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Gen AI Makes Legal Action Cheap – and Companies Need to Prepare

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Re: Gen AI Makes Legal Action Cheap – and Companies Need to Prepare

#41

Post by wongarsu »

pylua wrote: post #27

This is actually insane. 120,000 comments! To a certain extent if our law is already so complicated that you need to hire a lawyer to understand it that is already a fundamental problem. Simplify the rules, make it easier to understand and reason about. The computers should be able to determine if someone is breaking a law, not trying to check if it is a bad law. We should be using computing power where someone can a…

This kind of comes back to the common law vs civil law system. Most English-speaking countries operate under a common law system where the laws as written down provide the ground work, but precedent set by previous court cases is also legally binding. In contrast most of Europe and South America operates under a civil law system (yes, terrible name, not the opposite of criminal law) where the written law reigns supreme and previous court decisions are merely informing opinions.

As you can imagine, algorithmic decisions are incredibly difficult in any common law system. And while they might be viable in a civil law system, you would lose out on the ability of a judge to give consideration to the specific circumstances of each case.

In practise both systems end up unwieldy in an attempt to be fair. Common law systems because of the overwhelming amount of precedent to consider, civil law systems because the laws become incredibly long and complex, with complex interactions between laws

Re: Gen AI Makes Legal Action Cheap – and Companies Need to Prepare

#42

Post by avidiax »

adamc wrote: post #32
jfengel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd bet on 3) Courts respond by automating as well, so we get a constant background loop of suits and counter suits processing in nanoseconds.

I would bet on the opposite, new rules that prevent automation from gumming up the court system. The judiciary is going to be hostile to such approaches.

I imagine lawmakers would be amenable to rules that you can't use GenAI to make legal filings, or that forced arbitration can now use AI to "screen" claims.

The courts are not for the little guy with little claims, nor are they a high volume system.

Re: Gen AI Makes Legal Action Cheap – and Companies Need to Prepare

#43

Post by barrkel »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #13

> They use an AI tool to comb public information about your company and file hundreds of copyright infringement, IP, and trade secret theft cases. The scale means you can’t just ignore it or settle for a nominal amount. The "scale" itself is the problem. Because companies are so huge, and their reach is so huge, it invites techniques that increase the efficiency of attacks. Human beings weren't meant to handle things…

Self-sufficiency is poverty.

Re: Gen AI Makes Legal Action Cheap – and Companies Need to Prepare

#44

Post by campbel »

dartos wrote: post #22
ryandrake wrote: post #17

If suing became an ultra-easy one-click activity, I can see two things coming: 1. maybe that would force us to shape up our tort laws a little so that not everything under the sun was actionable and 2. maybe people and companies would stop misbehaving so much because they knew there was no longer a burden to suing them. A combination of 1 and 2 sound like a great outcome.

> everything under the sun was actionable Not everything (in the US at least) is actionable, but you still need someone to review each suit and determine whether or not to throw it out.

seems reasonable to add an initial cost burden to the filer then, to pay for the review, especially if they are filing a lot of suits. Say first 10 suits per year are free, but then you need to get on the premium plan :D

Re: Gen AI Makes Legal Action Cheap – and Companies Need to Prepare

#45

Post by visarga »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #13

> They use an AI tool to comb public information about your company and file hundreds of copyright infringement, IP, and trade secret theft cases. The scale means you can’t just ignore it or settle for a nominal amount. The "scale" itself is the problem. Because companies are so huge, and their reach is so huge, it invites techniques that increase the efficiency of attacks. Human beings weren't meant to handle things…

> If we lived in smaller, more self-sufficient communities, then we would not have scale and the people in such communities would not have much desire to develop AI either.

You could say AI is the child of internet, as it was the internet that cooked up the massive trillion token datasets. Without internet, no AI.

But if you look closely, internet resembles AI - you can search for images instead of generating, there are billions you can choose from. You can search for information and you can chat on social networks instead of using a LLM. It's the same with AI but even better, human made. An HGI made of humans and networks.

