Except this aint it.

"The person challenging a speeding ticket would wear smart glasses that both record court proceedings and dictate responses into the defendant's ear from a small speaker. The system relied on a few leading AI text generators, including ChatGPT and DaVinci."

I.e its equivalent of a person effectively studying the actual law and then representing themselves in court, just in a more optimal manner.

Even if it fails, it was supposed to be something trivial like a speeding ticket, because after all, this is a test.

And funny enough, the answer of will it work has already been answered. If law firms believed it was bullshit, they would just put a very good attorney on that case and disprove it. Barring it from entry with threat of jailtime pretty much proves that they are full of shit and they know it.

> I.e its equivalent of a person effectively studying the actual law and then representing themselves in court, just in a more optimal manner.

It's not equivalent at all. ChatGPT and DaVinci have not "studied the law" in the same way as any human would.

> If law firms believed it was bullshit, they would just put a very good attorney on that case and disprove it. Barring it from entry with threat of jailtime pretty much proves that they are full of shit and they know it.

This is a traffic ticket case. He's not up against Sullivan & Cromwell, he's up against some local prosecutor. I'm sure if some white shoe law firm were being paid hundreds of thousands to defend a case against a guy using ChatGPT, they'd be fine with it.

Even though we have an adversarial system, the state can't just let ordinary folk hang themselves with cheap half-baked "solutions". It would be unjust/bad press (delete as appropriate to your level of cynicism). That's why we have licensing requirements, etc.

> the state can't just let ordinary folk hang themselves with cheap half-baked "solutions".

Why hasn't the practice of self-representation been banned then? It's almost without exception a surefire way to hang oneself in a court room.

Self representation doesn't involve some mountebank selling you a "robot lawyer that will get you off your parking ticket" solution

So what if I just decided of my own accord to use ChatGPT and train it myself? Or someone on GitHub made a fully trained version of it available in a Docker container, for free?

Then nobody would issue legal threats to you for selling "Robot Lawyer" services. But you probably wouldn't get permission to use Google Glass in the courtroom either, so you'd have to commit your legal arguments to memory as well as hoping the AI hadn't ingested too much "freeman of the land" nonsense...

What's the difference between self representation and practicing law without a license - is there an exemption for unlicensed practitioners when they are performing on their own behalf, or this is a distinct category somehow?

Think of chatgpt as a search engine. Does it matter if you use a search engine before the trial, and perhaps bringing a big ass binder to the court with all possible responses, or you do it during the trial?

And any lawyer that can go against gpt3 and win will be a net benefit to the whole law community, showing that lawyers are worth the money.

I find the need for lawyers a tragedy. Interactions with the judicial system are often some of the most important events in a person’s life. The fact that it’s necessary to pay someone hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour to help navigate the arcane process is sad and shouldn’t be necessary. It would be one thing if laws were meaningfully written down, so that anyone could read the statutes and build their own argument, but the laws are not written down in a way that has meaning unless you are willing to wade through centuries of case law.

Is the need to use an expert the issue or rather the price point? Why would it be wrong to avail yourself of someone else's expertise (and people use lawyers in non-case law jurisdictions, too)?

Not sure anyone really would want to operate on themselves (because the need for a surgeon in an important event in their life is somehow "wrong").

We all use technology to treat ourselves in lieu of a surgeon all the time, whether it's a Google search, a plaster, or cough medicine or whatever. Are you going to give up all the advances that differentiate your situation from that of someone in say, 17th century Europe, because an expert should do it because they're an expert?

No thanks. I'll take advances that make things easy enough to avoid experts wherever I can get it and leave the bloodlettings (which, with lawyers, will be from your bank account) to others.

That’s not what he said. The key word there was _operate_, not _use a band–aid_. I wouldn’t recommend trying to take out your own appendix; it’s a really bad idea.

On the other hand:

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

(If it had been filmed, the video would probably be on YouTube with Dschinghis Khan's "Moskau" as the soundtrack.)

