OpenAI is boasting that they are about to make a lot of the legal profession permanently unemployed. : futurology

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 30 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

We'll see about that. AI is currently approaching the trough of disillusionment on the gartner hype cycle. That's certainly not something one of the largest AI companies will admit to, but probably still true.

And btw, the article doesn't load for me. Not sure if it's my browser or if I'm getting geo blocked... But the page is just white. No text.

[–] BluesF@lemmy.world 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

This headline certainly seems sensational, but I've also started seeing some really nice uses of LLMs cropping up. Some of the newer API features make them a lot more practical for development of things other than simple chat bots. It remains to be seen if the value delivered is worth the energy/data costs long term, but LLMs in general seems to be finding their feet in some ways.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Sure. I'm mainly basing my opinion on some more recent research (which I can't find right now) that had some disheartening numbers on AI use in programming. As far as I remember it said at the end of the day it saves some time, but not a lot, but on the flipside the code that has been produced by programmers with help of AI has significantly more bugs in it. Which makes me doubt it's a good fit to replace professionals (at this time).

And secondly, the stock prices of companies like Nvidia tell us, some of the hot air in the AI bubble is escaping. I'd say things are calming down a bit, not accellerating.

And regarding law, there is this funny story from a bit ago: https://www.forbes.com/sites/mollybohannon/2023/06/08/lawyer-used-chatgpt-in-court-and-cited-fake-cases-a-judge-is-considering-sanctions/
Well, maybe funny for everyone except that lawyer and his client. And science hasn't made fundamental progress on hallucinations since then. I'd say it's going to start replacing professionals once we get that solved. And that'll be when AI will become massively useful.

And of course it's already very useful within some more narrow use cases.

[–] BluesF@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Oh yeah, I'm talking about calling the LLM with code, not using the LLM to help write the code. They still suck at providing anything reliant on factual accuracy. What they are very good at is extracting meaning from text, e.g. taking a user's natural language request and deciding what to do with it from a set of options.

[–] hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 3 points 2 weeks ago

Sure. I believe that's called "intent classification" and has been around in natural language processing for quite some time.

[–] HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 24 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

A simple lawyer AI bot almost indistinguishable from the real thing:

while(True):

fees+=250.00

sleep(60)

[–] glimse@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I think lawyers actually charge per 15 minutes

[–] mosiacmango@lemm.ee 4 points 2 weeks ago

15 min or 6 min intervals are common. Both divide evenly into 60 minutes.

[–] stiephelando@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 2 weeks ago

Make it say: "It depends." after each loop and you're set.

[–] Taleya@aussie.zone 12 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Wordsalad batshit nonsensical lawyer - dude if i wanted that i'd just rep myself

[–] MattMatt@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

Let's prompt inject a Sovereign Citizen lawyer

[–] HootinNHollerin@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

Sam Altman watched Terminator and rooted for the machines.

Then Sam Altman watched The Matrix and rooted for the machines.

[–] Steve@startrek.website 5 points 2 weeks ago

X

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 21 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Lolz, no. Like they were going to revolutionize the engineering space and get rid of all of them?

[–] sunzu2@thebrainbin.org 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Exactly the same prolly... LLM is useful for any "learned" profession but so far I have not seen perform beyond college level type thing.

I guess they can be developed better but there isn't training data or not enough to train the model to be as good as a proper professional.

Once that dataset is available then I can see LLMs to start taking some real jobs, legal or anyone else whose job is jockeying paper or spreadsheets or code on a computer.

[–] just_another_person@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago

LLM is a sorting tool. It's not capable of novel ideation, only derivative. The only thing this might help with is research. Not to mention federal and state regulations require human representation to file anyway.

[–] Wanderer@lemm.ee 9 points 2 weeks ago

Good.

Sounds like we need to start talking about the four day work week and we can move from there.

[–] Lugh@futurology.today 8 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

People have often tended to think about AI and robots replacing jobs in terms of working-class jobs like driving, factories, warehouses, etc.

When it starts coming for the professional classes, as this is now starting to, I think things will be different. It's been a long-observed phenomena that many well-off sections of the population hate socialism, except when they need it - then suddenly they are all for it.

I wonder what a small army of lawyers in support of UBI could achieve?

[–] Eldritch@lemmy.world 14 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The legal profession won't touch it till it's been 100% proven that hallucinations have been completely eliminated. And when it comes to anything Sam Altmann says. People rarely regret doubting him.