Re: Gen AI Makes Legal Action Cheap – and Companies Need to Prepare

#46

Post by avidiax »

dmvdoug wrote: post #25

Founders of “legal AI” startup say legal AI will change everything (get in while you can!). Each 100 shares purchased comes with your very own carbolic smoke ball. Don’t delay!

Not clear the relevance to the article, but I suppose people using GenAI for contracts need to be cautious, since they will be bound by whatever the AI comes up with.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlill_v_Carbolic_Smoke_Ball_...

Re: Gen AI Makes Legal Action Cheap – and Companies Need to Prepare

#47

Post by busyant »

beej71 wrote: post #16
seydor wrote: post #5

Between the lines it seems the legal professions depend on strong barriers to entry to justify their high prices, and this is threatening them more than the companies.

Here's a story from my divorce 25 years ago. We were having an easy divorce, and so we used Nolo press to get it done. But it was difficult to know what forms actually had to be filed in our case. So we went to the clerk, and said, out of all these forms, which ones do we have to file? And the clerk said that they couldn't tell us because that would be offering legal advice. The lawyers had gotten laws passed prevent…

Another (non-divorce) story.

* My wife and I own several rental properties.

* The properties are in an LLC that we formed.

* I went to local housing court to file papers for an eviction (non-payment of rent).

* I hand the paperwork to the clerk and the clerk says, "I need your ID to determine that you actually own the property ..."

* Me: "Actually, my name won't be listed. It'll be listed under the name of our LLC."

* Clerk: "Then you can't file the eviction yourself. You have to be represented by a lawyer."

* Me: "???? Can't I just prove that I'm an officer of the LLC?"

* Clerk: "No. If it's not directly owned by you, you need a lawyer to proceed with the eviction."

* Me: "But I can represent the LLC in every other capacity that I can think of. You're telling me that I can't do this on my own?"

* Clerk: "I don't make the rules ..."

$1500 later, I have to keep my lawyer on task to file the paperwork.

Re: Gen AI Makes Legal Action Cheap – and Companies Need to Prepare

#48

Post by SoftTalker »

dartos wrote: post #22
ryandrake wrote: post #17

If suing became an ultra-easy one-click activity, I can see two things coming: 1. maybe that would force us to shape up our tort laws a little so that not everything under the sun was actionable and 2. maybe people and companies would stop misbehaving so much because they knew there was no longer a burden to suing them. A combination of 1 and 2 sound like a great outcome.

> everything under the sun was actionable Not everything (in the US at least) is actionable, but you still need someone to review each suit and determine whether or not to throw it out.

AI can do that too.

Re: Gen AI Makes Legal Action Cheap – and Companies Need to Prepare

#49

Post by SoftTalker »

campbel wrote: post #44
dartos wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> everything under the sun was actionable Not everything (in the US at least) is actionable, but you still need someone to review each suit and determine whether or not to throw it out.

seems reasonable to add an initial cost burden to the filer then, to pay for the review, especially if they are filing a lot of suits. Say first 10 suits per year are free, but then you need to get on the premium plan :D

No that just tips the playing field back in favor of the larger players who can afford the fees.

Re: Gen AI Makes Legal Action Cheap – and Companies Need to Prepare

#50

Post by analog31 »

vouaobrasil wrote: post #13

> They use an AI tool to comb public information about your company and file hundreds of copyright infringement, IP, and trade secret theft cases. The scale means you can’t just ignore it or settle for a nominal amount. The "scale" itself is the problem. Because companies are so huge, and their reach is so huge, it invites techniques that increase the efficiency of attacks. Human beings weren't meant to handle things…

Humans were also not meant to handle corporations of a scale that could engage in things like IP theft, data theft, wage fixing, and mass psychology, with impunity. It strikes me as a cat and mouse game. Not that I think either side will make things better for the rest of us.
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