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

arstechnica.com

151–160 of 218 posts

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

#151

> initially was advertised as "the world's first robot lawyer" with the ability to "sue anyone with the click of a button." There is no world in which allowing that to happen is a good idea.

I understand the sentiment but to be fair this is currently happening everywhere but only the rich people have access as they are the only one who have lawyers on retainer.

Access to legal services to poor will change things. In short term, judicial system will be overwhelmed and are forced to adopt new and efficient procedures.

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

#152
post #4

> DoNotPay also did not "hire or retain any attorneys" to help verify AI outputs or validate DoNotPay's legal claims. Wow, that's brave. Create a wrapper around ChatGPT, call it a lawyer, and never check the output. $193k fine seems like peanuts. 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'm not sure they mean "LLM based AI".

To me it looks like they automated some boilerplate legal forms and marketted it as "AI" to capitalize on the hype.

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

#153
post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Human lifespan is too short

Yep, need some way to image each new brain that comes online with some basics so it's not starting from 0 each time (and what basics to include would be a battle for the ages)

you've just described public school

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

#155
post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you operate in the confines of the law that's all that matters. This is uh.. Yeah. This is what I meant by having no moral or ethical qualms. There are things that I find immoral which are not illegal. I do not do those things, even though legally I could.

so religious zealotry? man-in-the-sky said "no do that!" ? "This is uh.. Yeah." - can you clarify this remark please?

>so religious zealotry? man-in-the-sky said "no do that!" ?

What are you on about?

I refuse to compromise my morals just because something is legal. That's it.

My morals did not come from some god, and they did not come from laws. No idea where you are getting religious zealotry from.

>"This is uh.. Yeah." - can you clarify this remark please?

Sure. I stopped myself from saying something rude to you.

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

#156
post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ideally the legal system wouldn't be byzantine and prohibitively expensive for mere mortals to engage with.

Too bad that the legal system is made of lawyers, whose interests run directly contrary to that ideal.

Reminds me of the expression "in and of itself".

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

#157
post #4

> DoNotPay also did not "hire or retain any attorneys" to help verify AI outputs or validate DoNotPay's legal claims. Wow, that's brave. Create a wrapper around ChatGPT, call it a lawyer, and never check the output. $193k fine seems like peanuts. 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'm not sure they mean "LLM based AI". To me it looks like they automated some boilerplate legal forms and marketted it as "AI" to capitalize on the hype.

>I'm not sure they mean "LLM based AI"

The article states that they use ChatGPT.

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

#158
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>they're just another startup playing the growth hacking game When is humanity going to start seeing some patches against these exploits? Is common sense still in beta?

>When is humanity going to start seeing some patches against these exploits? i think that's called "consequences" and it's the subject of the article you're commenting on

What I was getting at is: legal protections are good and necessary and all, but people try these things presumably because they work sometimes, and that fact bothers me. The idea that current generative AI tech - even if it were actually built to purpose - could actually fight for you in court, or output legal briefs that hold up to scrutiny and don't require review by a human expert, seems laughable to me. Law is definitely not a suitable field for an agent that frequently "hallucinates" and never questions or second-guesses your requests. There's so much that would have to go into such an AI system to be reliable, beyond the actual prose generation, that I certainly wouldn't a priori expect it to exist in 2024.

If so many people are willing to take the claim at face value, that suggests to me a general naivete and lack of understanding of AI out there that really needs to be fixed.

Aside from AI-related stuff, GGP mentioned "monthly subscriptions for services that most people need in a one-off manner". It's amazing to me that anyone would sign up for a monthly subscription to anything at all, without any consideration for whether they'd likely have a use for it every month.

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

#159
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually used the service in question during that time frame and did not feel deceived by their advertising. In fact, I felt good enough about the experience that I threw them a few bucks after the fact to compensate them for some of the value that they gave me. You read an article about it and 7 years later and are convinced they are crooks.

> You read an article about it and 7 years later and are convinced they are crooks. Actually, you read an article and assumed that your anecdotal experience from 7 years ago is more reflective of how a business operates than a current year investigation into that company by a federal agency. Nobody is arguing that they deceived you personally 7 years ago.

haha touche. That's a fair thing to say

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

#160

> initially was advertised as "the world's first robot lawyer" with the ability to "sue anyone with the click of a button." There is no world in which allowing that to happen is a good idea.

I understand the sentiment but to be fair this is currently happening everywhere but only the rich people have access as they are the only one who have lawyers on retainer. Access to legal services to poor will change things. In short term, judicial system will be overwhelmed and are forced to adopt new and efficient procedures.

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