OpenAI hit with lawsuit claiming ChatGPT acted as an unlicensed lawyer

Posted by droidjj 2 days ago

Comments

Comment by Aurornis 2 days ago

This reminds of recent cases where individuals were threatened with engineering without a license when they went up against larger institutions:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/state-charges-77-year-old-fo...

https://reason.com/2020/03/02/oregon-tried-to-silence-this-e...

I predict many will jump to side against OpenAI in this case because they don’t like OpenAI, but be mindful about what you’re wishing for. I don’t believe we’re better off when we force information to be siloed away where only licensed individuals are allowed to discuss topics and charge very high hourly rates for it.

Comment by arter45 2 days ago

The point is not forbidding discussion. Advice on important matters that may have serious legal or medical implications should be done by professionals who can be held accountable for their behavior, not sentence generators hosted by mostly unaccountable tech companies (which may be in another jurisdiction altogether).

Information is not siloed away by requiring license for legal or medical advice. It’s not like someone is hiding law codes or whatever.

Comment by droidjj 2 days ago

The plaintiff is represented by one of the largest law firms in the world, Sidley Austin. Which is to say: they have legal firepower.

Comment by verdverm 2 days ago

Nippon is a company that can afford that.

I'm a bit sus that they can bring OpenAI into this given this is just one woman using ChatGPT to generate terrible legal submissions. The ToS will be important here, but one can liken this to trying to bring the car manufacturer into a lawsuit over a car crash.

As far as I'm aware, OpenAI is not selling any legal products.

Comment by Aurornis 2 days ago

The largest lawfirms are happy to take on cases like this even if they don’t expect a win. The number of billable hours it will generate for them is very high.