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

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

#211

Post by RHSeeger » Fri, Sep 27, 2024, 11:38 AM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #193

golergka wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Politics and corruption" is exactly what is complex about society, and it is absolutely intristic to society. That's why we have laws in the first place. > because the public wouldn't support many things in the status quo if they understood the workings of them Personally, I've observed the opposite more often: somebody feeds the public a clickbait-ey and manipulative "explanation" of how things work, and public bec…

> "Politics and corruption" is exactly what is complex about society, and it is absolutely intristic to society. That's why we have laws in the first place. The reason we have laws is to facilitate corruption? That seems like something we ought not to want. > Personally, I've observed the opposite more often: somebody feeds the public a clickbait-ey and manipulative "explanation" of how things work, and public become…

> The media over-simplifies things.

There are a lot of cases (to the point where I expect your average person sees dozens of them every day) where the media isn't just "over-simplifying"; they're presenting things that are specifically crafted to both

- Be factually correct

- Make the reader leave with an false understanding of the situation

This exact same thing happens with political campaigns.

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

#212

Post by entreunemployed » Fri, Sep 27, 2024, 2:33 PM UTC

ziddoap wrote: 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.

Wow buddy. I guess we could say the dollar amount you were willing to forego is the price of your sense of superiority.

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

#213

Post by Mordisquitos » Fri, Sep 27, 2024, 2:40 PM UTC

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.)

I agree that would be a valuable proposition were it to be true (no idea, IANALE). But what I found impressive was the claim that said "robot" could do it even more similar to a human's work than a human lawyer could!

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

#214

Post by freejazz » Fri, Sep 27, 2024, 5:12 PM UTC

glial wrote: post #202

freejazz wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that your experience with traffic tickets?

Sure - when I was a kid, I was speeding in a neighborhood (think 40 in a 30) and an annoyed cop charged me with reckless driving. The public defender recommended I plead guilty, pay a large fine and be put on probation for a year. I think a more expensive lawyer would have had different advice.

Nothing about that sounds byzantine nor prohibitively expensive. Heck, you were provided an attorney for free.

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

#215

Post by natch » Fri, Sep 27, 2024, 6:17 PM UTC

BarryMilo wrote: post #185

natch wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Typical lawyer mistake versus an elevator mistake? Depends on the nature of each mistake. Elevator accidents can be serious.

We're talking about the guy that presses the buttons for the people taking the elevator, yes? What serious elevator accident might arise from that?

Talking about that guy, or the lack of that guy, historically in elevators of various vintages.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elevator_accidents

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

#216

Post by ziddoap » Fri, Sep 27, 2024, 7:33 PM UTC

entreunemployed wrote: post #212

ziddoap wrote: 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.

Wow buddy. I guess we could say the dollar amount you were willing to forego is the price of your sense of superiority.

Haha, yeah, feeling very superior over here with my... not lying to my customers. Yep!

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

#217

Post by AnthonyMouse » Sat, Sep 28, 2024, 2:33 AM UTC

RHSeeger wrote: post #211

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Politics and corruption" is exactly what is complex about society, and it is absolutely intristic to society. That's why we have laws in the first place. The reason we have laws is to facilitate corruption? That seems like something we ought not to want. > Personally, I've observed the opposite more often: somebody feeds the public a clickbait-ey and manipulative "explanation" of how things work, and public become…

> The media over-simplifies things. There are a lot of cases (to the point where I expect your average person sees dozens of them every day) where the media isn't just "over-simplifying"; they're presenting things that are specifically crafted to both - Be factually correct - Make the reader leave with an false understanding of the situation This exact same thing happens with political campaigns.

Oh of course, but that's a different thing.

Over-simplifications are false. They don't even meet the bar of being factually correct, whether because the proponent is willfully leaving something out or because they're ignorant themselves. It's not impossible for it to happen innocently, because people selling simplistic narratives often build a following even when they're true believers.

The thing you're talking about is selection bias. It's the thing assholes do when they want to lie to people but don't want to get sued for defamation. Whenever you discover someone using this modus operandi, delete them from your feed.

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

#218

Post by kbolino » Sat, Sep 28, 2024, 5:01 PM UTC

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #182

kbolino wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A majority of the shares in most publicly traded corporations are held by retirement funds, both "private" (BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street) and public (FERS, CalPERS, ...). These entities, generally, have no appreciable interest other than maximizing profit. They are all regulated financial entities, even the private ones are quasi-governmental (e.g., BlackRock has close business relationships with the Federal Res…

But then you have to make a different statement. The purpose of a large, publicly traded for-profit corporation is to maximize profit. This is quite an important distinction because it implies we may want to limit the prevalence of those things and increase the prevalence of small businesses and privately-held medium businesses that can advance other societal goals.

It is not clear to me that large and/or publicly traded corporations must maximize short-term profit. The seminal case of shareholders vs management concerning the Ford Motor Company in its early days shows that the objectives and incentives are not beyond debate and thus not intrinsically tied to the size or ownership model of a company.

The government has consolidated around the current set of incentives, both directly through its own arms and indirectly through legislation and policy, leading to the result we see today. Breaking these large businesses up may lead to some disruption for awhile, but if the incentives stay the same, the same end result will likely be arrived at again before too long.