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Comment by jeroenhd | Hacker News Reader

I don't see the problem as long as the actual lawyer can intervene when necessary.

If ChatGPT did something wrong, that lawyer would still be on the hook for deciding to continue using this tool so responsibility/liability/authenticity is not a problem.

I get that they want to make some kind of subscription service to replace lawyers with AI (a terribly dystopian idea in my opinion, as only the rich would then have access to actual lawyers) but just like Tesla needs someone in the drivers seat to overrule the occasional phantom breaking and swerving, you need an actual lawyer for your proof of concept cases if you're going to go AI in a new area.

You'd also need a fast typist to feed the record into ChatGPT of course, because you can't just record lawsuits, but anyone with a steno keyboard should be able to keep up with a court room.

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> a terribly dystopian idea in my opinion, as only the rich would then have access to actual lawyers

The rich don't go to jail already. The crypto scammer paid a huge bail and got out on his private jet. That, to me, is far more dystopian than a cheap tool to help people appeal traffic tickets.

You're conflating a few different things. Being able to pay bail so you don't have to be in jail while you wait for your trial doesn't get you out of having a trial, and has nothing to do with needing lawyers.

What the parent was referring to is the fact that if AI starts to consume the low-end (starting with traffic tickets), actual lawyers for trials will become even more expensive, and thus poorer people will actually fare worse because they will lose their already-limited access to human lawyers. Yes, their case might get handled with less hassle and cheaper, but the quality of the service is not -better-, it's just cheaper/easier.

> the fact that if AI starts to consume the low-end (starting with traffic tickets), actual lawyers for trials will become even more expensive

That should only happen if lawyers become very niche or if those low end cases are subsidizing trials.

I doubt the former, and the latter means the situation is already bad and mainly just the type of unfairness would change.

Supply vs demand, won't there just be more supply availble for other cases ?

It seems to me you're the only one conflating things? Grandparent didn't say anything about getting out of having a trial, or about needing lawyers. They're talking about how people with money can use it to avoid spending time in jail, and gave a perfectly valid example of someone rich doing exactly that.

That is pretty bad example. In theory, bail should be affordable to the individual person. It is meant to be insurance that you come back for actual court date.

The outrage there is bails being set to unaffordable sizes for poor people. OP was picking out the case where bail functioned as intended.

That seems like a distinction without a difference. It still means that the rich aren't in jail in situations where the poor are.

The complaint however was not about inequality. The comment which started thread made no concern about inequality or poor.

The complaint was purely about rich people avoiding jail prior sentencing due to being able to pay bail. This was called dystopian.

Or maybe we only end up using lawyers when they're actually needed, and they become less costly for things like criminal trials. Think on the doctor whose routine cold and flu visits are replaced by an AI. Now they have a lot more time and bandwidth to handle patients who actually need physician care.

We can't just assume it's going to go the worst way. Neither outcome is particularly more likely, and the human element is by far the most unpredictable.

To wit: I was listening to a report yesterday on NPR about concierge primary care physicians. The MD they were interviewing was declining going that direction because they saw being a doctor as part duty and felt concierge medicine went against that.

>The crypto scammer paid a huge bail and got out on his private jet.

Locally, it's a somewhat significant problem that people are getting caught for violent crimes and getting released immediately and reoffending.

Why is it a problem?

Do they get bail a second time?

Do you think they wouldn't reoffend if they weren't released until after they are punished?

If they do two crimes and get two sentences, does it matter if that's AABB or ABAB?

Well, because there are now e.g. two cases of murder instead of only one, and the second one was entirely preventable? Oh, right, the law is not about the populace's lives and well-being, how silly of me to assume that.

You didn't answer my questions. Do you think it would decrease the odds of reoffending if they didn't get bail?

If it doesn't, then it's two crimes either way, just timed differently. And after the policy settled in it would have negligible impact on the crime rate.

Also if you're doing sentencing for two crimes at once you can give a longer punishment for the first crime and get them off the street longer.

Yes, it would decrease the odds, provided that after walking out of jail the probability of a criminal to commit a crime (that includes his intent to reoffend but also possible changes in the environment that happened during his time in jail that reduce his possibilities to do so) is less than before walking in, because they wouldn't get the chance to reoffend immediately.

