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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

#471

Post by geph2021 »

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.

those lists also include something like ".. but not limited to ..."

Many legal documents are purposely not pinning themselves down on specifics, because they don't want an agreement circumvented on technicalities, when it should be pretty clear to reasonable people what is intended in an agreement.

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

#472

Post by hgsgm »

geph2021 wrote: post #471
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.

those lists also include something like ".. but not limited to ..." Many legal documents are purposely not pinning themselves down on specifics, because they don't want an agreement circumvented on technicalities, when it should be pretty clear to reasonable people what is intended in an agreement.

That's not the issue. The issue is that the laws are grammatically ambiguous in contradictory ways.

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

#473

Post by freejazz »

giantg2 wrote: post #470
freejazz wrote: post #439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You misunderstand licensing. Licensing ensures a minimum of conduct and creates a standard for liability for falling below that level of conduct.

I know that perfectly well. That doesn't change what I've said as it applies to the examples above.

It does. Licensing has nothing to do with your credentials past having them. The state bar doesn't care which lawschool you went to, your LSAT score, your GPA, etc.

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

#474

Post by Dylan16807 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #422
Dylan16807 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, they didn't try "that". "That" is having a lawyer in some basic case do it. The supreme court idea was never going happen and they knew it.

> No, they didn't try "that". In the the construction “they tried that, but... ”, the part after “but”, if it identifies an action by the actor and not an outcome, identifies a departure from what is described by “that”. So, I'm not sure what you are arguing against here. > The supreme court idea was never going happen and they knew it. I don’t think they knew it, just as I don’t think the bknew the traffic court thi…

> In the the construction “they tried that, but... ”, the part after “but”, if it identifies an action by the actor and not an outcome, identifies a departure from what is described by “that”. So, I'm not sure what you are arguing against here.

I'm saying the departure is so big that it doesn't make sense to frame it as even a partial solution to the idea.

> I don’t think they knew it, just as I don’t think the bknew the traffic court thing was also not going to happen, or the problems with their whole suite of legal (“sue in small claims court”, child custody, divorce) assistance supposedly-AI products were problenatic.

The combination of supreme court cases being so narrow, the interrogation being so harsh, the tech allowed in being carefully restricted, and the stakes being so high makes me think they would understand the gap between that demo and "find a guy with a parking ticket who happens to be a lawyer".

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

#475

Post by [deleted] »

snowwrestler wrote: post #409
gnicholas wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unaware of a President saying that. Sounds more like the Nancy Pelosi (then House Minority Leader, subsequently Speaker of the House), talking about Obamacare: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pelosi-healthcare-pass-the...

It was, and the context was the well-known tendency of the Washington press to only cover the fight until a bill passes, and only then turn toward explaining the substance of what just passed. (It makes sense from the press perspective, as the substance is changing constantly in big bills right up until it passes… that’s what the fight is all about.)

[deleted]

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

#476

Post by imoverclocked »

drdeca wrote: post #433
NikolaNovak wrote: post #411

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right. The programmer in me fumes at that imprecision. The human in me says "thank God". Because there a myriad valid times you cannot turn on signal 300ft before lane change, but you should always do it in reasonable time :) If I turn on a new street and there's a car parked 200ft down the lane or if a kid jumps on the road or if I become aware of an obstacle or a car cuts me off or I want to give somebody room at a…

Perhaps we could both give a vague description, and also a precise condition which is to be considered a sufficient but not necessary condition for the vague condition to be true? Such as “must signal within a reasonable time (signaling at least 300ft beforehand while not speeding is to be considered a sufficient condition for signaling within a reasonable time)” Downside: that could make laws even longer. Hm, what i…

That sounds like case law? Eg: It’s why we call “Roe v Wade” as we do.

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

#477

Post by hgsgm »

snowwrestler wrote: post #409
gnicholas wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm unaware of a President saying that. Sounds more like the Nancy Pelosi (then House Minority Leader, subsequently Speaker of the House), talking about Obamacare: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pelosi-healthcare-pass-the...

It was, and the context was the well-known tendency of the Washington press to only cover the fight until a bill passes, and only then turn toward explaining the substance of what just passed. (It makes sense from the press perspective, as the substance is changing constantly in big bills right up until it passes… that’s what the fight is all about.)

It's not about the press, it's about how until a House passes a bill that is sent to reconciliatio, there literally isn't "a bill", there is a constant flux of amendments.

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

#478

Post by jchw »

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…

Pretty sure the whole reason why DoNotPay actually exists is because defending against parking tickets didn't actually require a strong defense. The tickets were flawed automation, and their formulaic nature justified and equally formulaic response, or something to that effect. Whether the LLM was actually going to output answers directly, or just be used to drive a behavior tree or something like that, is a question I don't see answered anywhere.

That said, if it's such a catastrophically stupid idea, I'm not really sure why it had to be shot down so harshly: seems like that problem would elegantly solve itself. I assume the real reason it was shot down was out of fear that it would work well. Does anyone else have a better explanation for why there was such a visceral response?

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

#479

Post by dang »

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.

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34532371.

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

#480

Post by hgsgm »

weatherlite wrote: post #429
eloff wrote: post #285

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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'm not saying this is good but come on. Humans do that all the time, why aren't we so harsh on humans? > I am not now, nor have I ever been afraid that AI is coming after my job I am. This thing amazed me, and even if it won't be able to 100% replace humans (which I doubt), it can…

Broken window fallaccy. Software is so bad, that AI making is more productive won't put us out of work, it will make software suck a bit less. It eill5 make bugfixes and tech debt payback more affordable.
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