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Use of AI tools like ChatGPT is so common now for people looking for Illinois legal advice that I expect some day we are going to see a legal malpractice lawsuit against an AI company. We have already seen similar suits on behalf of families whose loved ones killed themselves in part based on AI guidance.
The problem is that AI does not actually think. It can regurgitate information it is aware of in a confident manner. It is almost like sports radio where someone yells and acts confident so people believe it. That is not to say it is never right, but the problem is that it is often wrong.
A recent caller to our office started off by telling me, “I am very smart and make over a million dollars a year. I have been involved in a car accident case for three years and I want you to help verify something for me. AI told me what my case is worth, but my lawyer tells me that is wrong and the best offer I can get is $50,000. That is ten times less what AI told me I should get. Can I sue my lawyer or file a bad faith lawsuit against the insurance company?
The Problem With Someone Who Takes Legal Advice From AI
I knew this call was going south when the person led off by telling me how smart they are and how much money they make.
This is the truth about relying on ChatGPT or another product for legal advice. The chances they will get it wrong are so great, that you will always have to wonder what it got wrong and what you are missing. That is if you are being honest with yourself. I say that for a few reasons including:
- AI lacks nuance – By that I mean that every day I get calls from people who want to discuss one legal issue, but in talking to them I realize they have not thought about something else that could solve their problem.
- AI can’t have the full picture – You can tell it your version of events, but surely are not going to give it the version that the opposing party will tell. So you are getting the advice you want to hear versus what the true situation is. Also, AI does not know who the Judge is, the opposing lawyer’s motivations or other external factors that affect the outcome of a case.
- AI does not have real world experience – In the car accident example above, part of the reason the caller was getting only $50,000 had to do with negotiating medical liens. How that works varies from state to state, case to case and based on who the medical providers are. If you haven’t dealt with that in actuality you can’t help someone. A machine can not comprehend all of the possible scenarios.
- AI does not think or reason – What it does is spit out a sentence based on information it is given. It often hallucinates and makes up case law and it is geared toward telling you what you want to hear.
So Is All AI Terrible?
That is not to say AI does not have useful functions. It can summarize text, help you craft a vacation plan or even get you started on drafting a letter. The summary might take the place of actual thinking. The vacation plan might be great or might miss out on things you would find out on your own, but it essentially acts as a search engine which is what it is. The drafting of the letter is great, especially if you lack creativity or are crunched for time.
But you are fooling yourselves if you think it is intelligent. You can not put a bunch of words into a machine and rely on it to regurgitate something that you can rely on to handle a complicated matter. It can give solid, generic summaries of cases, but not actual legal guidance.
And it certainly can not accurately tell you what your case is worth. If you rely on it to do so, you are either going to be disappointed with the outcome or end up settling for too little money because AI lacked the nuance or information to figure out that your case is actually worth so much more.