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Harvey AI raises $21M in a Series A round led by Sequoia
- jordanpg 4y agoAnyone know what this thing actually does? Neither TFA nor https://www.harvey.ai/ https://www.harvey.ai/ contain any clues.
- htrp 4y agoit's allegedly ai powered drafting
- drumhead 4y agoAI is the new moneypit for VC funds now that web3/ crypto turned out to be a bust. How many of these AI startup are going to make any money. Very very few.
- warthog 4y agoHonestly this is very interesting to me. Legal firms are firms that handle probably the most sensitive data there is other than privacy data which is usually encrypted. I was wondering how enterprise adoption would happen and whether it would happen internally or they would buy from a provider but it seems like they already sold to a firm like Allen and Overy which is huge. Do you think there is a similar opportunity in financial institutions like investment banks and government agencies?
- johndhi 4y agoI'm a lawyer, not really understanding your points here. What is privacy data, and what do you mean it's usually encrypted? Tons of entities have access to raw personal data of pretty much everyone in the world. "Legal" data could be anything -- from public records of a court, to extremely sensitive legal advice discussing perceived legal violations that is subject to the attorney-client privilege. What does Harvey actually do? Sounds like it's sort of like ChatGPT but with more privacy/security promises?
- warthog 4y agoYep rcme got me correctly but let me explain further: A legal firm has more access to confidential information compared to a financial services advisor like Morgan Stanley. What Harvey does is a lawyer in Allen and Overy feeds contracts, drafts and agreements into Harvey's AI. This data then is processed within OpenAI servers. That means OpenAI would get access to this data freely, without any encryption. Hence, as a lawyer, my question to you is twofold: - Is this kind of software useful for you? (my assumption is 100% yes) - How can you justify sharing data with OpenAI in your agreements with clients? Is this possible even? Does nobody care? Do you include this sort of disclosure in an indemnity agreement perhaps? If you have doubts, I suggest you take a look at Robin AI as well who uses Claude in the backend. Clifford Chance very actively uses it.
- rcme 4y agoI think the GP is referring to documents obtained as part of the discovery process. Things like internal company emails, private texts, etc.
- ipnon 4y agoAs long as training data is generated by experts then experts cannot be supplanted, such is my theory.
- spencerchubb 4y agoThey can be supplanted by experts who are more productive thanks to AI.
- CharlesW 4y agoSo turtles all the way down? AI built on data created by experts using AI built on data created by experts using AI built on data created by experts using…
- gumballindie 4y agoBut it's intelligent and can learn and create totally new things, remember?
- kajecounterhack 4y agoIsn't this the thing about productivity tools -- you can never make someone too productive. Once you've established a new baseline for productivity, they will want to be even more productive after that when new bottlenecks emerge.
- postalrat 4y agoSo a trip down can end with a person but not an AI? How are people not all the way down?
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- susssin 4y agoFrom first principles wouldn't a model trained on the written law and court rulings be capable of supplanting an "expert" that is in essence creating derivative works based off of such documents?
- tristanb 4y agoBuilt in a year, massive client, uses GPT-4? I'm intrigued as to how much there is to this product...
- m1sta_ 4y agoIve seen it. There really isn't much there. The organisation involved just wanted the announcement and can see the potential. Such behaviour isn't uncommon in large law firms.
- sulam 4y agoVery curious what their moat is, if they’re built on top of GPT-4 and didn’t exist more than a year ago. Go really fast?
- kajecounterhack 4y agoI suspect many think GPT-4 wrappers can just count on LLMs to become basic infrastructure like databases or anything else, and count on differentiating based on how they store/manage prompts to solve specific problems. Maybe they need to build some small models or machinery on top of the LLM outputs to make them truly useful, and maybe building those things isn't that easy to copy because they require domain-specific expertise (in this case law knowledge).
- runnerup 4y agoYeah basically use GPT-4 for now to make something useful and make customers happy, then eventually switch out to lower-cost LLM's as open-source options become available.
- ignoramous 4y agoSounds like OpenAi needs a moat.
- dopeboy 4y agoI think this is the big bet a lot of startups are taking. Aggregate demand quickly with GPT4 and then migrate off to another LLM. The assumption here is those other LLMs can be specialized to perform better than a general purpose one. A pattern I see across all of these plays is some kind of unfair advantage with distribution. Jasper, from what I know, was started by founders ran a content company and had a pre-existing set of customers. Looks like atleast one of the founders of Harvey knows the legal world and secured some pilots that way.
- runnerup 4y ago> unfair advantage heh. That's a bit of a strange wording, but yes. Domain-specific knowledge and connections are obviously a big advantage. I know it's frustrating when you're looking at "but how do I make money from this?" To any young students out there...perhaps the answer is to double-major in CS + $BIG_INDUSTRY at a top-10 school and get really high grades and work high-caliber, high-connection jobs in $BIG_INDUSTRY and then start a software company that leverages your experience and connections.
- gs17 4y agoAny idea who it's named after? I was hoping for Birdman, but I'm guessing they're fans of Suits unless there's someone else.
- yeauldfellows 4y agoMy guess is it's an ironic reference to the stage play and film from 1950 called Harvey, about a man with a best friend who is a tall white invisible (silent) rabbit called Harvey.
- jeremymcanally 4y agoGiven they're a legal startup, I really hope it's Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Birdman,_Attorney_at_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Birdman,_Attorney_at_La...
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- usaphp 4y agoCould be Harvey Specter from Suits: https://suits.fandom.com/wiki/Harvey_Specter https://suits.fandom.com/wiki/Harvey_Specter
- thebigspacefuck 4y agoOr Batman’s Harvey Dent
- surrealize 4y agoMy favorite legal Harvey is Harvey Richards, lawyer for children. He'll argue the finer points of "no backsies" etc. https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2015/03/12 https://www.gocomics.com/tomthedancingbug/2015/03/12
- kragen 4y agoit would be funny if the biggest impact of llms was the final death knell of wordperfect (not likely tho)
- exhibitapp 4y agoIt's great to see the market for $20m pre-revenue Series A has come back :D
- RileyJames 4y agoHarvey bird man. Attorney at law. Please be a reference. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Birdman,_Attorney_at_Law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Birdman,_Attorney_at_La...
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