[–] Hacksaw@lemmy.ca 5 points 2 weeks ago

Not all lawyers are that smart or careful. And these are just the ones who let the AI do the work without checking out validating anything! For every lawyer THIS dumb, there are hundreds who let AI do the grunt work, but actually validate the output for hallucination. The main problem is the AI makes them worse lawyers to have because if the AI missed something in the research so will the lawyer.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/new-york-lawyers-sanctioned-using-fake-chatgpt-cases-legal-brief-2023-06-22/

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/a-b-c-lawyer-submitted-fictitious-cases-generated-by-chatgpt-to-the-court-now-she-has-to-pay-for-that-mistake-1.6788128

[–] Umbrias@beehaw.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

llm are no path to socialism and being tricked into believing that a small collection of ultrarich capitalists having ownership of middle and upper class jobs in a more literal sense is somehow going to bring that about is unfortunate. It's neither here nor there, llm will never get there, but still unfortunate.

[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 5 points 2 weeks ago

Why, did they give it the launch codes?

[–] LordJer@beehaw.org 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Do you think the average consumer is going to want to have an AI represent them in court? People are still going to need lawyers to explain the law in laymen terms. For example, I work in tax law. And clients already struggle to understand what inventory capitalization ala code sections 263(a) is. And Why they need to adhere to it. I see how large language models can be useful. But I wonder if the hype is akin to crypto currency, or NFTs?

[–] Rogue@feddit.uk 2 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

There is a hell of hype but some of it is justified.

Chat GPT is really good at explaining stuff. Try asking to explain inventory capitalization, and just repeatedly ask it to explain it simpler and simpler and simpler. Then ask why repeatedly. It has a hell of lot more patience than a human and the client is going to be far less embarrassed repeatedly asking an AI than a human.

I'd also expect it to be pretty good at picking out relevant case law if to feed it a specific issue. However, where issues will arise is it will just make shit up at some point and it'll seem absolutely legit so you'll accept it without question.

[–] Umbrias@beehaw.org 1 points 2 weeks ago

infinite patience to produce bullshit has extremely limited utility

[+] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee -11 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

And I believe them 100%.

The legal profession revolves around logic. Legal arguments are formed based on the rules of logic. A fine tuned model would absolutely demolish any human opponent here.

Take chess for example. There's a predefined set of rules. Chess was one of the first games where ML models beat humans.

Sure, the magnitude of complexity of rules in law is more than that in chess. The ground principle is still the same.

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 25 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The legal system does not revolve around logic and even it it was: LLMs can't reason, so they'd be useless, anyways.

[+] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee -13 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

Law = rules. Action A is legal. Action B isn't. Doing X + Y + Z constitutes action A and so on. Legal arguments have to abide by all rules of logic. Law is one of the most logic heavy fields out there.

As for LLMs not being able to reason, it's very debatable. Whether they reason or not depends upon your definition of "reasoning". Debating definitions here is useless however, as the end result speaks for itself.

If LLMs can pass certification exams for lawyers, then it means either one of two things:

the exams are flawed
LLMs are capable of practicing law.

[–] SinAdjetivos@beehaw.org 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

I think you're conflating formal and informal logic. Programmers are excellent at defining a formal logic system which the computer follows, but the computer itself isn't particularly "logical".

What you describe as:

Action A is legal. Action B isn't. Doing X + Y + Z constitutes action A and so on.

Is a particularly nasty form of logic called abstract reasoning. Biological brains are very good at that! Computers a lot less so...

(Using a test designed to measure that)[https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.01547] humans average ~80% accuracy. The current best algorithm (last I checked...) has a 31% accuracy. (LLMs can get up to ~17% accuracy.)[https://arxiv.org/pdf/2403.11793] (With the addition of some prompt engineering and other fancy tricks). So they are technically capable... Just really bad at it...

Now law ismarketed as a very logical profession but, at least Western, modern law is more akin to combatative theater. The law as written serves as the base worldbuilding and case law serving as addition canon. The goal of law is to put on a performance with the goal of tricking the audience (typically judge, jury, opposing legal) that it is far more logical and internally consistent than it actually is.

That is essentially what LLMs are designed to do. Take some giant corpus of knowledge and return some permutation of it that maximizes the "believability" based on the input prompt. And it can do so with a shocking amount of internal logic and creativity. So it shouldn't be shocking that they're capable of passing bar exams, but that should not be conflated with them being rational, logical, fair, just, or accurate.

And neither should the law. Friendly reminder to fuck the police and the corrupt legal system they enforce.

[–] Tobberone@lemm.ee 15 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I disagree with your first statement. Law is about the application of rules, not the rules themselves. In a perfect world, it would be about determining which law has precedence in matter at hand, a task in itself outside of AI capabilities as it involves weighing moral and ethical principles against eachother, but in reality it often comes down to why my interpretation of reality is the correct one.

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 10 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Law = rules. Action A is legal. Action B isn't. Doing X + Y + Z constitutes action A and so on. Legal arguments have to abide by all rules of logic. Law is one of the most logic heavy fields out there.

You're ignoring the whole Job of a judge, where they put the actions and laws into a procedural, historical and social context (something which LLMs can't emulate) to reach a verdict.

You know what's way closer to "pure logic"? Programming? You know what's the quality of the code LLMs shit out? It's quite bad.

