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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

#591

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…

>>The legal profession is perhaps the closest one to computer programming There is a ton of people using ChatGPT for programming.... so much so that I wonder if we will have a crisis in skills as people forgo how to write code. sysadmin circles have tons people celebrating how they will not have to learn powershell now as an example

ChatGPT has no concept of a model for code, no understanding of syntax or logic or even language keywords. It just pulls info out of it's backside that sounds believable like a lot of people do, it's just better at it. I suspect the immediate future will be resplendent with tales of AI-generated code causing catastrophes.

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

#592
post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's extremely rare, despite medical malpractice being the third leading cause of death in America. https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/news/media/releases/study_su...

Misleading. That report discusses "medical errors", not "medical malpractice". They are not the same thing.

Potato, potato. Getting killed by a doctor fucking up is the third leading cause of death in America and doctors VERY RARELY ever face consequences for this.

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

#593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you a lawyer who deals with traffic law, or is California just some sort of dystopia where you get hundreds of parking tickets as a normal way of life? Up here in Ontario I've had 1 ticket in my life. I just... no, there is no way you're getting hundreds as an individual.

I had the custom plates NV and ended up in some sort of dystopia where I got hundreds of parking tickets for all different makes and models of cars until well after I returned the plates. I wrote my story up here... https://100parkingtickets.com/

Good gravy. Thanks for the link. What a read.

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

#595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read recently, the legal profession is the one most at risk of adverse financial effects from AI. Not the court appearances nor the specialized work. But the run-of-the-mill boilerplate legal writing that is the bread and butter profit center of most first. You bet they are threatened and will push back. Now the question is this. If an AI is doing something illegal like practicing law, how does one san…

Automating boilerplate seems like a great use for AI if you can then have someone go over the writing and check that it's accurate. I'd prefer that the boilerplate actually be reduced instead, but... I don't have any issue with someone using AI to target tasks that are essentially copy-paste operations anyway. I think this was kind of different. > If an AI is doing something illegal like practicing law, how does one…

This is different from self-driving or software dev apps.

Law is different because the bar has a legally enforced monopoly on doing legal work.

DoNotPay was being threatened. But they weren't practicing law - they were just providing legal tools.

My point is that were in uncharted legal territory. Perhaps ask the AI what it thinks ;)

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

#596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've read recently, the legal profession is the one most at risk of adverse financial effects from AI. Not the court appearances nor the specialized work. But the run-of-the-mill boilerplate legal writing that is the bread and butter profit center of most first. You bet they are threatened and will push back. Now the question is this. If an AI is doing something illegal like practicing law, how does one san…

> Now the question is this. If an AI is doing something illegal like practicing law, how does one sanction an AI? As far as I'm aware, no LLM has reached sentience and started taking on projects of its own volition. So it's easy - you sanction whoever ran the software for an illegal purpose or whoever marketed and sold the software for an illegal purpose.

Lots of legal software is marketed and sold.

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

#597

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you still referring to the scenario from the article, or a different one where it's a resource you use outside of court? > Here's how it was supposed to work: The person challenging a speeding ticket would wear smart glasses that both record court proceedings and dictate responses into the defendant's ear from a small speaker. Also, probably wouldn't matter. The interactive human-ish-like nature might cross the l…

Right, this strikes me as exactly the kind of "I'm not touching you!" argument that basically never works in a court of law. The law's not like code. "Well it's not any different than publishing a book, so this is just free speech and not legal representation"; "OK, cool, well, we both know that's sophist bullshit, judgement against you, next case."

[deleted]

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

#598
post #478

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…

This is the obvious point: they fear it would work well and they will have to slowly say good bye to their extremely well paid profession.

We are so close from a new disruptive revolution where a lot of jobs (not just lawyers) will be made obsolete. Possibly similar to inventions like assembly lines, or cars. Such an exciting time to be alive!

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

#599

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you still referring to the scenario from the article, or a different one where it's a resource you use outside of court? > Here's how it was supposed to work: The person challenging a speeding ticket would wear smart glasses that both record court proceedings and dictate responses into the defendant's ear from a small speaker. Also, probably wouldn't matter. The interactive human-ish-like nature might cross the l…

Right, this strikes me as exactly the kind of "I'm not touching you!" argument that basically never works in a court of law. The law's not like code. "Well it's not any different than publishing a book, so this is just free speech and not legal representation"; "OK, cool, well, we both know that's sophist bullshit, judgement against you, next case."

[deleted]

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

#600

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…

Do you imagine that a pro se litigant is going to have a hard time or will be required to spend small fortunes to defend themselves in "fucking traffic court?"

You're basically trying to cut the argument both ways. Administrative courts are not criminal courts, and an AI would never be allowed near a criminal defense trial for obvious reasons.

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