Even lawyers aren’t safe from robot replacement. The first of its kind is about to get a chance to argue in traffic court. The artificial intelligence entity won’t be present in the courtroom but will phone it in for the defendant to verbalize. If they lose, the company, DoNotPay, will cover the fines and costs.
World’s first robot lawyer
DoNotPay announced that the “world’s first robot lawyer” will take a case in court next month, as an “artificial intelligence legal assistant” helping a defendant fight a traffic ticket.
The program, which runs on a smartphone, can “listen to court arguments in real-time before telling the defendant what to say via headphones.”
Details aren’t being revealed. As New York Post reports, “the unprecedented hearing is slated to take place sometime next month, but the makers of the robot lawyer are not disclosing the location of the court or the name of the defendant.”
Artificial intelligence is set to advise a defendant in court for the first time ever next month. The AI by @donotpay will run on a phone and listen to all speech in the courtroom before instructing the defendant on what to say via an earpiece.https://t.co/UZfuxmg9jx
— Scott Santens (@scottsantens) January 8, 2023
We do know, courtesy of New Scientist, that “the ticket at the center of the trailblazing case was issued for speeding, and the defendant will only say in court what the AI instructs them to say.”
The defendant can’t wait to give it a try. He can’t lose. According to the company’s founder and CEO, Joshua Browder, if his robot lawyer can’t get his ticket fixed for him, “DoNoPay has agreed to cover any fines.”
Robolawyer has been in beta testing for a long time. Browder started out as a Stanford University-educated computer scientist. He “launched DoNotPay in 2015 as a chatbot that provides legal advice to consumers dealing with late fees or fines.”
Pivoted to AI
After the chatbot gave him lots of data to play with, the “company pivoted to AI in 2020.” Teaching the robot to make sense out of it all, reliably, wasn’t easy. Browder admits “it took a long time to train DoNotPay’s AI assistant on case law covering a wide array of topics.” It had a sneaky lawyer habit of lying. The big nightmare, he notes was programming it “to ensure the app sticks to the truth.”
Traffic court is only one place the entity will be on the job. The “AI begins by asking the client what the legal problem is, then finds a loophole and turns that loophole into a legal letter, which it can send to the right institution, or upload to a website.”
He could get sued over things his robot says. “We’re trying to minimize our legal liability and it’s not good if it actually twists facts and is too manipulative.” Only real lawyers can do that and get away with it. They tend to get jealous too.
'Robot lawyer' powered by AI will help fight speeding ticket as it takes first case in court https://t.co/o4ccIBrThv pic.twitter.com/tTBXtPWMLZ
— New York Post (@nypost) January 5, 2023
Hell hath no fury like a prosecutor with a grudge. “The AI app’s software was adjusted so it does not automatically react to everything it hears in court. Instead, it will listen in on the arguments and analyze them before instructing the defendant how to respond.”
The legal profession is going to be watching Browder closely. His “ultimate goal is to have his app replace some lawyers altogether in order to save defendants money.” Lawyers like money and will fight to keep it. “It’s all about language, and that’s what lawyers charge hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour to do.”
The guys on the TV ads are going to be furious. A “lot of lawyers are just charging way too much money to copy and paste documents and I think they will definitely be replaced, and they should be replaced.” DoNoPay promises users that their robot will “fight corporations, beat bureaucracy and sue anyone at the press of a button.“
