AI & PI Part Two
- 21 July, 2023
- 1.3 GB
In part two of our AI & PI episode, Bob Simon chats with Justice Team member and Hong Law Office’s Edwin Hong. While Bob and Edwin mostly praise how AI can assist in streamlining your work, they also caution against its limitations. Together, they contemplate AI’s unethical usage, AI-generated deep fake videos, and the importance of collaboration and seeking guidance from experienced mentors in the legal field.
Edwin Hong, Simon Law Group
Transcript
Bob Simon:
All right, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to this edition of the Justice Team Podcast. Today we’re going to be talking again about AI in PI. AI and law, practical integration, some things to look out for, some things that are new. As these things continue to evolve at an exponential pace, as was mentioned in the singularity and the thoughts thereafter. We bring none other than a common speaker on the topic, but Mr. Edwin Hong.
Edwin Hong:
You said common speaker. I think you meant commoner, but that’s fine too.
Bob Simon:
Common. No, I meant like Common the rapper ’cause you’re like-
Edwin Hong:
Oh, okay. Yeah.
Bob Simon:
Well, he’s a slashy.
Edwin Hong:
He’s an actor too.
Bob Simon:
He’s a slashy.
Edwin Hong:
We need to get it right.
Bob Simon:
Okay. So common, he likes common.
Edwin Hong:
Basketball, maybe?
Bob Simon:
Really?
Edwin Hong:
Yeah.
Bob Simon:
He can ball?
Edwin Hong:
He can ball.
Bob Simon:
All right. Well, I thought he was just a pretty face and a talking head and a singer, but I guess he’s a baller too. All right. Speaking of ball, I’m going to throw the ball in your court, Edwin. We’re sitting here recording in June of 2023. Things are going to change by July of 2023 likely. What are some things that… And you use AI in our practice, your practice. What are some just practical things that you’re doing right now and learning to use in your day to day?
Edwin Hong:
Well, I use it a lot. It’s evolving at a rapid pace like you see already, even ChatGPT, which is the one that’s known pretty widely. I think a lot of people are afraid to touch it because they don’t really know how to use it. A lot of people-
Bob Simon:
I also heard it’s woke.
Edwin Hong:
It is very woke apparently, whatever definition you want to use for that I guess. But it’s growing and it’s learning and it’s very impressive. Even the ChatGPT is a basic text-based program where you can ask it a query and it spits out whatever you want, Google on steroids if you will. You can literally ask it any kind of question, “Hey, what’s the law on this in California?” What I like to do is I say, “Hey, I want to write a letter to the defense attorney saying this.” Or, “Defense attorney sent me a letter saying, ‘Hey, I want to examine your client.’ I want to respond with these parameters.” It’ll spit out an email for me in 10 seconds.
Bob Simon:
And sometimes it will sound a lot more professional than the QUIBB stuff that you may… Well, I would just write back.
Edwin Hong:
Exactly. And the nice thing about programs like ChatGPT is it’s machine learning, which means it doesn’t just take the input, spit it out, and forget. It retains what you’re asking and tries to develop and give you a better answer. So, if it gives me a response that’s too neutral for me and I wanted to add a little bit of sass, a little bit of talk back. I’ll say, “Hey, say it in a sassier way or a little bit more aggressively,” or whatever you like.
Bob Simon:
Interesting. What platform do you use for these letters, response emails, types of things?
Edwin Hong:
For the basic stuff, I’ll just use ChatGPT, and they have the upgraded version where you can pay and you get kind of the better data set and faster processing times and stuff like that. But even the base one is fine for simpler [inaudible 00:02:58].
Bob Simon:
Where does somebody go to find us?
Edwin Hong:
ChatGPT is OpenAI, openai.com. You can go and register pretty quickly and then just use it there.
Bob Simon:
So go to openai.com, register for ChatGPT?
Edwin Hong:
Yep. Referral code, nothing, because there is none. But it’s super easy to use and you can even ask it, which is impressive. Just say, “Hey, how do I use this program?” And it’ll teach you.
