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DoNotPay predates GPT by quite a bit -- it used to be pretty positively received on HN e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822289 https://news.ycombinat

DoNotPay predates GPT by quite a bit -- it used to be pretty positively received on HN e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822289

ziddoap 2y ago
Not sure about the history, I based my comment on this quote from the article: >[...] DoNotPay's legal service [...] relying on an API with OpenAI's ChatGPT. Perhaps they rolled their own chatbot then later switched to ChatGPT? Either way, they probably should have a lawyer involved at some point in the process.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  My understanding is that they had much more linear automation of very specific, narrow, high-frequency processes — basically form letters plus some process automation — before they got GPT and decided they could do a lot more “lawyer” things with it.
- ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
  Yes I think you are right about that. Someone else called it "mad libs" and that is very much what it felt like back in 2017/18. Idk why they needed to have a lawyer involved though. Many processes in life just need an "official" sounding response: to get to the next phase, or open the gate to talk to a real human, or even to close the issue with a positive result. Many people are not able to conjure up an "official" sounding response from nothing, so these chatbot/ChatGPTs are great ways for them to generate a response to use for their IRL need (parking ticket, letter to landlord, etc).
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - everforward 2y ago
    "Lawyer" is a regulated term that comes with a lot of expectations of the "lawyer" (liability for malpractice, a bunch of duties, etc). You can't just say that something is a lawyer any more than you could do the same with doctors or police officers. Machines are also not allowed to be the "author" of court documents if they actually get to court (so far as I'm aware). A lawyer has to sign off and claim it as their own work, and doing so without the lawyer reading it is pretty taboo (I think maybe sanctionable by the BAR but I could be wrong).
    - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
      >You can't just say that something is a lawyer any more than you could do the same with doctors or police officers Do you think WebMD should be renamed? Lawyers seem to be better at defending their turf than doctors or cops.
ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
Yes! I used this "AI" tool to help a friend write a letter to her landlord. It was not at all "generative AI" and seemed to just paste modules together based on her answers to its questionnaire. To your second point, it's very funny how OpenAI seems to have soured the tech crowd on tech.
- faangguyindia 2y ago
  It's love and hate relationship with AI. All engineers I know in tech are bashing AI left and right and going home to work on AI projects in their free time.
  - dukeyukey 2y ago
    You can simultanously believe that AI: * Is massively overhyped by certain persons and companies, and * Is both interesting and has loads of promise, so is worth working on in your own time They aren't contradictory at all.
    - bee_rider 2y ago
      Actually, I think they are the opposite of contradictory. This tech is dumb, funny, new, and maybe it has potential in the right (low-stakes) applications. Meanwhile, I dunno, I have some begrudging admiration for the folks getting rich selling premium GEMMs, but eventually they are going to piss off all their investors and cause a giant mess. Like good luck guys, get that money, but please don’t take us all down with you.
  - whatshisface 2y ago
    The ship is sinking, and we're swimming towards the iceberg.
  - shadowgovt 2y ago
    Pretty classic hacker behavior. "This sucks. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go make it better because everyone else working on it is an idiot and I, alone, see the True Way Forward."
Aurornis 2y ago
> it used to be pretty positively received on HN I think people love the idea of DoNotPay: A magical internet machine that saves people money and fights back against evil corporations. Before ChatGPT they were basically mad libs for finding and filling out the right form. Helpful for people who couldn't figure out how to navigate situations by themselves. There is real value in this. However, they've also been running the same growth hacking playbooks that people disdain: False advertising, monthly subscriptions for services that most people need in a one-off manner, claiming AI features to be more reliable than they are, releasing untested products on consumers. Once you look past the headline of the company you find they're not entirely altruistic, they're just another startup playing the growth hacking game and all that comes with it.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  There's altruism, running a business, and unrestrained avarice. Sometimes libertarians can be as prone to equating the first two as leftists are the latter.
  - thrance 2y ago
    In your world, it seems the leftists have it figured out. The purpose of a business is always to maximize profit. EDIT: yeah, yeah, I hear you. You can survive on VC money, and maximize share price instead of focusing on profit. You can also be a small business owned by good people just trying to make a living, but then you still have to not get drowned out by more ruthless competition. The purpose of a business is not always to maximize profit.
    - dpassens 2y ago
      The purpose of a business is whatever its owners want it to be. Typically, this is maximizing profit, but it could be anything, like getting paid for what you like to do.
    - adventured 2y ago
      > The purpose of a business is always to maximize profit. That's false. The purpose of a business is whatever the owners of that business decide. I've known a large number of business owners that chose less profit in exchange for any number of other attributes they valued more than max profit: more of their own time (working less), better serving a local community by donating a lot of resources / air time (media company), paying employees abnormally higher wages (because said employees had been with them a long time and loyalty matters to some people a lot) - and so on and so forth. Max profit is one of a zillion possible attributes to optionally optimize for as the owner of a business. The larger the owner the more say they obviously will tend to have in the culture. Facebook as a prominent public example, hasn't been optimized for max profit at any point in the past decade. They easily could have extracted far more profit than what they did. Zuckerberg, being the voting control shareholder, chose to invest hilariously vast amounts of money into eg the Metaverse / VR. He did that on a personal lark bet, with very little evidence to suggest it would assist in maximizing profit (and at the least he was very wrong in the closer-term 10-15 year span; maybe it'll pay off 20-30 years out, doubtful). The pursuit of max profit is a cultural attribute, a choice, and that's all. It's generally neither a legal requirement nor a moral requirement of a business.
gortok 2y ago
> it used to be pretty positively received on HN Doesn’t that call into question the decision making of folks on HN rather than being a positive view of the product?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- bongodongobob 2y ago
  Yep. Turns out HN is just avg people that think they're really smart because they know how to write code.
  - skinnymuch 2y ago
    Literally why I stopped going to the comments or commenting. The blind arrogance of tech bros is up there.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Given the scope of the topic it appealed in 2016, parking tickets in two specific cities, I can see such a petty case like that be automated. The expansion in 2017 to seeking refuge seems like it'd be a bigger hurdle. But I wouldn't be surprised if that process can be automated a lot as well. Seems like the killing blow here was claiming it can outright replace legal advice. Wonder how much that lie made compared to the settlement. But yes, HN in general is a lot more empathetic towards AI than what the average consensus seems to be based on surveys this year.
hinkley 2y ago
On a long enough timeline we all (with the exception of narcissists) see our younger selves as little idiots.
KronisLV 2y ago
> It's something I personally find very bizarre, but I've definitely noticed that a lot of people have a very strong mental block about doing things on a computer, or even a browser. It's interesting that many have expressed something similar in regards to the current LLMs, for programming for example: that even if their output isn't exactly ideal, they still lower the barrier of entry for trying to do certain things, like starting a project in Python from scratch in a stack that you aren't entirely familiar with yet.
paulddraper 2y ago
> it used to be pretty positively received on HN HN is a fickle beast

