AI Creator Offers $1 Million He’ll Never Have To Pay To Anyone Willing To Let His Lawbot Argue Their Supreme Court Case
Josh Browder - the creator of the DoNotPay AI lawbot that helped users dodge $4 million in parking tickets - thinks his AI is ready to head to the big leagues.
Up until now, the bot's progress (and its creator's claims) have been incremental. Browder created a version of the bot to assist people in crafting asylum applications. Immigration law is deliberately complex and people seeking asylum generally don't have access to skilled lawyers, so anything that helps even the odds is welcome.
More recently, Browder announced his bot was going live," so to speak. A person will be using Browder's lawyer bot in municipal court, allowing the AI to process judge's statements/questions and provide suitable responses/rebuttals for the guinea pig accused of traffic infractions.
This case still hasn't happened, so there's no data on how well it performs when faced with unpredictable human beings, rather than simply navigating the paperwork involved in challenging parking tickets or filling out asylum applications. This lack of real world experience isn't discouraging Browder from claiming his bot is capable of replacing experienced lawyers with extensive pedigrees.
Over last weekend, Browder decided to put his money where his mouth is:
There's some money at stake now. Browder's tweet reads:
DoNotPay will pay any lawyer or person $1,000,000 with an upcoming case in front of the United States Supreme Court to wear AirPods and let our robot lawyer argue the case by repeating exactly what it says.
Sounds like quite the bet! Except it really isn't. First off, no lawyer is going to willingly give up an opportunity to argue in front of the Supreme Court, something that tends to look really good on the C.V., even if they end up taking a loss.
But, more importantly, this simply can't happen, no matter if Browder can find any lawyer or Supreme Court supplicant willing to turn over their case to his AI. As many people pointed out in response to Browder's bravado, AirPods aren't allowed inside the court. The list of items that can't be brought into the Supreme Court starts with the items necessary to allow a law-focused chatbot to argue a case.
The following items are strictly prohibited in the Courtroom while Court is in session:
- Electronic devices of any kind (laptops, cameras, video recorders, cell phones, tablets, smart watches, etc.)
This leads a list that contains food, beverages, books, stroller, political buttons/attire, and inappropriate clothing."
That makes use of Browder's bot an impossibility. And that means he can tweet out offers of millions of dollars with the assurance he'll never find any takers.
But even if people could bring electronic devices into the Supreme Court, they probably still shouldn't take Browder up on his offer. The bot has no track record in court. It's being test run at the lowest level of the court system - traffic court - at some point in the near future. No one knows how that case is going to go. And, given the low stakes, it will be almost impossible to tell if the bot contributed to the ensuing win/loss.
Jumping from traffic court to the top court in the land is foolhardy, even for actual living lawyers. Browder's bot may have more machine learning, but it's unlikely it's ready for prime time when things larger than traffic tickets (like people's lives and freedoms) are on the line.