Robot lawyer DoNotPay takes a step back: he won’t be in the courtroom as planned

The project of Joshua Browder certainly particularly ambitious: to help real lawyers engaged in courtroom hearings with solutions based onartificial intelligence. What it is called DoNotPay known on the net as the“robot lawyer” and he was supposed to defend his first client in the courtroom on February 22, he will be charged with speeding. But Browder took a step back, claiming he had received several threats intended to get him to give up on the experiment.

Here’s how it was supposed to work: The defense attorney was supposed to wear earphones with a Bluetooth connection through which the AI ​​would have suggested the arguments to propose in the courtroom, adapting in real time to the interventions of the various parties involved in the process. The system is based on some of the leading AI text generators, which have been talked about a lot in recent days, including Chat GPT And Da Vinci.

Browder claims he received threats from bar officials: “They pointed out to me that the unauthorized exercise of the law is a crime in some states punishable by up to six months in prison”. Browder would have received several letters of this nature, in particular from one of the officials, until he was convinced to desist.

Not only that, it looks like investigations into DoNotPay are ongoing in several states, including California. Indeed, the US legal system does not provide for technology-based legal representation. At the same time, the recording of conversations taking place in the courtroom is prohibited, a fundamental requirement for the machine learning algorithm on which DoNotPay is based to be able to provide the necessary arguments for the lawyer. Beyond that, some observers wondered how effective DoNotPay’s AI tools would be. According to some evidence, in fact, the defense that resulted was very incomplete.

Browder is known to have already tried to attract attention with his provocations. Earlier this month, he tweeted that his company would be giving him a million dollar prize to a lawyer who would be willing to wear some AirPods before the Supreme Court of the United States and convey the arguments generated by the artificial intelligence of his “robot lawyer”.

We already talked about DoNotPay in 2016 when, at the time of the announcement, Browder defined it as a way to “defeat bureaucracy and sue anyone with the push of a button”. But plans now seem to have changed after this setback. DoNotPay will focus on helping people understand how to get government assistance for medical expenses, how to resolve issues arising from unwanted subscriptions and manage advertising requests from credit bureaus.

“I think the term ‘robot lawyer’ has irritated the lawyers a lot” Browder said. “But they have to accept the fact that technology is making great strides and that the rules that apply in court are now obsolete”.