21–30 of 218 posts
Of course this didn't stop them raising $10m from credulous investors in 2021.
I am honestly surprised the fine is not more. We need to see more of these come out as AI is shoved dangerously into places thanks to the ability to use it with little to no technical knowledge. Especially when you are really just shoving data into an LLM and expecting a response to do some job, you are not training it to do a specific task. Like the home buying AI that was on HN yesterday.
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
Not sure about the history, I based my comment on this quote from the article: > [...] DoNotPay's legal service [...] relying on an API with OpenAI's ChatGPT. Perhaps they rolled their own chatbot then later switched to ChatGPT? Either way, they probably should have a lawyer involved at some point in the process.
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.
> 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 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.
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.
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.
Wasn't the tech crowd getting soured on tech by all the ads eating the world?
> 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.
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
I think people love the idea of DoNotPay: A magical internet machine that saves people money and fights back against evil corporations.
Before ChatGPT they were basically mad libs for finding and filling out the right form. Helpful for people who couldn't figure out how to navigate situations by themselves. There is real value in this.
However, they've also been running the same growth hacking playbooks that people disdain: False advertising, monthly subscriptions for services that most people need in a one-off manner, claiming AI features to be more reliable than they are, releasing untested products on consumers. Once you look past the headline of the company you find they're not entirely altruistic, they're just another startup playing the growth hacking game and all that comes with it.
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.
Wasn't the tech crowd getting soured on tech by all the ads eating the world?
Back in the day, anyone who touted AI generated works by default exclaimed that the work was not as good as a human. That changed now but was a valid statement back then.