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AI Chatbot Experiment in U.S. Court Cancelled
Last week DoNotPay CEO Joshua Browder announced that the company’s AI chatbot would represent a defendant in a U.S. court, marking the first use of artificial intelligence for this purpose. Now the experiment has been cancelled, with Browder stating he’s received objections from multiple state bar associations.
Legal Concerns and Decision to Postpone
“Bad news: after receiving threats from State Bar prosecutors, it seems likely they will put me in jail for 6 months if I follow through with bringing a robot lawyer into a physical courtroom,” Browder tweeted on Thursday. “DoNotPay is postponing our court case and sticking to consumer rights.”
The plan had been to use DoNotPay’s AI in a speeding case scheduled to be heard on Feb. 22. The chatbot would run on a smartphone, listening to what was being said in court before providing instructions to the anonymous defendant via an earpiece.
Reassessing DoNotPay’s Products
In light of the legal concerns, Browder decided to pull the plug on the whole experiment rather than risk jail time. DoNotPay will now only deal with cases regarding consumer rights law going forward, removing all other services “effective immediately.”
The CEO also stated that employees are currently working 18-hour days to improve DoNotPay’s user experience, which doesn’t seem like something to boast about.
Though DoNotPay’s AI experiment would have applied AI to a new area, it wouldn’t have been the first use of artificial intelligence in a U.S. courtroom. States such as New York and California have previously used AI tools to assess whether someone is likely to reoffend, but concerns about accuracy and fairness remain.
Artificial intelligence may seem like an exciting technology with many useful purposes. But some things are still best left to actual humans.
