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One could also argue the real problem is the tech industry constantly ignoring regulations that were put in place for good reasons. Car dealerships are for sure

One could also argue the real problem is the tech industry constantly ignoring regulations that were put in place for good reasons. Car dealerships are for sure a clear example of regulatory capture, but “legal advice from lawyers”, “medicine from doctors”, “insurance from companies that can prove they can pay out”, and “equities backed by actual assets” all exist for good reasons.

mensetmanusman 4y ago
Licenses for cutting hair or applying makeup? https://www.mprnews.org/amp/story/2019/11/13/freelance-wedding-makeup-artists-push-back-against-new-state-regulations https://www.mprnews.org/amp/story/2019/11/13/freelance-weddi...
- lostlogin 4y ago
  Where do you draw the line? I’d say that an industry with significant health, safety or financial risk should require regulation and licensing. Your example seems a bit crazy.
  - ajmurmann 4y ago
    The funny thing is that doctors would be the canonical examples for most people. Yet, there is no license that stops a pediatrician from performing brain surgery. What stops the pediatrician from performing brain surgery is that no hospital would hire them as a brain surgeon, no insurance would insure their brain surgery and if something goes wrong they'd likely face a lawsuit they couldn't win. Why is the system able to judge the difference between a pediatrician and a brain surgeon but we need licensing to distinguish between doctor and non-doctor?
    - giantg2 4y ago
      The answer is in your question. It's the credentialing. The pediatrician lacks the credentials of a neurosurgeon. Just as non-doctors lack the credentials to work as a doctor. The hosptial, insurance, and court would all be looking at the credentials.
      - 988747 4y ago
        Credentials are not the same as license. For example, software engineers do not need to pass any certification exams to practice software engineering, but companies still look at their education, years of experience, etc... Yes, it would make a recruitment process for doctors longer, as you would have to interview them, ask them questions to verify their medical knowledge, etc., but it is not impossible.
        giantg2 4y ago
        And yet, in your software example those companies overwhelming rely on degrees to credentialize candidates regardless of actual skill. Licensing is merely a subset of the larger credentialing world. Even in your doctor example, the license is not the issue - board certification of a specialty would be the issue.
        freejazz 4y ago
        You misunderstand licensing. Licensing ensures a minimum of conduct and creates a standard for liability for falling below that level of conduct.
        giantg2 4y ago
        I know that perfectly well. That doesn't change what I've said as it applies to the examples above.
        freejazz 4y ago
        It does. Licensing has nothing to do with your credentials past having them. The state bar doesn't care which lawschool you went to, your LSAT score, your GPA, etc.
        giantg2 4y ago
        "It does" How? "Licensing has nothing to do with your credentials past having them." The way that most credentialing is used for employment.
    - freejazz 4y ago
      It's called malpractice. What you described is prima facie malpractice and a key element of malpractice is that it is a licensed profession with a standard of conduct.
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      > there is no license that stops a pediatrician from performing brain surgery. This isn’t the case everywhere. Where I am (New Zealand) each doctor has a scope of practice. You work within your scope. There may be conditions placed on a scope of practice too (eg supervision is required). You can look up every doctor’s scope of practice and get a short summary of their training on the medical council website. Other health professions follow a similar model. https://www.mcnz.org.nz/registration/register-of-doctors/ https://www.mcnz.org.nz/registration/register-of-doctors/
    - dinkumthinkum 4y ago
