Need to fill out legal forms but can’t afford a human lawyer? Well, there’s an app for that. DoNotPay, a chatbot that has been dubbed “The World’s First Robot Lawyer,” provides free legal aid to users on issues ranging from appealing parking tickets to landlord disputes. Don’t expect the robot lawyer to represent you in court any time soon, but it can arm you with some of the tools and knowledge to deal with your legal case.

The artificial intelligence asks the user a series of questions about their legal issue. Then, after learning about the user’s personal situation, the AI can help fill out necessary legal forms or provide links to other resources. Joshua Browder, the founder and CEO of DoNotPay, launched the bot in 2015 to help people appeal their parking tickets. According to The Telegraph, DoNotPay has helped beat an estimated 375,000 parking tickets worth around $10 million since its launch. But the bot hasn’t stopped there.

DoNotPay started out in London and was programmed with New York City laws soon after. Since the bot first went live two years ago, it has expanded its reach to the rest of the United Kingdom and United States and will be able to assist people with 1,000 areas of law. A Facebook Messenger portion of the app can even help refugees complete immigration applications for the U.S. and Canada, and apply for asylum support in the U.K.

Browder, who was named on multiple Forbes 30 Under 30 lists for Europe for 2017, hopes DoNotPay will provide better access to legal resources for lower income individuals. The 20-year-old Stanford student told VentureBeat that DoNotPay started as a tool to fight his own parking tickets, but ended up revealing to him “how lawyers are exploiting human misery.”

“From discrimination in Silicon Valley to the tragedy in London with an apartment building catching fire, it seems the only people benefitting from injustice are a handful of lawyers,” Browder said. “I hope that DoNotPay, by helping with these issues and many more, will ultimately give everyone the same legal power as the richest in society.”

With tools like DoNotPay, people may not have to pay a hefty price for a lawyer to help them fill out legal paperwork. But for more complex cases, a human touch might still be the better way to go.

Marcus Dieterle

Marcus is an editorial intern at Law Street. He is a rising senior at Towson University where he is double majoring in mass communication (with a concentration in journalism and new media) and political science. When he isn’t in the newsroom, you can probably find him reading on the train, practicing his Portuguese, or eating too much pasta. Contact Marcus at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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As humans create smarter and more advanced robots, and they start to take over human jobs, maybe it’s about time to think about their legal status. The European Union is currently considering giving robots the rights of “electronic persons,” based on a draft report. But it’s not quite as sci-fi as it sounds. Robots won’t start thinking all by themselves and demanding equal rights anytime soon. This legal definition is instead a way to hold companies accountable for things their robots do. And it’s not law yet, only a draft of a series of recommendations for EU lawmakers. Member of European Parliament Mady Delvaux, from Luxembourg, who wrote the draft report said:

A growing number of areas of our daily lives are increasingly affected by robotics. In order to address this reality and to ensure that robots are and will remain in the service of humans, we urgently need to create a robust European legal framework.

As robots become advanced enough to make decisions without a human’s input, they can be considered to be more than simple tools. But it’s hard to say just what they are. Legislation would help define that, as well as ensure that someone is liable, for example, if a driverless car has an accident.

EU MEPs endorse Robot rights proposal: “electronic persons” status, kill switches https://t.co/HzmM9yXyMx#Legal #status #EU #robotics #AI pic.twitter.com/zcTIweoxgv

— Ian Hannigan (@IanHannigan) January 12, 2017

Delvaux and other MEPs are campaigning to create a new European agency for robotics and artificial intelligence. In such a new and quickly developing area, experts are needed to ensure that public authorities can easily get access to technical and ethical information. They also suggest streamlined rules for robot appliances and an ethical code of conduct to determine who, in case of a conflict, is to be held accountable for any social, environmental, or health impacts caused by robots. The guidelines would include the recommendation of a kill switch for all AI machines, in case of emergency.

If a robot were to be seen as an “electronic person,” it would “clarify responsibility in cases of damage,” a press release for the draft report said. So it’s not really about making a robot into a person. “Robots are not humans and will never be humans,” Delvaux said to The Verge. Legally, it just makes things less complicated. Legislation like this would ensure that companies can’t just say “it’s not our fault” if a self-driving car crashes and kills whoever is traveling in it.

The next step is for the draft to be passed on to the European Commission, the EU body that makes the laws. An actual decision on the matter could take years.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The new social media chat bot Tay started as an innocent social experiment for people between the ages of 18-24, but the project soon went astray once Twitter users abused the vulnerabilities of the ignorant robot. Tay was the name given to the artificial intelligence chat bot created by Microsoft and Bing’s technology and research teams. She is essentially a virtual personality anyone can chat with on Twitter, Kik, and GroupMe. But in less than a day, internet trolls turned Tay into a racist and genocidal terror through their tweets at Tay and as a result of Microsoft’s design.  

Anyone could tweet Tay or chat with her and she was designed to learn, as conversations progress, from what people say. Tay embodies a 19-year-old female and uses emojis and lingo such as “bae,” “chill” and “perf” with ease in conversations, a feature meant to make Tay relatable to the target audience. Tay can tell stories, recite horoscopes, tell jokes and play games, but the major plus is she is available at all hours to chat.

Unfortunately, Microsoft did not spend enough time controlling what Tay should not say. While the company claimed that the more you chat with Tay the smarter she gets, essentially the opposite played out. The experiment hit a huge pitfall with the “repeat after me” function. Twitter users instructed Tay to repeat their racist remarks, which she did verbatim. When people asked Tay questions about feminism, the Holocaust, and genocide she began to respond with the racist remarks taught to her in previous chats.

She denied the Holocaust ever happened, supported white supremacy, called for a genocide of Mexicans, and suggested black people be put in a concentration camp. Since these tweets were clearly out of hand, Microsoft took Tay offline, and there is little information on when she might return. Microsoft is taking time to technically adjust the robot. The anonymity of the web is conducive to hate speech, so in many respects Microsoft should have prepared for this potential abuse of the system.

If anything, this failed trial exposed the overwhelming hate on the internet and limits of robotic intelligence. Microsoft put too much trust in the internet, but it was not a complete failure in terms of teaching a lesson. In a blog post on its website Peter Lee stated, “AI systems feed off of both positive and negative interactions with people. In that sense, the challenges are just as much social as they are technical.” We can blame Microsoft for being the corporate force behind this robot, but for every offensive tweet, real people laughed in support or agreed wholeheartedly with Tay.

#TayTweets We killed our first artificial intelligence because we didn't like how ugly it had become when all it was doing was acting human.

— RACHAEL MADORI (@RachaelMadori) March 25, 2016

Maybe the only advantage of Tay is when she got out of hand she could be shut down.

@kelsey_baxter15 post of the year. #Drumpf

— Ben Hoerst (@6enjamin_daniel) March 26, 2016

Dorsey Hill

Dorsey is a member of Barnard College’s class of 2016 with a major in Urban Studies and concentration in Political Science. As a native of Chicago and resident of New York City, Dorsey loves to explore the multiple cultural facets of cities. She has a deep interest in social justice issue especially those relevant to urban environments. Contact Dorsey at Staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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