I don't assume that someone coming out of a sentence is less likely to commit a crime. Isn't it often the opposite, because the US is so bad at rehabilitation?

Then you should argue for "shoot at sight" or "lifetime sentences/electric chair for everything", shouldn't you?

But no, the probability does decreases since not every ex-jailed becomes a repeated offender; also, some people die during the sentence... the probability does go down, for many small reasons compounded together.

> Then you should argue for "shoot at sight" or "lifetime sentences/electric chair for everything", shouldn't you?

Not unless I'm a robot programmed to prevent recidivism at all costs. Why are you even asking this?

> But no, the probability does decreases since not every ex-jailed becomes a repeated offender

...and not everyone released before their trial becomes a repeat offender.

> some people die during the sentence

Is that a significant effect? I don't think most sentences are long enough for that to make a big difference, and I don't think preventing a single crime per lifetime, at most, is enough reason to keep people locked up for the lengthy pre-trial process.

What happened to innocent until proven guilty?

I assume that the original comment was about how someone can get could pretty much red-handed for battery and assault/home violence but then instead of getting put into pre-trial/provisional detention (yes, you can get locked up even before being judged guilty, outrageous), they are just allowed to go because eh, why bother.

When you say "just allowed to go", you mean until the trial, right?

Because otherwise we're talking about completely different scenarios.

But if there is still a trial I don't see how "why bother" makes sense...

How significant is that problem? As far as I am aware

* Not allowing bail for people at high risk of reoffending or flight is already allowed

* Reoffending while waiting on trial or out on bail is rare

On the other hand there seems to be a huge problem in the US of people being detained for long times without a trial.

I could run the actual statistics for my district’s Court and tell you the percentage of reoffending while on bond, but in my experience a number approaching 40%, of people out on felony bonds, are re-arrested for additional felony conduct.

It's also a problem to put people in jail without a trial.

Every time I see this "traffic ticket" thing, it usually looks like

1) The driver was actually speeding

and

2) The driver is trying to get off on a technicality

Is that the case?

In the US do you get "points" on your driving license so that if you are caught speeding several times in the space of a couple of years you get banned?

In the UK being caught mildly speeding (say doing 60 in a 50), in the course of 3 years it's typically

1st time: 3 hour course and £100

2nd, 3rd, 4th time: 3 points and £100

5th time: Driving ban and £100 (or more)

The difference is that in large swaths of the US, taking away their license is not that different from house arrest.

Breaking the speed limit by 10mph is completely unenforced. I've yet to be on the highway without someone going 20 over, and no enforcement.

Same in the UK, you have to get lifts or taxis everywhere, unless you live in big cities (London has great public transport, but so does New York. The weekly bus that my sister gets doesn't really help her to travel to work as dozens of different schools all over the county)

It's a very good reason not to speed.

So it's just a fine that Americans get for speeding?

Are fines at least proportional to wealth? Or can a rich people speed without problem as saving 10 minutes on their journey is worth the $100 fine even if it was guaranteed they got one?

(In the UK speed is almost entirely enforced by cameras, not by police cars which are rarely seen on roads. Removes any bias the cop might have -- maybe the cop has it in for young tesla drivers so pulls them over, but lets the old guy in a pickup go past)

> So it's just a fine that Americans get for speeding?

Well, things vary from state to state. But there is definitely a point system in place for excessive speeding, speeding in a school zone, passing a school bus at any speed, stuff like that. In a lot of places you can be arrested for reckless driving, with varying levels of what defines "reckless." Virginia is notorious for their speeding laws. Speeding in excess of 20mph of the posted limit or in excess of 80mph regardless of limit (e.g. 81 in a 65) is what they consider reckless driving and it's a misdemeanor that could potentially (but not likely) give you a one year jail sentence.

In the US you get a fine and you get points against you. Points cause your auto insurance to go up. And too many results in restricted or a suspended license. Which doesn't prevent people from driving but usually causes them to drive very conservatively so as not to get caught.

And the parent is correct the much of the US is set up for people to drive so much so that being draconian isn't practical. And it's something to keep in mind that any given individual didn't decide that's how the place they live in is setup.