Debating definitions here is useless however, as the end result speaks for itself.

Yes, it does speak for itself: They can't.

Yes, the exams are flawed. This podcast episode takes a look at these supposed AI lawyers.

I also don't agree with your assessment. If an LLM passes a perfect law exam (a thing that doesn't really exist) and afterwards only invents laws and precedent cases, it's still useless.

[+] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee -6 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

You're ignoring the whole Job of a judge, where they put the actions and laws into a procedural, historical and social context (something which LLMs can't emulate) to reach a verdict.

LLMs would have no problem doing any of this. There's a discernible pattern in any judge's verdict. LLMs can easily pick this pattern up.

You know what's the quality of the code LLMs shit out?

LLMs in their current form are "spitting out" code in a very literal way. Actual programmers never do that. No one is smart enough to code by intuition. We write code, take a look at it, run it, see warnings/errors if any, fix them and repeat. No programmer writes code and gets it correct in the first try itself.

LLMs till now have had their hands tied behind their backs. They haven't been able to run the code by themselves at all. They haven't been able to do recursive reasoning. TILL NOW.

The new O1 model (I think) is able to do that. It'll just get better from here. Look at the sudden increase in the quality of code output. There's a very strong reason as to why I believe this as well.

I heavily use LLMs for my code. They seem to write shit code in the first pass. I give it the output, the issues with the code, semantic errors if any and so on. By the third or fourth time I get back to it, the code it writes is perfect. I have stopped needing to manually type out comments and so on. LLMs do that for me now (of course, I supervise what it writes n don't blindly trust it). Using LLMs has sped up my coding at least by 4 times (and I'm not even using a fine tuned model).

I also don't agree with your assessment. If an LLM passes a perfect law exam (a thing that doesn't really exist) and afterwards only invents laws and precedent cases, it's still useless.

There's no reason as to why it would do that. The underlying function behind verdicts/legal arguments has been the same, and will remain the same, because it's based on logic and human morals. Tackling morals is easy because LLMs have been trained on human data. Their morals are a reflection of ours. If we want to specify our morals explicitly, then we could make them law (and we already have for the ones that matter most), which makes stuff even easier.

[–] SinAdjetivos@beehaw.org 4 points 2 weeks ago

LLMs would have no problem doing any of this. There's a discernible pattern in any judge's verdict. LLMs can easily pick this pattern up.

That's worse! You do see how that's worse right?!?

You are factually correct, but those are called biases. That doesn't mean that LLMs would be good at that job. It means they can do the job with comparable results for all the reasons that people are terrible at it. You're arguing to build a racism machine because judges are racist.

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 4 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

Ok, so you just ignore the reports and continue to coast on feels over reals. Cool.

Another report contradicting you

Stop believing the hype. Sam Altman is lying to you.

[–] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee -1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Ok, so you just ignore the reports and continue to coast on feels over reals. Cool.

I didn't. I went through your links. Your links however, pointed at a problem with the environment our LLMs are in instead of the LLMs themselves. The code one, where the LLM invents package names is not the LLMs fault. Can you accurately come up with package names just from memory? No. Neither can the LLM. Give the LLM the functionality to look up npm's database. Give it the functionality to read the docs and then look at what it can do. I have done this myself (manually giving it this information), and it has been a beast.

As for the link in the reply, it's a blog post about anecdotal evidence. Come on now... I literally have personal anecdotal evidence to parry this.

But whatever, you're always going to go "AI bad AI bad AI bad" till it takes your job. I really don't understand why AI denialism is so prevalent on lemmy, a leftist platform, where we should be discussing about seizing the new means of production instead of denying its existence.

Regardless, I won't contribute to this thread any further, because I believe I've made my point.

[–] Prunebutt@slrpnk.net 1 points 2 weeks ago

where we should be discussing about seizing the new means of production instead of denying its existence

Look at what OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, etc. Does and tell me once again that this is supposedly good for the workers. Jeez. 🙄

[–] RustyEarthfire@lemmy.world 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

The bar exam is just one part of a larger set of qualifications
The bar exam is just a (closed-book) proxy for the actual skills and knowledge being tested. While a reasonable proxy for humans, it is a poor proxy for computers

[–] UraniumBlazer@lemm.ee 1 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Ok. What test would an LLM need to pass to convince you that it capable of being a lawyer?

[–] mindaika@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 2 weeks ago

Draw a pentagon

[–] RustyEarthfire@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

The short answer is being admitted by the bar; we already trust them to certify humans.

If for some reason I were arbiter, I would say a convincing record of doing actual legal work, vetted by existing lawyers. The legal profession already has a well-defined model of how non-lawyers can contribute to the work, so there is no need for a quantum leap up to being a lawyer.

[–] mindaika@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

The legal system absolutely does not revolve around logic. Legal arguments, especially in court, are formed based on emotional appeal

Futurology