Bob Simon:
Good. Just type it and ask it. We’ll do it live. We’ll just do it now.
Edwin Hong:
Yeah. How do I use ChatGPT? And it’ll spit out an answer. Look at that, “ChatGPT can be used in various applications. It can be used in drafting emails, writing essays, brainstorming ideas, learning new topics, programming help, and even casual conversations.”
Bob Simon:
Oh my God, it’s still going.
Edwin Hong:
It’s still going. “Here are some ways you can make the most use out of ChatGPT. Define the context, direct instructions, ask for elaboration.” This goes on and on and on.
Bob Simon:
Can you ask and say, “Hey, I want to do a social media post as a lawyer discussing…” What’s something that’s hot in the press right now? Some legal topic? By the way, ChatGPT’s still answering your last question, it’s still going.
Edwin Hong:
It is. How about liability for driverless cars?
Bob Simon:
In California? Well, whatever. Let’s see what it says. And this is what I’ve been playing around with… Oh my god, here we go.
Edwin Hong:
It has the full framework for a post. It suggests that you use an emoji of a car and says, “As the era of autonomous vehicles steadily emerges, the question of liability in the event of a car accident becomes more critical than ever.” Sad face emoji. And it just goes on with that.
Bob Simon:
It’ll even tell you even the more sophisticated ones, when’s a good time to post? What platform you should put it on? A lot of these you can actually make is blogs like we’ve been doing, you can put a blog to help you put on your website, increases your SEO boost to get that type of case. Now, I think the critical thing here, it’s always trust but verify.
Edwin Hong:
Trust but verify.
Bob Simon:
What have we seen recently of this being used for evil?
Edwin Hong:
We’ve seen an attorney use ChatGPT and get case law that they’ve sent to the court to file and passed off as true. Subsequently getting in trouble once they found out that it was all fake. The best part of that whole story is they asked ChatGPT, “Hey, are these legitimate cases?” And it said, “Yeah, of course they are.”
Bob Simon:
So what is the best… You do legal research and writing. What platform do you use to do it?
Edwin Hong:
Ideally, you could do it all in ChatGPT right? But the issue with ChatGPT is they get their information from everywhere. Whether it’s a fake article or real article or whatever. Oftentimes, the cases that it cites, the names might be real, the case numbers might be real, but the contents are completely made up. It’s because it’s pulling from everywhere. We’ve come upon Casetext, which has this system called CoCounsel where they have a database of actual legal authorities that they’ve shepherdized and done everything too. So, if you combine that with ChatGPT, now ChatGPT has this legitimate and verified resource to pull data from. So when you ask that system, “Hey, defense disturbed me with discovery regarding the prior financial documents and whatever, and a personal injury action, what authority can they use to combat this?” And it spits out actual cases. Or you drag and drop a motion defense file and say, “Hey, please cite check this case brief. How valid are their authorities? How can I challenge it?” And it’ll give you actual legitimate case law to fight it.
Bob Simon:
Yeah, and I think that’s what I always tell people… I always see these new products coming out and say it’s AI, I saw a commercial yesterday, we were watching the Sandoval, the finale, the reunion of Vanderpump Rules and the commercial, the middle of it was like, “AI for skincare.” I was like, “This isn’t fucking AI.” Everything’s AI now because it’s a buzzword. But look, everybody can take, I’ve seen a lot of actually tech platforms that just want to launch new product like, “We’re doing AI.” It’s like, “Motherfucker, you’re just putting something on ChatGPT.” It’s not nothing fancy. But I think the use case here is like Casetext is a legal research platform that had all this stuff already on it and then it’s being taught with, I think they’re using ChatGPT, either 3.5 or 4.0.
Edwin Hong:
Yeah.
Bob Simon:
But that’s what makes it interesting. That’s what makes it more accurate.
Edwin Hong:
Yeah.
Bob Simon:
Now they’re not going to be able to maybe help you with social media posts.
Edwin Hong:
Well, maybe it could, right? But that’s the thing, AI, there’s so many different levels and types, right?
Bob Simon:
Well, I mean for Casetext specific. I think AI can help you with those things.