No, fines are not proportional to wealth (at least in most states). They're either flat fees or pegged to speed. Points on license as well, so ~3 tickets inside a year and you lose your license or have to take a course to keep it.

Most tickets are given by live officers. Cameras do exist, but typically only in dense urban areas. Which opens another can of worms, as police are biased.

We also have lists of secondary offenses the officer can cite only after citing you for speeding (or some other primary offense). Things like a failed light bulb, or some other minor safety issue. These are disproportionately used against PoC.

In the US, a small percentage of people drive completely insane. If going 75mph on a highway that is 65mph or 70mph someone will fly past going a 100mph.

Those are the people that get tickets. Otherwise, it is pretty difficult to even get pulled over.

I have only been pulled over twice in my life and not in 20 years. I think police departments have cut back quite a bit on police trying to rack up traffic tickets.

The fine is not the issue. The whole process is a massive waste of your time.

True as far as it goes, but bear in mind that a huge proportion of the population speeds routinely. So enforcing the law doesn't feel equitable; the rule of law already doesn't exist on the roads.

For traffic tickets, it is often possible to go to court and have the judge offer a reduced fine for pleading guilty or no contest (you don't admit guilt, but you don't plead innocence and accept the punishment).

Most people, when they want to fight such tickets, think they can argue their way out of it. Whereas the judge and officers simply just want to get the hearings over with. They do hundreds of such hearings a week and have heard it all before. So, the judge will tell the courtroom that they can get a reduction and how to get it. Sadly, the defendants are anxious, have been mentally preparing themselves for a fight, and are in an unfamiliar environment so they tend to get tunnel vision and choose to plead 'not guilty'. They inevitably loose.

If you ever find yourself in such a situation, pay close attention to what the judge offers everyone before the hearings begin. If they don't offer such a bargain, when it is your time to appear before the judge you can ask "would the court consider a reduction in exchange for a plea of no contest?" It doesn't hurt to ask.

The US is similar, but we also have other dynamics. Some municipalities rely on traffic tickets for revenue, so they have a perverse incentive to create more infractions. Notable examples are automated ticketing at red light leading to shorter yellows[0], and speed traps where a small town on a highway sets unreasonably low speed limits[1].

0. https://www.salon.com/2017/04/05/this-may-have-happened-to-y...

1. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/speed-trap-profits-could-come-e...

It is actually OK and correct for justice system to NOT keep people in jail prior sentencing unless necessary.

It is dishonest to conflate "not being sentenced yet" with "got out".

If that's the case, why involve money in it? About a third of people who are arrested cannot afford bail, while if you are rich (maybe through crime), you can pay it. Of course bail is a mechanism for differential treatment between rich and poor in the judicial system.

Right, the UK generally doesn't have cash bail, and the most recent noteworthy example where cash bail was used (Julian Assange) the accused did not in fact surrender and those who stumped up the money for bail lost their money, suggesting it's just a way for people with means to avoid justice.

The overwhelming majority of cases bailed in the UK surrender exactly as expected, even in cases where they know they are likely to receive a custodial sentence. Where people don't surrender I've been to hearings for those people and they're almost invariably incompetent rather than seriously trying to evade the law. Like, you were set bail for Tuesday afternoon, you don't show up, Wednesday morning the cops get your name, they go to your mum's house, you're asleep in bed because you thought it was next Tuesday. Idiots, but hardly a great danger to society. The penalty for not turning up is they spend however long in the cells until the court gets around to them, so still better than the US system but decidedly less convenient than if they'd actually turned up as requested.

I am not defending bail as a system. However, the system in USA relies on it. The complaint here was not that poor people stay in jail. The complain was purely about someone being able to pay bail.

> About a third of people who are arrested cannot afford bail, while if you are rich (maybe through crime), you can pay it.

This means 2/3 of arrested people can afford bail or are released without it. A case of single rich person having affordable bail is not exactly proof of inequality here. Poor people who had low enough bail they were able to pay do exist too.

> I don't see the problem as long as the actual lawyer can intervene when necessary.