Yea, but he was already a professional practicing surgeon! The rest of us should not attempt this; we should hire a professional. It is similarly preferable to hire the services of a professional lawyer most of the time.

You've cherry-picked a procedure out of the thousands possible. The reason it's preferable to use a surgeon for things like appendicectomy is because there isn't a technology to do it for yourself or treat it before it needs surgery. There are, however, other treatments available for other maladies that mean you don't need a surgeon or won't need a surgeon, and thus surgeons can concentrate on other stuff that we don't have better, cheaper ways of taking care of.

If AI can take care of parking tickets and small claims, perhaps speed up the process by making lawyers quicker at their jobs et cetera et cetera, then it's all good. If it puts pressure on lawmakers to simplify the law, all the better.

>Not sure anyone really would want to operate on themselves (because the need for a surgeon in an important event in their life is somehow "wrong").

Not operate, but since over here in Europe just about any piece of paper passes as a prescription, I tend to print my own. (Most people don't know this, but EU pharmacies are required to accept prescriptions from other EU countries. There's no standard format or verification procedure, so forgery is trivial even if your country has a more secure domestic system)

What's the point of going to (or even calling) a doctor for an antibiotics prescription? It's not like they're going to perform blood tests before prescribing. Want some Cialis for the weekend? Why go to a doctor? You can just pull up the contraindications on Google. Why bother doctor shopping for Ozempic? Just print your own prescription.

Wait, what? I can just print a foreign prescription for Adderall or Dilaudid and the pharmacy will accept it? I don't think that would work...

It depends on the country, usually there are national rules requiring special prescriptions for "fun" drugs like that.

If you can pick up drugs like that with an ordinary private prescription in your country, a foreign prescription should work.

For further information:

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/health/prescription-me...

https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/health/prescription-me...

Pretty sure, sometimes a doctor might know more than you on a prescription or their educated guess on which antibiotic is appropriate is better than yours, for example.

Hey, I definitely agree.

On the other hand, every time I've gone to the doctor with a cold, I've always been prescribed the same antibiotic after basically no examination.

If I had some new, unexpected symptoms, I'd probably want to at least call the doctor.

You do realize that antibiotics are completely ineffective against a cold? You're wrecking your digestive system and risking antibiotic resistance for nothing. If your doctor is prescribing antibiotics, either they're a terrible doctor, or they're a bad doctor and you're a worse patient.

Yes, sorry. That's just language barrier raising it's head. What I meant was strep throat, obviously there's not much of a point in taking antibiotics for a viral infection.

I don't need a doctor to inspect my tonsils, I have access to a phone with a flashlight.

And for what it's worth, I think I've taken antibiotics twice in the past 4 years. Always according to the instructions on the packaging.

At least in Switzerland, I always had to have blood tests done before the doctor would prescribe anti-biotics. The core issue you have is with the doctor prescribing things willy-nilly.

That might be a thing in some EU countries, but it's certainly not the norm across the EU. You can still buy antibiotics without a prescription in many EU countries, for example in Spain it's entirely dependent on the pharmacist.

> because the need for a surgeon in an important event in their life is somehow "wrong"

Most countries try to guarantee access to a surgeon when one is needed.

Where I live, insurance for civil litigation is actually pretty cheap. For criminal cases, my understanding is that in a lot of places you will be given a lawyer if you cannot pay for one as a defendant.

They've been slowly bleeding those systems dry, putting caps on how much they'll pay and restricting who gets access.

Most countries also give you a lawyer if you need it, no? Like, you get public defenders in the US?

Not for civil cases. And the reputation of public defenders for criminal cases is not particularly good.

In Denmark there is "fri process" that will ensure a lawyer is provided when really needed and you can't afford it – my guess is that other countries have similar systems.

The problem is that, most of the time, those lawyers are so loaded with cases that they cannot provide you full representation.

Ask any US Federal DA or US Federal Public Defender who you know to be honest. Any.

