solve?

It would help in having some sort of body that says, we want to have humans involved in the chain of responsibility when creating code and not willfully hand over the control to AI.

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

#337

Post by NoboruWataya »

fallingknife wrote: post #292
lolinder wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-lawyers aren't banned from giving legal advice because lawyers are trying to protect their jobs, they're banned from giving legal advice because they're likely to be bad at it, and the people who take their advice are likely to be hurt. Yes, in this case, it would just be a parking ticket, but the legal system runs on precedent and it's safer to hold a strict line than to create a fuzzy "well, it depends on how m…

They are not scared that it will fail. They are scared that it will succeed. And there's a great reason to allow a company to sell a stand-in for a lawyer. Cost. This isn't targeted at people who can afford lawyers, it's targeted at people who can't, for now at least.

It's naive to think that a company would develop an AI capable of beating a lawyer in court and then sell it cheaply to poor people to beat traffic tickets. If anyone ever manages to develop an AI that is actually capable of replacing a lawyer, it will be priced way, way out of reach of those people. It will be sold to giant corporations so that they can spend $500k on licence fees rather than $1 million on legal fees. (And unless those corporations can get indemnities from the software vendor backed by personal guarantees they'd still be getting a raw deal.)

These people are being sold snake oil. Cheap snake oil, maybe, but snake oil nonetheless.

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

#338

Post by ethanbond »

notahacker wrote: post #330
ethanbond wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Sure if your objective is to minimize your own personal exposure. If your goal is to push toward a world where poor folks aren’t coerced into not contesting their tickets because they can’t afford to go to court or get representation, then maybe it is a good option.

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

#339

Post by Joker_vD »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #136
Joker_vD wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it would decrease the odds, provided that after walking out of jail the probability of a criminal to commit a crime (that includes his intent to reoffend but also possible changes in the environment that happened during his time in jail that reduce his possibilities to do so) is less than before walking in, because they wouldn't get the chance to reoffend immediately .

I don't assume that someone coming out of a sentence is less likely to commit a crime. Isn't it often the opposite, because the US is so bad at rehabilitation?

Then you should argue for "shoot at sight" or "lifetime sentences/electric chair for everything", shouldn't you?

But no, the probability does decreases since not every ex-jailed becomes a repeated offender; also, some people die during the sentence... the probability does go down, for many small reasons compounded together.

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

#340

Post by noobermin »

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.

Syntax does not yield precision. While there is a lot of blur and fluff in law (an understatement), I don't think syntax would yield more precision.
Post reply on HN