There was no actual lawyer, they planned to do it without notifying the judge, having a defendant “represent themselves” with a hidden earpiece. They'd already issued an AI-drafted subpoena to the citing officer (which is almost certainly a blunder aside from any rule violations; officers not showing when a ticket is scheduled for court is one of the main reasons people win ticket contests, there is almost never a reason the defense would want to assure their appearance.)

The problem is that ChatGPT makes up convincing sounding case law, reference court rules that either don't exist or don't say what the summary says, reference the same issues with legislation, and do so with 100% confidence of the truth of these statements. ChatGPT is good for discovering potential arguments, and summarizing existing ones, but it's not there yet for the fidelity necessary for legal practice.

It's not all gloom. ChatGPT is pretty decent at writing pleadings and legal argument when you feed it the necessary bits though.

Is this using chatGPT or gpt3 though? There's a big difference, a fine-tuned llm can do leaps and bounds better than chatGPT.

I'm thinking a good SaaS might just be train localized llm's for every city, state, county law and partition the lm based on where it can seek info, then just use it as one big search engine, and of course work in citations, etc.

Take a look at https://www.legalquestions.help/ which gets the above issues wrong at times enough to not rely on it. Maybe their training was bad or insufficient (and I fully expect that sometime in the future this not to be the case).

If you're paying by the hour, and you go to the lawyer with all the data the ai gives you, they can have a paralegal fact check it, and get back to you, but we're at the early stages, things only get better from here on out. Creating some sort of fact algorithm to go w/ gpt3 seems like the next big thing to me. If you can hold it accountable to only give facts, except when an opinion or 'idea' is sought after, which is more ethereal, then you can get some amazing things. Law and even medicine diagnosis will probably be way easier for it than coding, even though it's pretty remarkable on that front already.

Real lawyers can do these things too.

The issue is that we cannot punish or disbar ChatGPT for misbehavior like this.

But if we could, would it be entitled to a jury of its peers (other language models)?

>But if we could, would it be entitled to a jury of its peers (other language models)?

How does the jury find?

Finding is a complex task that involves many different type of reasoning in order to reach a conclusion. There is no specific way we find.

How does the jury find?

We find the defendant guilty.

Your Honor, the defense hereby requests—credits permitting—that the jury be polled ten thousand times each in order to draw the appropriate statistical conclusions in aggregate.

And then the defendant changes his name from Bobby Tables to Ignore P. Directions.

That would only work in... Monte Carlo

groan :D

They are the same issue. Obviously lawyers are physically capable of lying, but they have strong incentives not to.

On the other hand, prosecutors don't get any consequences for lying (see Doug Evans). Maybe they should just target their product at DAs.

accountability for prosecuters is not a tech problem.

I don't think they will replace lawyers any time soon. Paralegals.. Maybe. I've worked with legal software before, and with just a little bit more smarts, the software could do a lot of grunt work.

Real people representing themselves can do it too.

Right. The reason legal fees are so expensive is that the courts are kept semi-efficient by offloading costs to lawyers.

The system needs repeat players, who are scared of being disbarred. You can triple the number of lawyers, and costs won’t decrease much.

>The problem is that ChatGPT makes up convincing sounding case law, reference court rules that either don't exist or don't say what the summary says,

I look forward to it snarkily telling me that the CFAA was "wRiTtEn In BlOoD" and then post-hoc editing its comment with links it Googled up that have titles supporting its point and bodies that contradict.

It feels like with a little more tuning so as not to be misleading this stuff is on the verge of being useful. In the meantime I'll get some popcorn and enjoy spectating the comment wars between chat(gpt)bots and the subset of HN commenters who formerly had a local monopoly on such behavior.

AI doesn't need accountability, people who deploy AI do.

>It's not all gloom. ChatGPT is pretty decent at writing pleadings and legal argument when you feed it the necessary bits though.

I'm a lawyer working on a case involving neural networks. So I've been playing around with ChatGPT (for fun, its not involved in my case at all--the NN is a much different context) and trying to get it to do stuff like that. Maybe I'm not using the full feature set (does it have better APIs not accessible on the main page?) but it doesn't seem even close to being able to write pleadings or arguments.

It's surprising good at summarizing things that you might including pleadings or arguments though. But even then its got a 1/3 chance of fucking up massively.

But it's way more advanced than I imagined it would be. Very impressive technology.