It may differ in your country, but it is unlikely.

> It may differ in your country, but it is unlikely.

It differs in my country, and it is very likely. The US follows an anglo approach to law. No country in the EU follows that – I do understand that it is the easiest to assume that other countries work like you expect, though not very productive.

> Ask any US Federal DA

There is no such thing as a “US Federal DA”.

I assume you mean a US Attorney. OTOH, US Attorneys and Federal Public Defenders (in the judicial districts that have them, its a district by district decision under the governing law) may not be the most knowledgeablr about this since most cases are tried in state court and the federal indigent defense delivery system is very different from most state systems, both in structural model and caseload.

"need to use an expert the issue or rather the price point"

Both, but for most people it is simply the price point, so this is the more important issue.

I think no one has a problem, that when setting up complicated contracts with multiple persons involved, a legal expert is necessary, but for very basic things, it should not be, but rather the laws should be more clear and simple.

> Is the need to use an expert the issue or rather the price point? Why would it be wrong to avail yourself of someone else's expertise (and people use lawyers in non-case law jurisdictions, too)?

Even needing an expert at all is an issue - the law that governs society needs to be accessible to members of society, long before they reach the point of litigation.

It might also be a function of legal tradition/system. In some places laws are quite easy to read for me, in others I find it much tougher (as a non-lawyer).

In part I understand what you mean. I think it is extremely important that courtroom procedure doesn’t get so complex that it is impossible for an individual to cope with. In practice a lot of judges go out of their way to make self–representation possible. However, I don’t think that having professional lawyers represents a tragedy. Specialization is very important, and we would all be worse off without it.

Teaching is even more important, and we use professional teachers. Building a house is also an important moment in our lives, and most people would do well to accept the advice of a professional architect.

Yeah but the rules that govern our lives in society shouldn't need a phd to understand.

There are often daily situations where both citizens and police don't know really know what the law is.

Reform is proven to be really hard. But that's the tragedy.

For instance taxes shouldn't really be more complicated then filling in a simple automated form. Also for businesses. And it should really be the burden of the government taxing that it's all clear. But it's not and it's a mess and the burden is put on the people.

This is by design. Governmental systems are "captured" by special interests and made intentionally obtuse and complex as a barrier to entry. Lawyers and judges are a guild that works to make the law complex and extract rents from the productive economy. Over 1/3 of the U.S. Congress are attorneys as well.

I honestly don't think there is such a malicious intent behind it. Perhaps in some small instances.

Generally, the fact of the matter is simply that law is highly complex and the way it evolves is almost always by creating new laws, not getting rid of old ones. That's unfortunate obviously, but just like you don't just rewrite the Linux kernel, you can't just reset the legal foundation.

Some, and maybe most, of the complexity is organic. But there are specific instances, like the tax code, that have been kept intentionally complex at the bequest of special interest groups.

And of course, laws are made mostly by lawyers. So they don't have much of an incentive to change things.

I disagree, I think for important things like the rules that govern us (i.e. the legal system) we need to be able to fully understand and interact with them. Imagine if voting was so complicated that you had to pay someone to vote for you!

Likewise, taxes should be simple and understandable and doable. Don't undersell our importance as citizens; We should demand more because we deserve well!

Imagine if computing was so complicated that you had to pay someone hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour to program for you.

> Imagine if voting was so complicated that you had to pay someone to vote for you

I think they call this “representative democracy”.

It is already far too complex for the average American. In other words, it is already too complex.

In fact, it is so complex for the average IQ that even some judges can't do it right, even the basics.

The American legal system is broken to a Lovecraftian degree.

The complexity is intentional - it's to make lawyers the maximum possible money while avoiding maximum accountability.

Just move to a country not based on case law?