      This is kind of an absurd example. The system is setup in such a way that such a person would be in enormous amounts of trouble even face criminal liability. They may not face a law called “practicing medicine without a license” but they would face negligent or other similarly severe charges. As well, the fact that this never, ever happens seems to indicate the current regulatory structure is enough for this.
      - lostlogin 4y ago
        The US really doesn’t have the concept of ‘scope of practice’? That’s what’s being argued here and other systems have it. It seems an obvious thing.
  - purpleflame1257 4y ago
    Cutting hair is one thing. But hairdressers also handle things like, for example, chemical relaxation of hair, which can be seriously dangerous in the wrong hands. I don't know where the answer lies for regulation. But it seems to be there for at least some reason.
- pseingatl 4y ago
  Milton Friedman covered this in Capitalism and Freedom.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  Crazier case is places that braid hair and pose. In some states they are now required to get a license as a cosmetician (which takes longer on average than becoming a police officer in the US). The classes required for the license teach no skill relevant to the hair braiding. However, the hair braiding is in competition with the hair dressers who also control the licensing board. Longer discussion of the topic on Econtalk: https://www.econtalk.org/dick-carpenter-on-bottleneckers/#audio-highlights https://www.econtalk.org/dick-carpenter-on-bottleneckers/#au...
ovi256 4y ago
> all exist for good reasons Sure, but what's banned is surely not all medical or legal advice. I can browse case law or US code thinking about my case - somehow this does not need a legal license. At the other end of the continuum, talking to a lawyer about my case obviously needs him to be licensed. So now we're debating on which side of the cutoff using DoNotPay's robot must fall. The lawyers have made their mind ages ago that legal advice can only be dispensed by licensed humans.
- inetknght 4y ago
  > I can browse case law or US code thinking about my case - somehow this does not need a legal license. Of course. With rare exceptions, court proceedings are public. But being able to read court proceeds or judgements or anything at all doesn't mean that you know and understand the law. You know, the actual words that are written and codified that must be interpreted and adhered to with jurisprudence. Not that lawyers actually do either. But at least they've been certified (by "the bar" association) to have some competence in the matter.
  - asvitkine 4y ago
    But on the other hand, one can't argue ignorance of the law so then everyone is supposed to already know all laws and understand them!
    - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
      I am strong believe that basics of law should be taught in school, especially criminal. If governmet will prosecute me for free (to the accuser), then it should, for free, teach me the law.
- elil17 4y ago
  I don't think and anyone is saying that using the bot is illegal. The issue is that DoNotPay is calling the bot a lawyer and therefor implying that it gives legal advice. Their website literally says "World's First Robot Lawyer." Someone who doesn't understand AI might wrongly think that their AI tools are qualified to represent them on their own. I suspect that it would be much less of an issue if it was advertised as an "AI paralegal."
dsfyu404ed 4y ago
Literally every regulation has pros and cons and those change over time with the makeup of the reality we live in. Something that was useful when passed may be hampering us now. Plenty of regulations have been an obvious net negative for society when passed to anyone who crunched the numbers but have been passed anyway because of appeals to emotion, political optics and special interest lobbying.
tablespoon 4y ago
