Hacker News Reader

Comment by dboreham | Hacker News Reader

Ok well it seems my test for whether we really have AI yet (are there self-driving lawyers) remains unsatisfied. For me lawyers work is significantly easier to automate with some proto-AI than is software development or driving a car. So although recent AI progress is highly impressive, I'm not retiring until it takes over the lawyers.

View on HN

Truly one of the worst takes on AI I've seen. What is the purpose of a lawyer? It's not to read the law, the text is free (or should be). It's to advise you, based on the law but also on the immediate, historical and sociopolitical coontext, as well as on their understanding of the characters of all the humans involved.

If that gets automated, we are in AGI territory.

Your first paragraph with very small tweaks (laws of physics etc., not law) could also apply to human attendants in elevators.

The second paragraph… hard to make a call on that one.

I think you'll find elevator attendance errors rather cheaper.

Typical lawyer mistake versus an elevator mistake? Depends on the nature of each mistake. Elevator accidents can be serious.

We're talking about the guy that presses the buttons for the people taking the elevator, yes? What serious elevator accident might arise from that?

Talking about that guy, or the lack of that guy, historically in elevators of various vintages.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_elevator_accidents

> What is the purpose of a lawyer?

This is a good question. Is the point of paying the lawyer the piece of "intellectual output" (contract, specific advice, legal briefs, etc) or the fact that they stand behind it? Is a company using AI liable if the agents sell something for a pittance? Do the AI agents have intent and standing?

It's not a question of how easy it is to automate it. It's about how frequent and costly the mistakes are. Lawyer AI is a high bar - plus the people watching you are human lawyers, exactly the kind of people who can make your mistakes more costly.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com