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An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

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Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#401

Post by weatherlite »

aardvarkr wrote: post #382
weatherlite wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They will pretty soon be able to fact check everything they say when they gain real time internet connectivity. But for now yeah you're right. A year-two from now this won't be true anymore.

Being connected to the internet may make their information more up to date but they won’t stop being confidently incorrect. These language models are amazing at token prediction but it’s a mistake to believe that they’re actually intelligent. Give it an inane prompt to better see the difference, like "write me an essay about camels and their value in cybersecurity" which gives us the answer "The camel is a valuable a…

Well it did what you asked him to do , you ordered it to write an essay about camels and their value in cybersecurity. It doesn't understand if you're joking or not or what the purpose of the whole thing.

I asked it this:

Are camels important to cyber security?

Answer:

"No, camels are not typically considered to be important for cyber security. Camels are domesticated mammals that are well-adapted to desert environments and are often used as a means of transportation or for their milk, meat, and hides. Cyber security, on the other hand, is the practice of protecting computer systems, networks, and data from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction. The two are not related."

Sounds pretty intelligent to me.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#402

Post by mountainb »

lolinder wrote: post #246

This company is either run by someone who doesn't understand the tech or is willfully fraudulent. ChatGPT and company are far from good enough to be entrusted with law. Having interacted extensively with modern LLMs, I absolutely know something like this would happen: > Defendant (as dictated by AI): The Supreme Court ruled in Johnson v. Smith in 1978... > Judge: There was no case Johnson v. Smith in 1978. LLMs hallu…

What's interesting is that sometimes it does a great job at something like telling you the holdings of a case, but then other times it gives you a completely incorrect response. If you ask it for things like "the X factor test from Johnson v. Smith" sometimes it will dutifully report the correct test in bullets, but other times will say the completely wrong thing.

The issue I think is that it's pulling from too many sources. There are plenty of sources that are pretty machine readable that will give it good answers. There's a lot of training that can be eked out from the legal databases that already exist that could make it a lot better. If it takes in too much information from too many sources, it tends to get garbled.

There are also a lot of areas where it will confuse concepts from different areas of law, like mixing up criminal battery with civil battery, but that's not the worst of the problems.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#403

Post by drakythe »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #354
drakythe wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As noted by several lawyers when some of the details of this experiment were revealed: The AI already committed a cardinal sin of traffic court in that it subpoenaed the ticketing officer. Rule 1 of traffic court: If the state's witness (the ticketing officer) doesn't show, defendant gets off. You do not subpoena that witness, thereby ensuring they show up. If the AI or its handlers cannot be trusted to pregame the c…

> noted by several lawyers when some of the details of this experiment were revealed: The AI already committed a cardinal sin of traffic court in that it subpoenaed the ticketing officer Would you have a source?

https://twitter.com/questauthority/status/161754192110223360...

Mike Dunford is a practicing attorney. Embedded tweet is of a non-lawyer who screenshotted Joshua Browser DoNotPay CEO) saying the subpoena had been sent. He has since deleted those tweets as DNP backs away from this plan.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#404

Post by lolinder »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #392
gnicholas wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I asked it for books on Hong Kong history and it spit out five complete fabrications. The titles were plausible and authors were real people, but none of them had written the books listed.

Can you follow up and ask it "Is [title] by [author] a published book?

I just tried, and it did issue a correction and gave me five new books, several of which were also fictitious.

But the real question is, could you follow up with a question as it dictating to you live in a courtroom?

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#405

Post by drakythe »

gfodor wrote: post #334
drakythe wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As noted by several lawyers when some of the details of this experiment were revealed: The AI already committed a cardinal sin of traffic court in that it subpoenaed the ticketing officer. Rule 1 of traffic court: If the state's witness (the ticketing officer) doesn't show, defendant gets off. You do not subpoena that witness, thereby ensuring they show up. If the AI or its handlers cannot be trusted to pregame the c…

agree to your last point, but a traffic ticket beta test does not fail that test

While I agree in absolute terms, in legal terms it is problematic because it sets precedent, which is what the law often runs off of. Better to not breach that line until we're sure it can perform in all circumstances, or rules have been established which clearly delineate where AI assistance/lawyering is allowed and where it isn't.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#406

Post by nzealand »

dools wrote: post #123

This is so fucking dumb. As if you need a lawyer to contest a parking ticket in the first place. The last time I got a parking ticket I had photos and documentary evidence that I should not have been liable. After I lodged my intent to contest the fine, the council sent me a letter saying how they win 97% of cases and I should just pay up now to avoid the risk. I called bullshit and turned up on my court date. There…

This was actually arguments for a speeding ticket in California.

For those in the bay area with parking tickets.... I've had hundreds of parking tickets in California. I would always lose the first round of dispute, because it is adjudicated by the city/county that gets the revenue. The second level of dispute is reviewed by an independent party who actually looks at what you state and makes an impartial decision, and the third level is reviewed by the courts. I disputed hundreds of tickets, and only once did I almost get to the third level.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#407

Post by SuoDuanDao »

DangitBobby wrote: post #269
LegitShady wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most judges won't allow you to record video in their court room anyways.

I wonder why we allow them to prevent that?

privacy for the accused who are considered innocent until the verdict is read is one reason.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#408

Post by freejazz »

ethanbond wrote: post #321
freejazz wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I’m not convinced." Yeah, no surprise. You seem completely unreasonable if you posit only these three options for freakin' traffic court...

What are the others? If you contest a ticket, you either have representation or you don’t. You can either afford good representation or you cannot.

Traffic court attorneys aren't expensive. They are actually incredibly cheap. There's also no public defenders in US traffic courts at least.

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#409

Post by snowwrestler »

gnicholas wrote: post #374
Nifty3929 wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A recent US president said about a large bill "we have to pass it just to see what's in it."

I'm unaware of a President saying that. Sounds more like the Nancy Pelosi (then House Minority Leader, subsequently Speaker of the House), talking about Obamacare: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/pelosi-healthcare-pass-the...

It was, and the context was the well-known tendency of the Washington press to only cover the fight until a bill passes, and only then turn toward explaining the substance of what just passed.

(It makes sense from the press perspective, as the substance is changing constantly in big bills right up until it passes… that’s what the fight is all about.)

Re: An AI lawyer was set to argue in court – real lawyers shut it down

#410

Post by mountainb »

phpisthebest wrote: post #379
rhino369 wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>One wonders why we have not developed something explicit like mathematical notations for legal stuff. Because you have to apply the law to fact and facts lack mathematical precision. "No vehicles in the park" would require someone to categorize everything in the world into vehicle or !vehicle. Does a wheel chair count? It's easier to lay out the principle and let judges determine edge cases as they play out.

Even you example is more precise that most laws. For example Indiana recently changed their Turn signal law from "Must put in on 300 feet before a lane change" to "Must signal in a reasonable time" WTF is a reasonable time... well what ever time the cop, judge, or prosecutors says it is

Reasonable time is determined by case law, and when it's a judge deciding, it's the judge's estimation of what a reasonable juror in that jurisdiction would think about the case. It's not as woozy as it seems, and is usually called an objective standard in the legal jargon. It's something that could conceivably be determined by a computer looking at all the factors that a judge would look at, and/or the relevant jury instructions that might frame the issue for a jury.
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