Snake Oil AI?

I have to admit I haven't followed DoNotPay all that closely. It has expanded since its first introduction as a traffic ticket fighter. I did see the story about the CEO, Josh Browder, offering a million dollars to anyone stupid enough to repeat his chatbot's words in front of the Supreme Court. According to BobAmbrogi, he "pulled the plug on the prank, saying he had received threats from bar officials of prosecution and even imprisonment." No surprises there. To address the title of Liz Dye's post, it seems to me, based on Kathryn Tewson's investigation, to be less of a "real" robot short out and more like a scene from the Wizard of Oz. The man behind the curtain said, "DoNotPay is postponing our court case and sticking to consumer rights." Both Bob and Liz both talk about the impact on self help services. Sadly I think it reflects negatively on those services, on AI and the legal tech vendor community as a whole. No one likes a snake oil salesman. Read more at:
LawSites: A Bad Week for DoNotPay and Its Robot Lawyer, But It Should Not Reflect on Self-Help Legal Tech
ABOVE THE LAW: World's First Robot Lawyer Shorts Out

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The Sneetches and other eDiscovery stories

The first thing I learned from this post is that Dr. Seuss wrote a short story called "Too Many Daves." According to Wikipedia, it "is a very short story about a mother, Mrs. McCave, who named all 23 of her sons Dave. This causes minor problems in the family, and the majority of the story lists unusual and amusing names she wishes she had given them." The analogy is that "in the eDiscovery field, there may be an over-presentation and overexposure of information and personalities, making it difficult for professionals to break through the digital clutter to keep track of which people, processes, and protocols are truly innovative, valuable, and effective. This can lead to a lack of critical evaluation, and a tendency to rely on the opinions and preferences of a select group of individuals or organizations." Think about that as you go into the weekend and read more at Complex Discovery: 'Too Many Daves' in eDiscovery? How High-Velocity Online Sharing May Be Undermining Critical Thought in the Industry

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Simply a battle of tech giants?

With a hat tip to who else but Stephen Abram, we get an interesting story linking ChatGPT and Google. The author, Stephen Arnold links out to a New York Times post (behind a paywall) in which ChatGPT is seen as such a threat, Google founders had to be called back into action. And from what my sources inside Google say, it couldn't be a worse time considering the chaos the current layoffs are causing. Is this simply a battle of tech giants, of Google vs Microsoft and ChatGPT? I think that may be too simplistic a look. I won't spoil any more of Stephen's thoughts, but will say that this could end up as the new measuring stick for "disruptive." Read more at Beyond Search: ChatGPT Spells Trouble for the Google

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Jeffrey Brandt, Editor

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ILTA Strategic Partner Liaisons - NetDocuments
Judge, Litera Changing Lawyer Awards 2021