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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

#361

Post by Nifty3929 »

hwillis wrote: post #290
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…

A recent US president said about a large bill "we have to pass it just to see what's in it."

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

#362

Post by ethanbond »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #347
ethanbond wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> goal is to push toward a world where poor folks aren’t coerced into not contesting their tickets Invest in a company doing this properly and not pushing half-baked frauds into the world. Supervised learning, mock trials. You’re proposing turning those poor folk into Guinea pigs, gambling with their freedom from afar.

This company has been doing this stuff for years. Yes this is a big step forward but it’s not from zero, as you’re suggesting. What makes you think they haven’t been doing mock trials and tons of supervised learning?

And no, I’m not. I don’t think Defendant Zero (or one, or two, or 100) should be people whose lives would be seriously affected by errors. I’m pretty sure DNP doesn’t either.

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

#363

Post by winReInstall »

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…

Eh, what if it was trained on all the previous cases ever to have existed? I think it could be pretty good, as long as it detects novelty as a to flag and confirm error case.

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

#364

Post by lolinder »

ma2rten wrote: post #328
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.

Yes, you'd do better, but you'd still have a LLM that is designed to predict the most likely next words. It would still hallucinate and invent case law, it would just be even harder for a non-lawyer to recognize the hallucination.

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

#365

Post by SuoDuanDao »

freejazz wrote: post #298
ethanbond wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DoNotPay seems to know very well what they’re doing. It really doesn’t strike me as true that law requires absolute precision. There are many adjacent (both near and far) arguments that can work in law for any given case, since the interpreter is a human. You just need no silly mistakes that shatter credibility, but that’s very different from “get one thing wrong and the system doesn’t work at all or works in wildly…

"DoNotPay seems to know very well what they’re doing." What makes you think that? What they are doing is illegal. It's the unlicensed practice of law.

So if a chat program can pass the bar exam, it's okay? Because I would bet that if a program can represent someone semi-competently in court, passing the bar exam which needs an objective marking criterion would be trivial by comparison.

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

#366

Post by some_random »

hwillis wrote: post #290
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…

Laws are absolutely passed without understanding of what's in them, very frequently in fact

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

#367

Post by yunwal »

ethanbond wrote: post #306
freejazz wrote: post #298

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"DoNotPay seems to know very well what they’re doing." What makes you think that? What they are doing is illegal. It's the unlicensed practice of law.

Their track record? Seems like this is the first you’re hearing of them, but this is just the latest (and yes, most ambitious) experiment. They’ve been successfully using technology to help normal people defeat abusive systems built by “the professions” for years.

They’ve been scamming people for years and hitting them with BS credit card charges. Just another abusive system tacked onto the rest.

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

#368

Post by bastawhiz »

winReInstall wrote: post #363
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…

Eh, what if it was trained on all the previous cases ever to have existed? I think it could be pretty good, as long as it detects novelty as a to flag and confirm error case.

That's not the point. LLMs work by predicting what text to generate next. It doesn't work by choosing facts, it works by saying the thing that sounds the most appropriate. That's why it's so confidently wrong. No amount of training will eliminate this problem: it's an issue with the architecture of LLMs today.

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

#369

Post by Dylan16807 »

msla wrote: post #171
Dylan16807 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's precisely the question, yes. Don't be vague on purpose. Say what you're implying. > Court cases aren't about the common occurrences. Usually they still are. But I'm talking about things being very rare among court cases . Do you think there is a systemic problem of false court transcripts? And I really don't think such a thing is the reason not to allow recording.

We do certain things to avoid the image of impropriety. We also look askance at people who refuse to allow oversight into their work.

That oversight is a big part of why the court reporter exists, and has existed since long before recording technology was invented. Keeping things the same is not a refusal of oversight.

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

#370

Post by notahacker »

ethanbond wrote: post #338
notahacker wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I prefer a world in which people pay a small fine or make their own excuses rather than pay the fine money to a VC-backed startup for access to an LLM to mount a legally unsound defence that ends up getting them into a lot more trouble, yes.

If your goal is to ensure poor folks are pushed towards paying an utterly unaccountable service further fees to escalate legal cases they don't have the knowledge to win so the LPs of Andreesen Horowitz have that bit more growth in their portfolio, I can see how you would think differently.

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