The startup company DoNotPay has created the world’s first AI-powered robot lawyer, and is set to take a case to court next month, with the robot legal assistant aiding a defendant in fighting a traffic ticket.
The hearing is scheduled to go down sometime in the following weeks and although the location of the court and name of the defendant have not been revealed, it has been reported that the ticket was issued for speeding.
Joshua Browder, founder and CEO of DoNotPay, is also a Stanford University-educated computer scientist and launched DoNoPay in 2015 as an AI chatbot providing legal advice to consumers dealing with fines or late fees. For this unprecedented hearing however, if they lose their case then DoNoPay have agreed to pay any associated fines. In order for their AI assistant to function correctly during this case it had to be especially trained on a variety of aspects of case law so that it could offer sound advice and guidance in real time via headphones. But more than this, Browder has stated that he wanted assurance that his AI would not distort facts or manipulate reality so as to minimize legal risks and liabilities for his company.
Browder’s objective when creating his app was not only to assist people in real life courts but also provide them with an alternative means through which they can fight corporations and beat bureaucracy by simply pressing a button which prompts the AI assistant to generate appropriate legal documents based on loopholes regarding their particular problem.
His inspiration came from his own experience after relocating from his native UK home country to study at Stanford when he started amassing parking tickets that he couldn’t quite afford. This lead him down a path of becoming somewhat of an expert when it comes finding ways around paying those types of fines without breaking any laws.