This is a tricky situation, but it seems like it should be possible if structured as a "McKenzie friend": https://www.legalchoices.org.uk/types-of-lawyers/other-lawye... / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McKenzie_friend

Professional advocates aren't a result of any specific legal system - if I'm at risk of having my life's savings and achievements summarily destroyed then I want someone of waaaaay above average verbal and emotional intelligence, who is thinking clearly and not under any pressure themselves, explaining why that shouldn't happen.

There is a problem where the laws so complex and numerous it is no longer practical to understand them or follow them all. People have a bias and don't seem very good at separating "good idea in the current context" from "thing that should be legally required". Let alone navigating the complexity of the phrase "cost benefit analysis". Anyone who lives life while obeying all laws to the letter is at a serious disadvantage to the average human - although since it is impossible to know what all the laws are it is unlikely anyone could do this.

But that arcanery isn't what drives the need for lawyers. You'd have to be crazy to engage with something as powerful as a legal system on your own. And crazy people do frequently represent themselves already.

I think the stakes are not that high in this particular application. I see it as something akin to Turbotax, it helps you navigate a difficult environment but you should also exercise judgement to not screw everything up.

Yes but if this were legal, it would set a precedent, and soon these companies would be trying to use it in divorce cases and eventually criminal law.

Money only stops when forced to by regulators.

Or do what the rest of the world does and make the (tax) environment simpler for the average person.

Turbotax, Quicken, etc, is a great warning, those companies lobby to increase complexity of trivial matters (like personal tax returns). The same companies will do this with 'trivial' legal matters, and the only way forward is to buy their software.

Can you please find me a licensed lawyer for less than the price of a parking ticket?

Wait until you hear about this Electric Car company, using real people to beta test untried self driving software, on Real roads against other drivers and pedestrians...

How does failing to get rid of a traffic ticket ruin someone's life?

> How does failing to get rid of a traffic ticket ruin someone's life?

The downside of contesting a traffic ticket is not “failing to get rid of the ticket”. The ticket amount amounts to a no contest plea bargain offer, not the maximum penalty for the offense, not to mentiom the potential additional penalties for violating court rules.

ChatGPT lies. It makes up facts, sources, and nonsense arguments.

Lying to a judge is generally not a good idea. You can go from traffic ticket to contempt of court real fast if you start lying in court.

ChatGPT also assumes you're speaking the truth. If you ask it about a topic and say "that's wrong, the actual facts are..." then it'll change argumentation to support your position. You probably don't want your legal representation to become your prosecutor when they use the right type of phrasing.

> Lying to a judge is generally not a good idea. You can go from traffic ticket to contempt of court real fast if you start lying in court.

Then I suppose that's just the risk the defendant takes, isn't it? Let people use ChatGPT, if the rope they're given ends up hanging enough people, that'll be the end of that, won't it?

Also, everyone is ignoring the possibility that this same person could've had ChatGPT generate a script (general outline of arguments, "what do I say if asked this" type of stuff), memorized it, and used that to guide his self-defense. Fundamentally, no difference. No one would've known, and no one would've objected.

To me, this move is less "oh we need to protect people from getting bad legal advice from a robot" and "we're not even gonna let this thing be used a single time in court to keep our job from being automated."

> Fundamentally, no difference. No one would've known, and no one would've objected.

I'm not a legal professional but it seems obvious to me that there is a fundamental difference, namely the one you describe just before that sentence. The whole legal system is built around and under the assumption that all kinds of people want to trick it, and judges tend to be allergic to this kind of reasoning. Memorizing legal arguments and getting live legal advise from earphones in your glasses are not the same thing. Besides,even lawyers are advised not to defend themselves in court, and it would be generally very bad advise for anyone to do so.

> Memorizing legal arguments and getting live legal advise from earphones in your glasses are not the same thing.

Only in the strictest sense. Let's say the person memorizing ChatGPT's directions handles their case in the exact same manner as if it was being relayed to them live (i.e., the set of statements/questions from the judge lined up perfectly with what ChatGPT presented in its script). What then? Same outcome, different delivery method. We're kind of splitting hairs with the "live legal advise" thing. The defendant could bring a pile of law books with him and consult those without anyone blinking an eye. The objection seems to boil down to "well OK, if you want to represent yourself you better not consult an intelligent system to help you form your defense." Why not though? Seems more about job protection than anything else.