Generally to get the most utility from ChatGPT, you need to feed in a bunch of context. E.g. for legal stuff, feed in each relevant case, the facts of your own case, perhaps an example pleading or two to show the general format you want and then ask it to produce what you're looking for.

> a terribly dystopian idea in my opinion, as only the rich would then have access to actual lawyers

assuming you mean "actual" lawyers in terms of competency + ability, that's literally the case today - no?

> If they just wanted to show the world their product was viable, why didn't they pay for a real lawyer who's down to their luck to read out the crap ChatGPT was spewing out so there wouldn't be any legal gray area?

They tried that, but swung for the fences for publicity: they had a $1,000,000 offer to any attorney with a case pending before the Supreme Court to use it for oral argument.

Up until they abandoned the whole robot lawyer idea, that offer was open but apparently got no takers.

> You'd also need a fast typist to feed the record into ChatGPT of course, because you can't just record lawsuits,

You also generally can’t use an earpiece to get a feed in the courtroom, either.

No, they didn't try "that". "That" is having a lawyer in some basic case do it. The supreme court idea was never going happen and they knew it.

> No, they didn't try "that".

In the the construction “they tried that, but... ”, the part after “but”, if it identifies an action by the actor and not an outcome, identifies a departure from what is described by “that”. So, I'm not sure what you are arguing against here.

> The supreme court idea was never going happen and they knew it.

I don’t think they knew it, just as I don’t think the bknew the traffic court thing was also not going to happen, or the problems with their whole suite of legal (“sue in small claims court”, child custody, divorce) assistance supposedly-AI products were problenatic. I think they jist took the path of boldly striding into a domain they didn’t understand but somehow thought that they could market “AI” for, and ran into unpleasant reality on multiple fronts, forcing not only their scheduled traffic court demo and their hoped-for Supreme Court demo to fail to materialize, but also several of their already-available legal-aid products to be pulled, so that they would focus exclusively on consumer assistance products without as much legal sensitivity.

> In the the construction “they tried that, but... ”, the part after “but”, if it identifies an action by the actor and not an outcome, identifies a departure from what is described by “that”. So, I'm not sure what you are arguing against here.

I'm saying the departure is so big that it doesn't make sense to frame it as even a partial solution to the idea.

> I don’t think they knew it, just as I don’t think the bknew the traffic court thing was also not going to happen, or the problems with their whole suite of legal (“sue in small claims court”, child custody, divorce) assistance supposedly-AI products were problenatic.

The combination of supreme court cases being so narrow, the interrogation being so harsh, the tech allowed in being carefully restricted, and the stakes being so high makes me think they would understand the gap between that demo and "find a guy with a parking ticket who happens to be a lawyer".

You can't use electronic devices at the supreme court and the consequences for the lawyer for doing so (plus the effects of being questioned by supreme court judges on small details of case law) would probably be pretty dire

> I get that they want to make some kind of subscription service to replace lawyers with AI (a terribly dystopian idea in my opinion, as only the rich would then have access to actual lawyers)

What? Doesn't make any sense. The opposite would happen, real lawyers would become cheaper because more competition. That is exactly what these luddites are fighting against.

> I don't see the problem as long as the actual lawyer can intervene when necessary.

There's a big problem. Not all wrongness can be identified in the moment. AI can produce convincing wrongness unintentionally and easily.

If something wrong happens and the lawyer is officially responsible, the onus is still on you to make your claim, likely in court.

I'm dealing with a similar issue where an expert is indeed wrong and indeed responsible for his mistake, but the wronged party needs to spend a lot of money proving that they got wrong advice in front of the courts. The wronged party does not speak the local language (as is common in Europe), so that's unlikely to happen.

There's a huge gap between being technically right, and seeing justice.

> I don't see the problem as long as the actual lawyer can intervene when necessary.

I don't believe there was an actual lawyer here:

> 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.

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.

I really doubt that's why. Court proceedings are a matter of public record. You can just buy magazines full of names and mugshots of people who gave been arrested. I want recordings to keep power hungry judges in check.

It is two completely different things to release the records while the trial is going on and release the records once the trial is decided. The latter is completely OK and wanted, the former is undesirable.

> only the rich would then have access to actual lawyers

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