> One could also argue the real problem is the tech industry constantly ignoring regulations that were put in place for good reasons This is it. The tech company wants the ability to sell a shoddy product to its customers, and the legal system said no. And frankly, I don't know how anyone could honestly claim (without being ignorant or deluded) that feeding legal arguments into court, output from modern-day voice recognition fed into ChatGPT, isn't shoddy. > ...but “legal advice from lawyers”, “medicine from doctors”, “insurance from companies that can prove they can pay out”, and “equities backed by actual assets” all exist for good reasons. Exactly. The legal system is no joke, and if there weren't regulations about who can practice law, you'd have all kinds of fly-by-night people getting paid to do it while getting their clients thrown in jail.
- deltarholamda 4y ago
  >The legal system is no joke, and if there weren't regulations about who can practice law, you'd have all kinds of fly-by-night people getting paid to do it while getting their clients thrown in jail That sort of highlights the problem. The legal system is supposed to be about ensuring fair and impartial justice. What the legal system is actually about is providing jobs for people in the legal system. Lawyers make laws, directly or indirectly, and thus the legal system has become insanely complicated and nearly impossible to navigate without paying the lawyer toll. It's more about hiring your own bully to keep other bullies from bullying you than any airy-fairy "justice". The "never talk to cops" video comes to mind, where the lawyer gives a few examples of how a perfectly law-abiding person can run afoul of the law without meaning to. I've often said that if you really want to make a lawyer squirm, suggest that we have socialized law care. Most modern countries have some version of socialized or single payer health care, so why not make it the same for legal services? After all, fair and equal justice under the law is definitely something most national constitutions guarantee in some way, but getting a hip replacement is not. Why should rich people get access to better legal service than regular people?
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    >> The legal system is no joke, and if there weren't regulations about who can practice law, you'd have all kinds of fly-by-night people getting paid to do it while getting their clients thrown in jail > That sort of highlights the problem. The legal system is supposed to be about ensuring fair and impartial justice. What the legal system is actually about is providing jobs for people in the legal system. > Lawyers make laws, directly or indirectly, and thus the legal system has become insanely complicated and nearly impossible to navigate without paying the lawyer toll. And software has become insanely complicated and nearly impossible to navigate without paying the software engineer toll. Life is complicated, and so is the law. Maybe it's just harder to ensure "fair and impartial justice" than you think? I'm not saying the system is perfect, but railing against lawyers and getting rid of legal licensing is not the way to get to a better one. > I've often said that if you really want to make a lawyer squirm, suggest that we have socialized law care. Most modern countries have some version of socialized or single payer health care, so why not make it the same for legal services? You might have said that, but I doubt it would actually many real lawyers squirm any more than it would the idea of socialized software engineering would make developers squirm. And in any case, something like that already exists: the public defender's office.
naasking 4y ago
> One could also argue the real problem is the tech industry constantly ignoring regulations that were put in place for good reasons They were good reasons. By definition, disruptive technologies change the situation. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. You have to leave room for innovation or you stagnate.
- lolinder 4y ago
  ChatGPT is not disruptive enough to be used in law, end of story. It's a very impressive language model, but like any language model it will hallucinate, inventing arguments that sound impressive on a surface level but bear no legal authority whatsoever. That's simply not acceptable in a courtroom.
- jonstewart 4y ago
  Everyone’s permitted to represent themselves pro se, and a pro se litigant could obviously use ChatGPT. What one can’t do is offer ChatGPT as legal advice, and that still seems like a solid reason for regulation, given how terrible and inaccurate some ChatGPT output has been.