> Besides,even lawyers are advised not to defend themselves in court, and it would be generally very bad advise for anyone to do so.

And I say: let people discover the downside of using ChatGPT for defense if it's so inept. Bad outcomes are the best way to prevent widespread usage, not pre-emptive bans in the interest of keeping people from shooting themselves in the foot.

Honest tangent that I'm dying to find an answer for. Is the assumption of truthful prompts something openAI decided should be there, or is the assumption something very deeply baked into this sort of language model? Could they make an argumentative, opinionated, arrogant asshole version of chatGPT if they simply let it off its leash?

>Lying to a judge is generally not a good idea. You can go from traffic ticket to contempt of court real fast if you start lying in court.

If you knowingly lie because ChatGPT told you to that's on you. If you said something that you believed was true because ChatGPT said it to you then that's not perjury, it's just being wrong.

> You probably don't want your legal representation to become your prosecutor when they use the right type of phrasing.

When the worst case scenario is having to pay the parking fine, it might be worth taking this risk to avoid paying a lawyer.

Yeah, but notebooks are allowed in court and you could spill water on your notebook and confuse an 8 for a 0 and then read it out to court and it would be a lie.

Lying to judges is bad, so notebooks should be banned. Likewise, anything typed should be banned because we could have hit the wrong key, causing you to lie to the judge.

--->8

ChatGPT: "Your honor, that couldn't have been me, as I drive a red Mustang, not a blue minivan, and was in Nepal climbing a mountain at the time.."

Defendant: "Your honor, that couldn't have been my, as I drive a red Mustang, not a blue minivan, and was in Nepal climbing a mountain at the time."

Prosecutor: "Um, this photo clearly shows your face in this blue minivan, and there's no evidence you've been to Nepal."

Judge: "I'm holding you in contempt of court, and sentence you to 7 days in jail for perjury."

8<----

I don't think the argument is that AI is never allowed to represent someone in court; just that before it happens, a sufficient amount of vetting must be done. At a bare minimum, the legal AI needs to know not to lead the defendant to perjure themselves.

I think the way forward might be an arbitration case, where they pay an actual legal expert in the right position to make binding decisions outside of the context of the normal law system.

In voluntary arbitration, you can bend the rules a lot more than in an actual court case.

I would 100% lay the blame with the defendant in that instance though.

Today, parking ticket. Tomorrow, DUI. Next week, a murder case.

It's about putting the first wedge in.

As the AI gets better people will trust it with more and more kinds of cases and cases with more increased complexity. If people want to pay for a real licensed lawyer they are still able to do so.

> As the AI gets better people will trust it

AI is just informed search, a dwarf sitting on shoulders of human knowledge. There were medical "expert systems" in 2000s, yet we still have doctors.

In my understanding, in most cases AI will be a glorified assistant, not an authoritative decision-maker. Otherwise in collides head-on with barriers and semis. I won't trust such system even with a parking ticket, yet alone my life.

We're just at the top of a hype-cycle now. AI can do new things, but not as well as we dream or hope.

Whatever it is, it's getting better.

And lots of people would rather have a glorified assistant than nothing.

> Whatever it is, it's getting better.

Yeah, telling grammatically correct but factually wrong things, having biases, crashing into things, and whatnot.

> And lots of people would rather have a glorified assistant than nothing.

An assistant which can't be checked for accuracy, or for telling the truth.

The future is bright!

> Yeah, telling grammatically correct but factually wrong things, having biases, crashing into things, and whatnot.

If you don't think it's right more often, please go poke an older model. Especially look at the ability to stay on topic.

> An assistant which can't be checked for accuracy, or for telling the truth.

What do you mean "can't be checked"? And any kind of assistant can make mistakes.

