from the increased-fines-will-maintain-revenue dept.
Joshua Browder has set up a service that has led users to challenge and overturn over $2.5 million in parking tickets:
An "automated lawyer" chatbot service has successfully challenged and overturned more than $2.5m in parking tickets in New York and London, according to its inventor.
The Do Not Pay service automatically generates an appeal if people fit the criteria to challenge a parking ticket – all publicly available information – and it has been successful an extraordinary 64 per cent of the time, says London-born Stanford student Joshua Browder. Asked about the success rate, he told The Register: "It's not that high. Parking tickets are a multimillion dollar industry. I am just appealing a small fraction of it."
The service is free and leads people through a series of quick questions before firing off a missive to fine-collecting bureaucrats. Not surprisingly, having an artificial intelligence (AI) bot do the legwork for you has been inviting, and over 250,000 appeals have been lodged through it. Demand is such that Browder noted with some irony that his focus on it caused him to get his own parking ticket.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 29 2016, @03:09PM
lemme guess, rich or famous?
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday June 29 2016, @03:57PM
My guess is procedural errors.
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Wednesday June 29 2016, @10:54PM
finally, a robot overlord i can support ! ! !
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tibman on Wednesday June 29 2016, @04:53PM
Here are some example questions from tfa:
- My car was stolen before I got the ticket
- I was travelling to the hospital urgently
- The offence was before I bought the car
Seems like some pretty legit reasons to fight a ticket.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Wednesday June 29 2016, @04:59PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 29 2016, @05:01PM
“As soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore.”
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday June 29 2016, @06:05PM
The AI part is that it has to be tuned to each city in which it offers services.
That requires "canning" the parking regulations, which means a review of ordinances.
For Instance....
You parked at a parking meter, and the meter ran out, and you got a ticket.
...No challenge for you, pay up you filthy deadbeat.
Unless.....
there is a sign saying metered parking not in effect during some days/hours and those were the hours you got a ticket.
you have a handicapped sticker and your city exempts handicapped
Not all cities have such signs or ordinances on their books.
On other words the questions the app asks have to be set up to find all the avenues of appeal for each city.
Its more of an "Expert System" than a true AI, but its close enough for journalism.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Wednesday June 29 2016, @06:28PM
Unfortunately "Close enough for journalism" can be pretty much anything from incorrect detail to complete fabrication these days.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 29 2016, @08:43PM
Was it ever any different at any other time in it's existence? The only difference now is that people's disagreements with an article are much easier to make apparent than it used to be. Media used to be expensive and hard to distribute. That's been completely flipped on it's head. In fact, it's starting to be treated with EQUAL or GREATER reverence. An "oh this restaurant is awesome" from someone you know is just as effective as a glowing review written by a writes-glowing-reviews-for-a-living journalist to the average joe.
(Score: 2) by Fnord666 on Thursday June 30 2016, @02:46AM
Its more of an "Expert System" than a true AI, but its close enough for journalism.
Rules based expert systems may have been considered AI twenty years ago, but these days I would put some form of machine learning as the very floor to even try calling something AI.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Thursday June 30 2016, @11:34PM
Exactly,
Which is why this is nothing more than an expert system (canned rules for each supported city).
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by tonyPick on Thursday June 30 2016, @06:56AM
Although, funnily enough, if I were to adapt this system to a Soylent news comment bot, the scripted first response to any story about an AI system would be to complain that it isn't really AI.
:)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday June 29 2016, @07:07PM
This seems like an excellent place for automation to come in. Lawyers cost way too much for smaller ticket items, so it ends up better to pay the unjust fine/ticket rather than fight it. If AI can cover some of these smaller cases that would be great! Also, it could greatly reduce the workload for human attorneys while raising the average quality of law research. Only some of the best human minds could compete with something like Watson when it comes to research large data sets.
On one hand I don't want humans to feel useless, people that can't handle work highly skilled jobs still need to feel useful to society or we risk major social problems. On the other, I can't wait for more automation as it will push humanity into social progress. Hopefully that doesn't require any more violence.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 29 2016, @08:20PM
Does not seem to go into any area where a lawyer would actually be required - it seems to be equivalent to writing your excuse into the provided form on the back of the ticket and mailing it to the relevant authority, just that now there's an app for that. And as the questionaire at the beginning weeds out all the hopeless cases, I suspect the successful ones are just first offenders with a plausible explanation that would be too bothersome to check.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 29 2016, @07:54PM
... to kill all the automated lawyers
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 29 2016, @10:07PM
This is exactly the kind of thing that should exist for speed and red light camera violations. I would love the poetic justice of having automated camera violations overturned due to an automated appeal process.
(Score: 4, Funny) by NCommander on Wednesday June 29 2016, @10:29PM
I would be hugely amused watching our legal system deadlock into an infinite loop on that very issue.
Still always moving
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Thursday June 30 2016, @01:13AM
"Our automated lodgement system has noted your correspondence. If our automated assessment system can make a determinadetermination, a robot will be around to harvest your organs in the morning. Please be at home. "
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex