A CEO Planned To Use A “Robot Lawyer” In Court But Then Learned He Could Be Arrested For It
Joshua Browder, the startup CEO who wanted to use an artificial intelligence–powered “robot lawyer” to help a defendant fight a traffic ticket in court, has revealed that he is dropping the plan after being threatened with jail time.
Browder runs DoNotPay, a San Francisco–based DIY legal services startup created to help people get out of parking tickets. In a December tweet, he asked anyone with a speeding ticket hearing coming up to DM him. “We want to build a @donotpay bot that listens to the court hearing via your AirPods and whispers what to say with GPT-3 and LLMs,” he wrote, referring to the tech that powers chatbots like ChatGPT. “We just want to experiment and will pay the ticket, even if you lose!”
Numerous Twitter users expressed skepticism, but Browder told BuzzFeed News that more than 300 people DM’d him. The company eventually ended up picking just one person, who had a $200 speeding ticket. That case, set to be heard Feb. 22, made the cut because the authorities hadn’t provided adequate evidence of the person speeding, according to Browder.
“What the AI was going to do in the courtroom was tell the person to say there wasn’t enough evidence and ask for the ticket to be dismissed,” he said. “We were fairly confident we were going to win.”
Browder told BuzzFeed News that his company was “on the verge of a multistate investigation by members of state bars.” He declined to say which states were investigating him or which court he was planning to try the AI experiment in. He did say that members of the California State Bar had sent the company five letters over the past month.
Joshua Browder, the startup CEO who wanted to use an artificial intelligence–powered “robot lawyer” to help a defendant fight a traffic ticket in court, has revealed that he is dropping the plan after being threatened with jail time. Browder runs DoNotPay, a San Francisco–based DIY legal services startup created to…