And calling it an assistant was your idea.

Any kind of assistant can make mistakes. But a human assistant can be made to show their work and explain their reasoning to check their output. If ChatGPT says "this thing is totally legal" or "don't worry about that rash", how am I to validate it's "reasoning"? How do I know where it's drawing it's inference from?

Unpaid traffic tickets are probably many people's gateway to their first arrest warrant. Then once in the system it is hard to escape. It is a real thing.

https://brunolaw.com/resources/general-criminal-law/what-to-...

Then once this process starts you automatically get

  * Suspended driver’s license
  * Ineligible to renew your driver’s license
  * Ineligible to register your vehicle
  * Vehicle being towed and impounded
  * Increased insurance premiums

Interactions with the state are serious business

In what countries do unpaid parking tickets justify arrest warrants? That's seriously insane.

Traffic tickets and parking tickets are two different things though. Unpaid parking ticket is unlikely to get you arrested anywhere, but an unpaid speeding ticket will eventually lead to some pretty unpleasant consequences which yes, might include arrest(to bring you in front of the judge and explain yourself).

Losing the case doesn't mean you won't pay the ticket.

It absolutely can do.

For instance, as I discovered recently going through this process myself - here in UK when applying for British citizenship you have to disclose any court orders against you. Now here's a thing - if you were given a ticket for speeding, accepted it and paid it then that's it, no harm done. If it's less than 3 tickets in the last 5 years then you don't even need to list it on the application form.

However, if you went to court to contest it and lost, then you now have a court order against you - and that's an automatic 3 year ban on British citizenship applications, and even after that you always have to list it as a thing that happened and it can be used to argue you are of "bad character" and be used to deny you the citizenship.

So yes, failing to get rid of a traffic ticket(in the court of law) can absolutely ruin your life.

This only applies to a small group of people and that risk is known up front. If it's that important that they win they can not use this.

How is this known upfront? I've lived for over a decade in this country without knowing this, until I actually applied for my citizenship last year. I'm just lucky I never went to court to contest a speeding ticket(because I never got any) or I could have screwed myself over without even knowing.

Also define "small group" - nearly 200k people apply for British citizenship annually, and I bet most of them have no idea contesting a traffic ticket can cost them a chance at becoming citizens.

I used to drive a cab and people would tell me why they were in the cab quite often.

My favorite was this guy who got a ticket on a bicycle for not having a headlight, moved out of state and ten years later had his car impounded for driving without a license because they apparently suspended it for getting (or, more correctly, not paying) a ticket he got on a bicycle.

I’m guessing he never tried changing his license to the new state because Arizona licenses are good until you’re 65.

I see that as a tool, I'm not sure why it's presented as "AI being the lawyer".

You're allowed to represent yourself in court, most of the time (and for parking ticket I'm pretty sure) you have no obligation to have a lawyer. Now if you want to pay for a tool that helps you represent yourself better, why not?

I had the same thought, but I guess if you're paying someone for legal counsel then they need to be held responsible for the service they are giving, however they give it. That's qualitatively different from buying a legal textbook and advising yourself from it, since you are the one deriving counsel to yourself from generally available information.

> I see that as a tool, I'm not sure why it's presented as "AI being the lawyer".

The hero element for the product's home page describes it as "The World's First Robot Lawyer". Twice.

> I know we all hate regulations, but some of them exist for a reason, and the reason is Bad Shit happened before we had regulations.

That's not the only reason regulations exist.

And most 'Bad Shit' can already be dealt with via existing rules, instead of specific new regulations. But making new rules sounds good to the voters and can also be a powergrab.

This position means nobody gets adequate legal representation unless they are wealthy, so essentially just 'screw poor people'.

Who's more likely to get out of a wrongful charge? A wealthy millionaire spending $1,000/hour on fancy lawyers or a poor guy who's public defender had 1 hour to look into his case?

AI levels the playing field, and anyone campaigning against wants poor people to continue to get railroaded.