DoNotPay predates GPT by quite a bit -- it used to be pretty positively received on HN e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822289 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13822289

ziddoap 2y ago

Not sure about the history, I based my comment on this quote from the article: >[...] DoNotPay's legal service [...] relying on an API with OpenAI's ChatGPT. Perhaps they rolled their own chatbot then later switched to ChatGPT? Either way, they probably should have a lawyer involved at some point in the process.

dragonwriter 2y ago
My understanding is that they had much more linear automation of very specific, narrow, high-frequency processes — basically form letters plus some process automation — before they got GPT and decided they could do a lot more “lawyer” things with it.
ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
Yes I think you are right about that. Someone else called it "mad libs" and that is very much what it felt like back in 2017/18. Idk why they needed to have a lawyer involved though. Many processes in life just need an "official" sounding response: to get to the next phase, or open the gate to talk to a real human, or even to close the issue with a positive result. Many people are not able to conjure up an "official" sounding response from nothing, so these chatbot/ChatGPTs are great ways for them to generate a response to use for their IRL need (parking ticket, letter to landlord, etc).
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- everforward 2y ago
  "Lawyer" is a regulated term that comes with a lot of expectations of the "lawyer" (liability for malpractice, a bunch of duties, etc). You can't just say that something is a lawyer any more than you could do the same with doctors or police officers. Machines are also not allowed to be the "author" of court documents if they actually get to court (so far as I'm aware). A lawyer has to sign off and claim it as their own work, and doing so without the lawyer reading it is pretty taboo (I think maybe sanctionable by the BAR but I could be wrong).
  - ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago
    >You can't just say that something is a lawyer any more than you could do the same with doctors or police officers Do you think WebMD should be renamed? Lawyers seem to be better at defending their turf than doctors or cops.

ahmeneeroe-v2 2y ago

Yes! I used this "AI" tool to help a friend write a letter to her landlord. It was not at all "generative AI" and seemed to just paste modules together based on her answers to its questionnaire. To your second point, it's very funny how OpenAI seems to have soured the tech crowd on tech.

