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DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

arstechnica.com

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Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#31

Post by raverbashing »

gradyfps wrote: post #10
Mordisquitos wrote: post #8

I love the quote they included in their ads, purportedly from the Los Angeles Time but "actually from a high-schooler’s opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times’ High School Insider": > "what this robot lawyer can do is astonishingly similar—if not more—to what human lawyers do."

To be fair if legal paperwork follows a standard process with standard information, a "robot" can complete many orders of magnitude more than any human lawyer. (I'm also not a lawyer and have no idea if this line of thinking is applicable.)

Honestly most lawyers (that I know at least) just keep templates of most common documents and fill in the blanks as needed

For basic stuff this is 95% of the end product

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#32

Post by ziddoap »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #24
ziddoap wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To your second point, it's very funny how OpenAI seems to have soured the tech crowd on tech. In this particular case, I'm not sour because of OpenAI. I am sour because of deceptive and gross business practices highlighted in the article.

It worked as well as any other eighteen dollar a month lawyer back when I tried it in 2017/2018. It was actually free back then I used it the one time and felt grateful enough for the help that I signed up for one cycle and then cancelled (since I didn't have a continued need for it). Nothing gross or deceptive.

>Nothing gross or deceptive.

They just had to pay a fine for deceptive advertising. The article lists a number of other deceptive and immoral business practices.

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#33

Post by [deleted] »

whiplash451 wrote: post #18
ryandrake wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Sometimes I think about where I would be in life if I had no moral or ethical qualms. I'd probably be running a company like this. I think about this all the time. If I didn’t have a conscience, I would be retired by now.

You might be retiring in jail, though.

[deleted]

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#34

Post by toast0 »

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #14

It's amazing to me that people think they need other people to resolve disputes, or that "law" is some kind of magic... And yet people keep thinking so, both selling it as magic, and buying it as magic, and not once taking the time to consider what the words on the paper might mean.

It's the same with plumbing, wiring, programing, writing, cooking, gardening, and most of the other verbs.

For the most part, everyone can do these things, but it's nice to pay someome else to do it; especially in fields where experience gives expertise and hopefully wisdom. Also, it's handy to hire a licensed practicioner in fields where government requires licensure to sell services.

Some people are really woried about making big mistakes that are expensive to clean when plumbing or wiring or lawyering. It's a legitimate thing to consider.

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#35

Post by kibwen »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #12
sixhobbits wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DoNotPay predates GPT by quite a bit -- it used to be pretty positively received on HN e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822289

Yes! I used this "AI" tool to help a friend write a letter to her landlord. It was not at all "generative AI" and seemed to just paste modules together based on her answers to its questionnaire. To your second point, it's very funny how OpenAI seems to have soured the tech crowd on tech.

The race to the bottom in the ruthless and relentless pursuit of profit is what soured us on tech, and the AI hype train is but one in a long procession.

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#36

Post by add-sub-mul-div »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #12
sixhobbits wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DoNotPay predates GPT by quite a bit -- it used to be pretty positively received on HN e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822289

Yes! I used this "AI" tool to help a friend write a letter to her landlord. It was not at all "generative AI" and seemed to just paste modules together based on her answers to its questionnaire. To your second point, it's very funny how OpenAI seems to have soured the tech crowd on tech.

AI helps our lives in many ways and it's a shame that the LLM era has perverted the term with the same bad smells and scamminess of the NFT era.

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#38

Post by swatcoder »

ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #12
sixhobbits wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DoNotPay predates GPT by quite a bit -- it used to be pretty positively received on HN e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822289

Yes! I used this "AI" tool to help a friend write a letter to her landlord. It was not at all "generative AI" and seemed to just paste modules together based on her answers to its questionnaire. To your second point, it's very funny how OpenAI seems to have soured the tech crowd on tech.

> To your second point, it's very funny how OpenAI seems to have soured the tech crowd on tech.

They represent an amplifier for the enshittening that was already souring the tech crown on tech.

LLM's used in this sort of way, which is exactly OpenAI's trillion dollar bet, will just make products appear to have larger capabilities while simultaneously making many capabilities far less reliable.

Most of the "win" in cases like this is for the product vendor cutting capital costs of development while inflating their marketability in the short term, at the expense of making everything they let it touch get more unpredictable and inconsistent. Optimistic/naive users jump in for the market promise of new and more dynamic features, but aren't being coached to anticipate the tradeoff.

It's the same thing we've been seeing in digital products for the last 15 years, and manufactured products for the last 40, but cranked up by an order of magnitude.

It's exhausting and disheartening.

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#39

Post by probably_wrong »

manofmanysmiles wrote: post #14

It's amazing to me that people think they need other people to resolve disputes, or that "law" is some kind of magic... And yet people keep thinking so, both selling it as magic, and buying it as magic, and not once taking the time to consider what the words on the paper might mean.

> that "law" is some kind of magic...

Law is some kind of magic, though. Consider the case where I want to cast the "Lawyer" protection spell.

If I chant "I am invoking my right to remain silent. I want to contact my attorney" then the police must stop questioning me and provide me one [1]. The spell worked.

If I chant "This is how I feel, if y’all think I did it, I know that I didn’t do it so why don’t you just give me a lawyer dog ’cause this is not what’s up" then my spell is not strong enough and the police can interrogate me as they see fit [2].

And then there's the time where a wizard had to interpret a comma [3].

[1] https://www.nedbarnett.com/do-i-have-a-right-to-an-attorney-...

[2] https://uproxx.com/culture/louisiana-supreme-court-suspect-l...

[3] https://www.loweringthebar.net/2017/03/the-oxford-comma-use-...

Re: DoNotPay has to pay $193K for falsely touting untested AI lawyer, FTC says

#40

Post by onemoresoop »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #36
ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes! I used this "AI" tool to help a friend write a letter to her landlord. It was not at all "generative AI" and seemed to just paste modules together based on her answers to its questionnaire. To your second point, it's very funny how OpenAI seems to have soured the tech crowd on tech.

AI helps our lives in many ways and it's a shame that the LLM era has perverted the term with the same bad smells and scamminess of the NFT era.

It goes both ways. AI is used in both benefic ways as well as malefic ones. I don't think it's a net positive but that's just my opinion.
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