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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

#671

Post by freejazz »

giantg2 wrote: post #566
freejazz wrote: post #523

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My point? That credentials are separate from the license and aren't part of the same thing. That's why many professions don't have licensing. They serve completely different purposes.

A license is a credential. Not all credentials are licenses, but all licenses are credentials. You can look up some definitions if you want. I'm done with this conversation as you are so set on arguing a tangent without an open mind.

I did look up the definitions and they don't support your argument

License: a permit from an authority to own or use something, do a particular thing, or carry on a trade

Credential: a qualification, achievement, personal quality, or aspect of a person's background, typically when used to indicate that they are suitable for something.

Sure, you can characterize the license as an achievement. But it's really just a license.

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

#672

Post by dragonwriter »

freejazz wrote: post #671
giantg2 wrote: post #566

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A license is a credential. Not all credentials are licenses, but all licenses are credentials. You can look up some definitions if you want. I'm done with this conversation as you are so set on arguing a tangent without an open mind.

I did look up the definitions and they don't support your argument License: a permit from an authority to own or use something, do a particular thing, or carry on a trade Credential: a qualification, achievement, personal quality, or aspect of a person's background, typically when used to indicate that they are suitable for something. Sure, you can characterize the license as an achievement. But it's really just a li…

> Sure, you can characterize the license as an achievemen

Maybe, maybe not, but its 100% a qualification, so its definitely a credential.

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

#673

Post by HeyZuess »

eloff wrote: post #285
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…

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 been using copilot for half a year now and it’s helpful, but often wrong.

I wonder if that is because of the training set, us humans are often wrong or different. If given a room of programmers and asked to implement a Fibonacci algorithm would they all get it right, would they all do it via iteration, recursion, dynamic programming. Co-pilot might not replace you, but it just needs to replace some of those programmers. Then add tools like automated AI reviews or integration tests for example and now you removed another population of tech workers.

I am not sure if that is cause for alarm or the fact that such improvements could be rather beneficial. Some tools will replace people, some will be assistive, and as they improve and other layers are added they will reduce the need for people in areas, improving efficiency and productivity. Robots in manufacturing for example, improve productivity and reduce human labor.

And this leads on to this, these tools are narrow to general and have achieved this in a very short period of time. The cost factors have also massively reduced, if you could pay OpenAI $10 a month to make 1000 mistakes and still deliver code, or a human $120k a year to do the same then which one would you target. AI might not be coming for your job soon but it will be taking away your options to get a job. This is not unique to AI it is the basis for any technological improvement vs labor, yes new ideas and opportunities may come out of this but I don't think they will be equal in volume.

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

#674

Post by chii »

Calavar wrote: post #570
intrasight wrote: post #542

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.

you cannot sanction the seller of a software, any more than you can sanction the seller of the gun for a murderer.

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

#675

Post by danShumway »

intrasight wrote: post #595
danShumway wrote: post #553

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ;)

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

I don't see how this would decrease DoNotPay's liability.

Regardless of how you feel about the bar, I don't think that changes anything about who they would sanction or why. Having a legal monopoly means they're even less likely to go along with a "the AI did it, not me" explanation than a normal market would be.

I mean, no matter what, they're not sanctioning the AI. They don't recognize the AI as a person, they recognize it as a tool that a person/organization is using to perform an action.

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

#676

Post by gptgpp »

torstenvl wrote: post #653
gptgpp wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the solution is clear then. If the judge gently corrects defense counsel and guides them towards competence, they can just do the same with AI. Then the company can use that data to improve it! Eventually it will be perfect with all the free labor from those judges. >Judge: that case does not exist. Ask it about this case instead >AI: I apologize for the mistake, that case is more applicable. blah blah bla…

Ehhh... the judge's patience for that kind of thing is not unlimited. At some point they're going to reopen the inquiry about counsel (there's also the issue that an AI probably can't be your counsel of record, since it hasn't passed the bar; more likely the court would view it as you representing yourself with the assistance of research software). BREAK BREAK My jurisdiction (the military justice system) is a bit of…

Oh, that's actually a relief that the reason they take so little time with clients before telling them to take the deal is simply because the cases are generally clear cut. Although like many things, I'll bet this can vary by region significantly.

The rest of my comment I dropped the '/s' for. I think it's wild some people think current LLMs can replace lawyers... The absolute best I would think they could currently do is maybe speed up research for paralegals. I was just imagining expecting a judge to QA a private companies software and thought it was really funny.

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

#678

Post by intrasight »

ArnoVW wrote: post #660
intrasight wrote: post #542

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…

The AI is a tool, belonging to a person, thar is using that tool to sell advice.

That's a different situation that what I am discussing - where the defendant is directly using AI.

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

#679

Post by wpietri »

TillE wrote: post #577
wpietri wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So far __ChatGPT got it wrong every time__. The first wave of ChatGPT stories were all "amazing, wonderful, humanity is basically obsolete". But now that people have had a little time, I'm seeing a ton of examples where people are realizing that ChatGPT sounds like it knows what it's talking about, but actually doesn't know anything. We know that humans are easily fooled by glib confidence; we can all think of poli…

ChatGPT does some really impressive stuff! As a creative tool or a code generator it can give you some good material to work with. But the hype has been insane, totally untethered from reality. I think it's the instinct to assume that something which can mimic human speech quite well must also have some mechanism for comprehending the meaning of the words it's generating, when it really doesn't.

True. And the really interesting question for me is how much those people are also failing to notice this distinction not just with ChatGPT, but with other people. Which sounds absurd at first, but long ago Oliver Sacks gave an example that sticks with me: https://www.junkfoodforthought.com/long/Sacks_Reagan.htm

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

#680

Post by torstenvl »

gptgpp wrote: post #676
torstenvl wrote: post #653

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ehhh... the judge's patience for that kind of thing is not unlimited. At some point they're going to reopen the inquiry about counsel (there's also the issue that an AI probably can't be your counsel of record, since it hasn't passed the bar; more likely the court would view it as you representing yourself with the assistance of research software). BREAK BREAK My jurisdiction (the military justice system) is a bit of…

Oh, that's actually a relief that the reason they take so little time with clients before telling them to take the deal is simply because the cases are generally clear cut. Although like many things, I'll bet this can vary by region significantly. The rest of my comment I dropped the '/s' for. I think it's wild some people think current LLMs can replace lawyers... The absolute best I would think they could currently…

A huge, huge number of cases are extremely cut and dry. Probably 80+% of the misdemeanor docket is drugs and traffic. You know what evidence is required to prove you were driving while your license was suspended? That you were driving (police cam) and that your license was suspended (certified DMV record).

I know it sounds scary when stats get thrown around like "Over 90% of defendants plead guilty without a trial!" but that's usually pursuant to a generous deal from an overworked prosecutor's office who absolutely does not want to do a freaking jury trial because you were desperate to get to work and couldn't get a ride.

Obviously, if the underlying reason your license was suspended is extreme (vehicular manslaughter, 3rd+ DUI) then their tune will probably change, but that's an extreme minority of cases. Those are the ones that go to trial.

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