faangguyindia 2y ago
It's love and hate relationship with AI. All engineers I know in tech are bashing AI left and right and going home to work on AI projects in their free time.
- dukeyukey 2y ago
  You can simultanously believe that AI: * Is massively overhyped by certain persons and companies, and * Is both interesting and has loads of promise, so is worth working on in your own time They aren't contradictory at all.
  - bee_rider 2y ago
    Actually, I think they are the opposite of contradictory. This tech is dumb, funny, new, and maybe it has potential in the right (low-stakes) applications. Meanwhile, I dunno, I have some begrudging admiration for the folks getting rich selling premium GEMMs, but eventually they are going to piss off all their investors and cause a giant mess. Like good luck guys, get that money, but please don’t take us all down with you.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  The ship is sinking, and we're swimming towards the iceberg.
- shadowgovt 2y ago
  Pretty classic hacker behavior. "This sucks. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go make it better because everyone else working on it is an idiot and I, alone, see the True Way Forward."

Aurornis 2y ago

> it used to be pretty positively received on HN I think people love the idea of DoNotPay: A magical internet machine that saves people money and fights back against evil corporations. Before ChatGPT they were basically mad libs for finding and filling out the right form. Helpful for people who couldn't figure out how to navigate situations by themselves. There is real value in this. However, they've also been running the same growth hacking playbooks that people disdain: False advertising, monthly subscriptions for services that most people need in a one-off manner, claiming AI features to be more reliable than they are, releasing untested products on consumers. Once you look past the headline of the company you find they're not entirely altruistic, they're just another startup playing the growth hacking game and all that comes with it.

whatshisface 2y ago
There's altruism, running a business, and unrestrained avarice. Sometimes libertarians can be as prone to equating the first two as leftists are the latter.
- thrance 2y ago
  In your world, it seems the leftists have it figured out. The purpose of a business is always to maximize profit. EDIT: yeah, yeah, I hear you. You can survive on VC money, and maximize share price instead of focusing on profit. You can also be a small business owned by good people just trying to make a living, but then you still have to not get drowned out by more ruthless competition. The purpose of a business is not always to maximize profit.
  - dpassens 2y ago
    The purpose of a business is whatever its owners want it to be. Typically, this is maximizing profit, but it could be anything, like getting paid for what you like to do.
  - adventured 2y ago
    > The purpose of a business is always to maximize profit. That's false. The purpose of a business is whatever the owners of that business decide. I've known a large number of business owners that chose less profit in exchange for any number of other attributes they valued more than max profit: more of their own time (working less), better serving a local community by donating a lot of resources / air time (media company), paying employees abnormally higher wages (because said employees had been with them a long time and loyalty matters to some people a lot) - and so on and so forth. Max profit is one of a zillion possible attributes to optionally optimize for as the owner of a business. The larger the owner the more say they obviously will tend to have in the culture. Facebook as a prominent public example, hasn't been optimized for max profit at any point in the past decade. They easily could have extracted far more profit than what they did. Zuckerberg, being the voting control shareholder, chose to invest hilariously vast amounts of money into eg the Metaverse / VR. He did that on a personal lark bet, with very little evidence to suggest it would assist in maximizing profit (and at the least he was very wrong in the closer-term 10-15 year span; maybe it'll pay off 20-30 years out, doubtful). The pursuit of max profit is a cultural attribute, a choice, and that's all. It's generally neither a legal requirement nor a moral requirement of a business.

gortok 2y ago

> it used to be pretty positively received on HN Doesn’t that call into question the decision making of folks on HN rather than being a positive view of the product?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
bongodongobob 2y ago
Yep. Turns out HN is just avg people that think they're really smart because they know how to write code.
- skinnymuch 2y ago
  Literally why I stopped going to the comments or commenting. The blind arrogance of tech bros is up there.
johnnyanmac 2y ago
Given the scope of the topic it appealed in 2016, parking tickets in two specific cities, I can see such a petty case like that be automated. The expansion in 2017 to seeking refuge seems like it'd be a bigger hurdle. But I wouldn't be surprised if that process can be automated a lot as well. Seems like the killing blow here was claiming it can outright replace legal advice. Wonder how much that lie made compared to the settlement. But yes, HN in general is a lot more empathetic towards AI than what the average consensus seems to be based on surveys this year.

hinkley 2y ago

On a long enough timeline we all (with the exception of narcissists) see our younger selves as little idiots.

KronisLV 2y ago

> It's something I personally find very bizarre, but I've definitely noticed that a lot of people have a very strong mental block about doing things on a computer, or even a browser. It's interesting that many have expressed something similar in regards to the current LLMs, for programming for example: that even if their output isn't exactly ideal, they still lower the barrier of entry for trying to do certain things, like starting a project in Python from scratch in a stack that you aren't entirely familiar with yet.

paulddraper 2y ago

> it used to be pretty positively received on HN HN is a fickle beast