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> Preload a city's, county's etc. entire set of laws You would also need to load an enormous amount of precedential case law, at least in the US and other comm
by stult 2y ago
> Preload a city's, county's etc. entire set of laws
You would also need to load an enormous amount of precedential case law, at least in the US and other common law jurisdictions. Synthesizing case law into rules of law applicable to a specific case requires complex analysis that is frequently sensitive to details of the factual context, where LLMs' lack of common sense can lead it to make false conclusions, particularly in situations where the available, on-point case law is thin on the ground and as a result directly analogous cases are not available.
I don't see the utility at the current performance level of LLMs, though, as the OP article seems to confirm. LLMs may excel in restating or summarizing black letter or well-established law under narrow circumstances, but that's a vanishingly small percentage of the actual work involved in practicing law. Most cases are unremarkable, and the lawyers and judges involved do not need to conduct any research that would require something like consulting an AI assistant to resolve all the important questions. It's just routine, there's nothing special about any given DUI case, for example. Where actual research is required, the question is typically extremely nuanced, and that is precisely where LLMs tend to struggle the most to produce useful outputs. LLMs are also unlikely to identify such issues, because they are issues for which sufficient precedent does not exist and therefore the LLM will by definition have to engage in extrapolational, creative analysis rather than simply reproducing ideas or language from its training set.
- _akhe 2y ago> You would also need to load an enormous amount of precedential case law Very easily done. Is that it? > lack of common sense, false conclusions The AI tool doesn't replace the judge/DA/etc. it's just a very useful tool for them to use. Checkout the "RAG-based learning" section of this app I built (https://github.com/bennyschmidt/ragdoll-studio https://github.com/bennyschmidt/ragdoll-studio) there's a video that shows how you can effectively load new knowledge into it (I use LlamaIndex for RAG). For example, past cases that set legal precedents, and other information you want to be considered. It creates a database of the files you load in, so it's not making those assumptions like an LLM without RAG would. I think a human would be more error-prone than an LLM with vector DB of specific data + querying engine. > I don't see the utility Then you are not paying attention or haven't used LLMs that much. Maybe you're unfamiliar with the kind of work it's good at. > actual work involved in practicing law This is what it's best at, and what people are already using RAG for: Reading patient medical docs, technical documentation, etc. this is precisely what humans are bad at and will offload to technology. > actual research is required You have not tried RAG. > LLMs struggle to produce useful outputs You have not tried RAG. > LLMs are unlikely to identify issues You have not tried RAG. > the LLM by definition is creative analysis You have not tried RAG. You can load an entire product catalog into LlamaIndex and the LLM will have perfect knowledge of pricing, inventory, etc. This specific domain knowledge of inventory allows you to have the accurate, transactional conversations that a regular LLM isn't designed for.
- cess11 2y agoI'm not so sure human judgement is as comparable to medical terminology or technical manuals as you think it is. How did you come to this conclusion?
- _akhe 2y agoMaybe I wasn't that clear, but I did say in my original post: I used to think AI would replace doctors before nurses, and lawyers before court clerks - now I think it's the other way around. The doctor, the lawyer - like the software engineer - will simply be more powerful than ever and have lower overhead. The lower-down jobs will get eaten, never the knowledge work. Yet you and a few other people insist I'm saying "AI will replace human judgment" - why? I'm saying the doctor isn't replaced, the lawyer, the software engineer, etc. aren't replaced. It's more like the technician just got a better technical manual, not like they are replaced by it.
- cess11 2y agoI did not. I pointed out that you assumed a similarity between human judgement in courts to technical documentation and medical diagnostics, and asked on what grounds you make this assumption. It can't be that engineering and biology are so similar to jurisprudence, because they aren't. There has to be another reason for you to lump them together.
- _akhe 2y ago> human judgement Again the human judgment is not replaced in either scenario, I'm talking about a tool the lawyer, the doctor, etc. would use. Lawyer and doctor are often listed as comparable examples because both involve sensitive info you can't afford to get wrong, unlike creative use cases for AI like image or song generation.
- cess11 2y agoNot sure why you keep bringing that up instead of answering my question. Lawyers and doctors get it wrong all the time.