mensetmanusman 4y ago

Licenses for cutting hair or applying makeup? https://www.mprnews.org/amp/story/2019/11/13/freelance-wedding-makeup-artists-push-back-against-new-state-regulations https://www.mprnews.org/amp/story/2019/11/13/freelance-weddi...

lostlogin 4y ago
Where do you draw the line? I’d say that an industry with significant health, safety or financial risk should require regulation and licensing. Your example seems a bit crazy.
- ajmurmann 4y ago
  The funny thing is that doctors would be the canonical examples for most people. Yet, there is no license that stops a pediatrician from performing brain surgery. What stops the pediatrician from performing brain surgery is that no hospital would hire them as a brain surgeon, no insurance would insure their brain surgery and if something goes wrong they'd likely face a lawsuit they couldn't win. Why is the system able to judge the difference between a pediatrician and a brain surgeon but we need licensing to distinguish between doctor and non-doctor?
  - giantg2 4y ago
    The answer is in your question. It's the credentialing. The pediatrician lacks the credentials of a neurosurgeon. Just as non-doctors lack the credentials to work as a doctor. The hosptial, insurance, and court would all be looking at the credentials.
    - 988747 4y ago
      Credentials are not the same as license. For example, software engineers do not need to pass any certification exams to practice software engineering, but companies still look at their education, years of experience, etc... Yes, it would make a recruitment process for doctors longer, as you would have to interview them, ask them questions to verify their medical knowledge, etc., but it is not impossible.
      - giantg2 4y ago
        And yet, in your software example those companies overwhelming rely on degrees to credentialize candidates regardless of actual skill. Licensing is merely a subset of the larger credentialing world. Even in your doctor example, the license is not the issue - board certification of a specialty would be the issue.
        freejazz 4y ago
        You misunderstand licensing. Licensing ensures a minimum of conduct and creates a standard for liability for falling below that level of conduct.
        giantg2 4y ago
        I know that perfectly well. That doesn't change what I've said as it applies to the examples above.
        freejazz 4y ago
        It does. Licensing has nothing to do with your credentials past having them. The state bar doesn't care which lawschool you went to, your LSAT score, your GPA, etc.
        giantg2 4y ago
        "It does" How? "Licensing has nothing to do with your credentials past having them." The way that most credentialing is used for employment.
  - freejazz 4y ago
    It's called malpractice. What you described is prima facie malpractice and a key element of malpractice is that it is a licensed profession with a standard of conduct.
  - lostlogin 4y ago
    > there is no license that stops a pediatrician from performing brain surgery. This isn’t the case everywhere. Where I am (New Zealand) each doctor has a scope of practice. You work within your scope. There may be conditions placed on a scope of practice too (eg supervision is required). You can look up every doctor’s scope of practice and get a short summary of their training on the medical council website. Other health professions follow a similar model. https://www.mcnz.org.nz/registration/register-of-doctors/ https://www.mcnz.org.nz/registration/register-of-doctors/
  - dinkumthinkum 4y ago
    This is kind of an absurd example. The system is setup in such a way that such a person would be in enormous amounts of trouble even face criminal liability. They may not face a law called “practicing medicine without a license” but they would face negligent or other similarly severe charges. As well, the fact that this never, ever happens seems to indicate the current regulatory structure is enough for this.
    - lostlogin 4y ago
      The US really doesn’t have the concept of ‘scope of practice’? That’s what’s being argued here and other systems have it. It seems an obvious thing.
- purpleflame1257 4y ago
  Cutting hair is one thing. But hairdressers also handle things like, for example, chemical relaxation of hair, which can be seriously dangerous in the wrong hands. I don't know where the answer lies for regulation. But it seems to be there for at least some reason.
pseingatl 4y ago
Milton Friedman covered this in Capitalism and Freedom.
ajmurmann 4y ago
Crazier case is places that braid hair and pose. In some states they are now required to get a license as a cosmetician (which takes longer on average than becoming a police officer in the US). The classes required for the license teach no skill relevant to the hair braiding. However, the hair braiding is in competition with the hair dressers who also control the licensing board. Longer discussion of the topic on Econtalk: https://www.econtalk.org/dick-carpenter-on-bottleneckers/#audio-highlights https://www.econtalk.org/dick-carpenter-on-bottleneckers/#au...

ovi256 4y ago

> all exist for good reasons Sure, but what's banned is surely not all medical or legal advice. I can browse case law or US code thinking about my case - somehow this does not need a legal license. At the other end of the continuum, talking to a lawyer about my case obviously needs him to be licensed. So now we're debating on which side of the cutoff using DoNotPay's robot must fall. The lawyers have made their mind ages ago that legal advice can only be dispensed by licensed humans.

inetknght 4y ago
> I can browse case law or US code thinking about my case - somehow this does not need a legal license. Of course. With rare exceptions, court proceedings are public. But being able to read court proceeds or judgements or anything at all doesn't mean that you know and understand the law. You know, the actual words that are written and codified that must be interpreted and adhered to with jurisprudence. Not that lawyers actually do either. But at least they've been certified (by "the bar" association) to have some competence in the matter.
- asvitkine 4y ago
  But on the other hand, one can't argue ignorance of the law so then everyone is supposed to already know all laws and understand them!
  - ClumsyPilot 4y ago
    I am strong believe that basics of law should be taught in school, especially criminal. If governmet will prosecute me for free (to the accuser), then it should, for free, teach me the law.
elil17 4y ago
I don't think and anyone is saying that using the bot is illegal. The issue is that DoNotPay is calling the bot a lawyer and therefor implying that it gives legal advice. Their website literally says "World's First Robot Lawyer." Someone who doesn't understand AI might wrongly think that their AI tools are qualified to represent them on their own. I suspect that it would be much less of an issue if it was advertised as an "AI paralegal."

