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Robolawyer Files Appeals

posted by Fnord666 on Thursday July 13 2017, @12:43PM   Printer-friendly
from the queue-the-lawyer-jokes-in-3-2-1 dept.

looorg writes:

A chatbot-"ai"-lawyer keeps filing appeals against parking tickets and similar minor offenses. The author claims it has defeated an estimated 375,000 parking tickets by now -- defeated or appealed? Is every appeal a sure win with this bot-created-paperwork? Do people even contact lawyers to fight parking tickets? Isn't the lawyer fee almost always going to be higher than the fine? Sure, it might be about the good fight and standing up for what is right, etc. but still.

After reading the story I'm still unsure what the actual AI part of the chatbot is, it seems to just be one big decision-tree. But I guess that doesn't get as much press as claiming you have invented a lawyer-AI.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/7/12/15960080/chatbot-ai-legal-donotpay-us-uk

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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by bradley13 on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:14PM (2 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:14PM (#538691) Homepage Journal

    AI != learning capability.

    A decision tree, or a rules-based system - these are classic "expert systems", which have always been considered a branch of AI. It's all about how to take human knowledge in an applied field, and represent it in a program. You don't actually *want* these systems to be learning and changing on their own, because they cannot reliably pick up training data on the fly. Instead, they are hand-crafted by experts, and simply distribute that knowledge to non-experts.

    Just as an example, there are lots of medical systems that work basically like this. One that I am familiar with is meant to guide (not replace) doctors working in the emergency room. A doctor may be inexperienced, or under time pressure, or overwhelmed with a sudden influx of patients. It's helpful for them to have a system that prevents them from skipping any important steps or forgetting relevant tests. And again, there is no provision for dynamic learning, nor would you want such a system changing itself while you're using it.

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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by TheRaven on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:22PM (1 child)

    by TheRaven (270) on Thursday July 13 2017, @02:22PM (#538695) Journal
    There is something wrong with calling it AI: the term has been so watered down by the media that it can mean 'fully conscious artificial entity', 'algorithm', 'program', or 'computer'. Anyone who describes something as an AI is more likely to be demonstrating their ignorance than informing their audience.
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