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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

#91
post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just keep small claims like that in small claims court. Then auto-Ronald has to send $500/hr general counsel instead of farming it out to a law firm and that makes it impractical for them to sue little people.

1. Only a handful of states prohibit hiring representation for small claims court. 2. McDonalds could make it so to get inside you have to agree to arbitration of any disputes. That's usually just used by companies to make you use arbitration instead of the courts when you have a complaint, but offhand I can't think of any reason they couldn't require arbitration in the other direction.

Arbitration clauses almost always run both ways. I am not even sure if they are legal to go only one way.

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

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or you can hire a lawyer and pay $50-100K minimum before the trial even starts What are those lawyers doing that’s worth so much, and that one cannot do themselves if they have time and mental capacity for it? I don’t know about courts (though I managed my way through a simple divorce case without any need for a lawyer), but e.g. immigration attorneys are typically drastically overpriced for the services they provi…

This is like stating, "What are software engineers doing that's worth so much? There's plenty of free code courses online." It reminds me of the old story of the plumber being called to a house that's leaking water out of a pipe, and the plumber looks around, finds one valve and gives it a half turn, and then writes a bill for 100$. The home owner is outraged he is charging so much for just a couple of minutes, and t…

> This is like stating, "What are software engineers doing that's worth so much? There's plenty of free code courses online."

Well, that’s not perfectly accurate comparison. When adjusted for nuances it’s much less clear what’s best. If a quick course is all you really need to get something done, and there are no e.g. maintenance concerns (so you don’t care if something is merely acceptable and not up to the best standards - as I get it, without any research, the case is effectively an one-off thing), and the professional services are notoriously costly, it makes me wonder why. In such scenario DIY approach looks very compelling to me.

Because I’ve heard the same thing about immigration and it turned out to be false. My current understanding is that there are a lot of immigration cases that may need a lawyer but a lot more where it’s a total waste of money.

Of course I can be wrong. There are always nuances and differences. That’s why I’ve asked what makes it so costly.

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

#93

> 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…

This is an unnecessarily complicated rationalization. The only reason large companies attract these attacks is because large companies have large bank accounts. That’s it. That’s the reason. There’s no need to theorize about small communities or humans developing AI in reaction to something. Scammers see a tool, an opportunity for exploitation, and a target with something they want (money). They leverage the tool to…

> There’s no need to theorize about small communities or humans developing AI in reaction to something.

Actually there is. You are looking at the proximal cause, I am more interested in the ultimate, to borrow from the evolutionary biologists.

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

#94

> 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. Yes, because they’d be too busy worrying about food and disease to bother with much else. Agrarian societies weren’t fun.

> Agrarian societies weren’t fun.

I suppose you've lived in one? Or are you just fearmongering? Because agrarian societies certainly weren't always worrying about food and disease. What about the Amish? They certainly manage decently without too much technology.

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

#95

> 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…

I mean, sure, if we still lived as small groups of hunter-gatherers, many of today's problems would not exist. But many of yesterday's problems could never have been solved.

It isn't a dichotomy. But making a dichotomy is thing technophiles do a lot and I'm not sure why. It's clear that we can go back to smaller communities and keep some of the newer ways. I think technophiles irrationally put everything that isn't "advanced tech society" into the box of hunter-gatherer because they can't psychologically cope with the idea that there is an alternative to the unsustainable technological world that they have become emotionally attached to.

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

#96
post #52

I often read comments where people doubt there will be much work left after AGI. I think on the contrary, it will keep us busy, even busier than before. The moment the road widens, more cars fill it up to the brim. Will lawyers lose their jobs? Looks like the opposite trend is happening. With each capability unlocked, we got more work not less. Remember that reminder about the fate of horses after the automobile was…

> The moment the road widens, more cars fill it up to the brim. Jevon's Paradox is not a law of nature. - - - - Mark Miller pointed out, "A Computer's Perspective on Moore's Law: Humans are getting more expensive at an exponential rate." The explosion of AI means that humans are getting more valuable, but only for doing things that only humans (not AI) can do.

> Jevon's Paradox is not a law of nature.

It's probably related to the nature of human desire.

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

#97
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The moment the road widens, more cars fill it up to the brim. Jevon's Paradox is not a law of nature. - - - - Mark Miller pointed out, "A Computer's Perspective on Moore's Law: Humans are getting more expensive at an exponential rate." The explosion of AI means that humans are getting more valuable, but only for doing things that only humans (not AI) can do.

> Jevon's Paradox is not a law of nature. It's probably related to the nature of human desire.

Desire is like fire: feeding it only makes it grow, it consumes leaving ash.

One of the primary points of human life is learning the undesirability of desire itself.

- - - -

Jevons paradox, on the other hand, isn't metaphysical. When you make the road wider more people drive on it, but widening the road didn't conjure up those people and their cars. The road was too narrow. If you kept adding lanes to the freeway eventually everyone who needed or wanted to drive on it would have enough space.

Now metaphorically speaking we're considering a situation where widening the freeway is so cheap that we can make the freeway as wide as we like, and we're making free self-driving cars, and people can send the cars on the freeway to do anything at all, even really trivial things, and we imagine endless freeway and endless cars until the world is covered in freeways. Something like that?

I guess we do have to solve the problem of human nature and our tendency to flagrantly waste our time and resources on dumb stuff, eh? How does AI help us do that?

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

#98
post #20

Lawsuits may become automatic when you leave a store unhappy it might have the ability to create a lawsuit and then the store's lawsuit Api will be called, then the two ais will start negotiations and end up with a $15 deposit in your account by the time you get home. And it will be all because a certain hormone raised in your head.

> $15 deposit in your account A transfer on the blockchain, you mean.

They meant 1 kg of standard breakfast bread's worth of tokens in whatever cryptocurrency.

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

#99
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.

AI can do that too.

Not really.

I’d rather have a tractable thought process which can be interrogated decide whether or not I can sue a corporation rather than an automated black box.

The whole point of law is that it’s humans regulating other humans. Not machines (in this case, built by wealthy humans) regulating humans.

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

#100
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your two statements logically conflict. I understand the article. Your first line is not what it says. See the "Legal Cost Collapse" subhead. In addition, logically LLM's will increasingly allow individuals to free themselves from the need for attorneys. And again, see the Cyber Risk subhead for issues implying an intolerable state of affairs for the wider public. In that light as well as other context, your second l…

> logically LLM's will increasingly allow individuals to free themselves from the need for attorneys. No. Not a chance. If you sue me with LLM-generated filings, I’m going to be paying a lawyer to mercilessly win , using LLMs as needed (perhaps using LLMs to test various responses to your filings that cause your LLM to spit out something that is terrible for you but you’d have no idea since you aren’t using a lawyer)…

Legal access and the viability of the human-staffed legal profession aren't just about litigation. Moreover, your and everyone else's respective ability to continue to counter lawsuits is severely limited by how much cash you and they have. Change is on the way, even if it mostly ends with radical defensive restructuring on the part of the law and legal profession.
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