dsfyu404ed 4y ago

Literally every regulation has pros and cons and those change over time with the makeup of the reality we live in. Something that was useful when passed may be hampering us now. Plenty of regulations have been an obvious net negative for society when passed to anyone who crunched the numbers but have been passed anyway because of appeals to emotion, political optics and special interest lobbying.

tablespoon 4y ago

> One could also argue the real problem is the tech industry constantly ignoring regulations that were put in place for good reasons This is it. The tech company wants the ability to sell a shoddy product to its customers, and the legal system said no. And frankly, I don't know how anyone could honestly claim (without being ignorant or deluded) that feeding legal arguments into court, output from modern-day voice recognition fed into ChatGPT, isn't shoddy. > ...but “legal advice from lawyers”, “medicine from doctors”, “insurance from companies that can prove they can pay out”, and “equities backed by actual assets” all exist for good reasons. Exactly. The legal system is no joke, and if there weren't regulations about who can practice law, you'd have all kinds of fly-by-night people getting paid to do it while getting their clients thrown in jail.

deltarholamda 4y ago
>The legal system is no joke, and if there weren't regulations about who can practice law, you'd have all kinds of fly-by-night people getting paid to do it while getting their clients thrown in jail That sort of highlights the problem. The legal system is supposed to be about ensuring fair and impartial justice. What the legal system is actually about is providing jobs for people in the legal system. Lawyers make laws, directly or indirectly, and thus the legal system has become insanely complicated and nearly impossible to navigate without paying the lawyer toll. It's more about hiring your own bully to keep other bullies from bullying you than any airy-fairy "justice". The "never talk to cops" video comes to mind, where the lawyer gives a few examples of how a perfectly law-abiding person can run afoul of the law without meaning to. I've often said that if you really want to make a lawyer squirm, suggest that we have socialized law care. Most modern countries have some version of socialized or single payer health care, so why not make it the same for legal services? After all, fair and equal justice under the law is definitely something most national constitutions guarantee in some way, but getting a hip replacement is not. Why should rich people get access to better legal service than regular people?
- tablespoon 4y ago
  >> The legal system is no joke, and if there weren't regulations about who can practice law, you'd have all kinds of fly-by-night people getting paid to do it while getting their clients thrown in jail > That sort of highlights the problem. The legal system is supposed to be about ensuring fair and impartial justice. What the legal system is actually about is providing jobs for people in the legal system. > Lawyers make laws, directly or indirectly, and thus the legal system has become insanely complicated and nearly impossible to navigate without paying the lawyer toll. And software has become insanely complicated and nearly impossible to navigate without paying the software engineer toll. Life is complicated, and so is the law. Maybe it's just harder to ensure "fair and impartial justice" than you think? I'm not saying the system is perfect, but railing against lawyers and getting rid of legal licensing is not the way to get to a better one. > I've often said that if you really want to make a lawyer squirm, suggest that we have socialized law care. Most modern countries have some version of socialized or single payer health care, so why not make it the same for legal services? You might have said that, but I doubt it would actually many real lawyers squirm any more than it would the idea of socialized software engineering would make developers squirm. And in any case, something like that already exists: the public defender's office.

naasking 4y ago

> One could also argue the real problem is the tech industry constantly ignoring regulations that were put in place for good reasons They were good reasons. By definition, disruptive technologies change the situation. Sometimes for the better, sometimes not. You have to leave room for innovation or you stagnate.

lolinder 4y ago
ChatGPT is not disruptive enough to be used in law, end of story. It's a very impressive language model, but like any language model it will hallucinate, inventing arguments that sound impressive on a surface level but bear no legal authority whatsoever. That's simply not acceptable in a courtroom.
jonstewart 4y ago
Everyone’s permitted to represent themselves pro se, and a pro se litigant could obviously use ChatGPT. What one can’t do is offer ChatGPT as legal advice, and that still seems like a solid reason for regulation, given how terrible and inaccurate some ChatGPT output has been.