Should AI replace free legal aid lawyers to save money?

Hawkeye123

It seems to me that if you feed Irish law into an AI robot, it would save the state a fortune. The Times today said the country's highest paid criminal legal aid barrister got nearly 773.000 euro last year. A robot would do the same job for the cost of running a vacuum cleaner for half an hour.

There is no argument that AI would do a better job for a fraction of the fee than paid lawyers but should we continue with the present system out of charity to the legal profession?

godtabh

You mean same AI that makes up case law?

Hawkeye123

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121717246#Comment_121717246

Didn't hear of that. I did not proffer the view that AI should legislate, just that it should represent people who need free legal aid. Legislation is a different kettle of fish. So does AI do a good job making up case law?

wench

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121719032#Comment_121719032

Well the Judge wasn't too impressed...

https://www.theverge.com/2023/5/27/23739913/chatgpt-ai-lawsuit-avianca-airlines-chatbot-research

Augme

We could get it to replace AI doctors as well. All they do is regurgitate what they learned from a book as well.

magicbastarder

We could get AI to come up with provocative ideas for thread titles on boards too.

timmyntc

AI judges would surely make more sense than 'lawyers'

Mrs OBumble

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121719127#Comment_121719127

Quite possibly we already have.

banie01

Iterative AI is already in some instances involved in legal work and research.

Even prior to the rise of GPT, IBMs Watson was being used in Japan for insurance work, claims checking and so on.

https://www.ibm.com/cloud/resources/intelligent-automation-for-insurance/

From a practitioners standpoint, on negotiation in particular. AI is still easily gamed. Much like a trading bot can be exploited by knowing it's parameters, so with AI negotiation. Thomson Reuters and the other big law databases are already making AI tools available.

https://oneflow.com/blog/ai-in-contract-negotiation/#:~:text=AI%20technologies%2C%20such%20as%20natural,to%20focus%20on%20critical%20issues.

https://legal.thomsonreuters.com/blog/ai-for-legal-documents-unlocking-a-competitive-edge/

IMHO, this is the 5th Industrial Revolution. Parts of previous industries that relied upon human experience, adaptability, creativity and years of training are the most at risk. The ROI on capital invested in an AI with human oversight? Will vastly outstrip the return on an office of 2/3 solicitors and some legal secretaries.

Hawkeye123

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121719100#Comment_121719100

Ah, but judges are people and people have biases. AI robots are unbiased so now that you mention it, perhaps judges are even more replaceable than lawyers with this new technology.

Hawkeye123

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121719115#Comment_121719115

Well we don`t have any AI doctors yet but you are right of course, replacing our 600,000 euro salaried consultants with a batch of AI bots is only common sense.

Hawkeye123

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121719265#Comment_121719265

I concede you are correct. In fact judges are perfect for replacement.

Jim2007

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2058334527/should-ai-replace-free-legal-aid-lawyers-to-save-money

AI is still very much in its infancy and common law is an advanced topic so it’s a bit like asking a border collie to run a sheep farm.

Hawkeye123

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121719537#Comment_121719537

You do make some excellent points in favour of lawyers over AI. That said, AI could well articulate strong counter arguements and leave you feeling rather foolish.

smacl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121722109#Comment_121722109

AI is also biased as it inherits all the bias in its training data, the following article is one of very many on the subject, https://www.ibm.com/blog/shedding-light-on-ai-bias-with-real-world-examples/ AIs also suffer from hallucination, as shown in previous posts, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallucination_(artificial_intelligence) for a discussion on this.

While I'm a big fan of AI and where it is going, it is still a long way from supplanting human expertise, experience and wisdom.

Hawkeye123

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121743267#Comment_121743267

Try disputing statistics in court and see how that goes down with a human judge.

You mention human wisdom. But not all humans are wise. Some are foolish and some are arrogant

Pigs and clowns in wigs and gowns may be good at pomp and ceremony but they don't always impress in the courts of justice.

smacl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121743306#Comment_121743306

False dichotomy. The fact that humans have their flaws in no way detracts from the flaws in AI. Your opening argument that "there is no argument that AI would do a better job" is specious.

Hawkeye123

What is spacious is your use of the word dichotomy. Analogy is the word and far from being a false one it is the epitome of truth. Don't forget, AI can't lie.

smacl

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121744273#Comment_121744273

Wrong again on all counts. LLMs such as ChatGPT simply regurgitate and piece together answers based on the information they've been trained with, they don't tell the truth or tell lies as they're not actually intelligent. If the training information has lies, misinformation and bias, the output has lies, misinformation and bias. The largest part of training data for OpenAI LLMs such as ChatGPT is publicly available data from the internet which is strewn with lies, misinformation and bias. Unfortunately, ChatGPT also tends to mix incompatible information from different sources leading to further misinformation, the recent case with Dave Fanning is a great example of this; https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/01/24/dave-fannings-defamation-case-is-latest-in-a-wave-of-ai-related-litigation/

AlanG

Legal AI such as Harvey are extremely expensive. It woud likely cost more in many cases than free legal aid. Ultimately the lawers providing free legal aid will use AI for some functions but unless you replace the judges with AI you wont have massive savings.

Judgses are required to pass both a legal judgement and a moral judgement in most cases. AI is a long way from being accepted to sit in moral judgement.

Hawkeye123

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121744449#Comment_121744449

Taking randum information from different sources does not increase misinformation. The models show the opposite. But speaking of reguritating answers, that is no different to what lawyers did while sitting the bar. It`s just AI is so much better at it.

nachouser

It's a troll.