Edwin Hong:
Yeah, Casetext, they even do it where you can say, “Hey, I’m deposing a treating doctor focusing on spine injuries specifically for cervical spine and C2, C3,” whatever it is. “Can you make me a deposition outline?” And it’ll spit out a lot of issues for you to address and you can say, “Hey, clarify these points or add these points.”
Bob Simon:
I’ve used it for that as well and it’s very good because it gives you a good outline and then some maybe case law to fall back on. And again, it’s like teaching a child. You have to continue to ask it questions, redefine, and it has to be specific as your question is. What are some other practical things? We talked about just using the OpenAI, a ChatGPT to write letters or emails, spitball questions. We talk about Casetext, use of CoCounsel using it for social media. What are some other ways that you, Edwin Hong, as a lawyer is using AI?
Edwin Hong:
Sure. Well, there’s so many tools that are out now and more that are emerging every day. There’s tools that integrate AI between your different platforms. If I send myself an email with a specific subject line saying “jury selection”, and I send myself a picture of the jury sheet, it’ll send it to another program that OCR’s it, scans it and lists all the names in a table, and that can send it to another program that does an automated search for these jurors in this specific city. So, there’s a lot of different tools out there. There’s one called Zapier or Zapier, I don’t know how you pronounce it-
Bob Simon:
Yeah, and it bounces it back and forth.
Edwin Hong:
That bounces it between a lot of different programs.
Bob Simon:
[inaudible 00:09:00] company’s been fantastic. There’s a lot of stuff we’re doing on the back end and we call it zapping back and forth. It’s going to be important in a use case like that. This was a month ago we were talking about, I was like, “There will be a platform where you take a picture of the jury sheet, use AI, and it’ll be able to pull out their social media handles and tell you what posts that they’re making and what’s relevant.” And here we are.
Edwin Hong:
Exactly. We’re doing it already, and next month it’s going to be different.
Bob Simon:
Yeah.
Edwin Hong:
It’s insane.
Bob Simon:
Man, any other use cases or things… Again, a lot of our listeners I think are law school, young lawyers, aspiring lawyers. It’s a hot topic in our YPO group, I was in our meeting yesterday and everybody’s very interested in just learning how to put AI into their companies.
Edwin Hong:
Yeah, and what’s really cool is if you have a base system like ChatGPT, you can just ask it, “Hey, how can I use you?” And it’ll give you a bunch of little options. If you be more specific like, “Hey, I’m an attorney in California practicing personal injury law. How can I use you for this?” It’ll teach you how to streamline your office sometimes. It’ll teach you draft template emails to your clients or to opposing counsel, all sorts of stuff.
Bob Simon:
I think it’s going to reach a point too where it’s going to be in your operation systems and you’ll be able to, “Hey, send out these types of emails to all my clients or engage my customers every 30 days and then learn how I would answer these questions and… Shit, this is exciting, I can hide.”
Edwin Hong:
Yeah.
Bob Simon:
I saw a product where it’s almost like a deep fake where you can, I know people that are using it for training videos where I can record a video once and then they can use AI to dub in certain parts of it and do it en masse.
Edwin Hong:
Yeah.
Bob Simon:
Scary but practical.
Edwin Hong:
And not just that, but Apple just announced their program where you can speak, I think a hundred or something sentences into it and it starts recognizing, recording your voice and then it’ll do a FaceTime scan of your face. So, if you don’t want to talk to someone, you can type in what you wanted to say and your face will talk and send that message.
Bob Simon:
See, I love that because I don’t want to talk to people.
Edwin Hong:
But at the same time, I’m going to use that a lot to blackmail you.
Bob Simon:
No, my wife and I talked about this the other day is I’ve heard of use cases where people are making fake kidnapping calls with this because it sounds like your voice or your image. So, we’re with our kids, we’re giving them safe words in case this happens to them like you ask this AI creature, “Okay, so what’s the safe word?”
Edwin Hong:
Yeah, I’ve done the same thing with my daughter. We have safe words and I just-
Bob Simon:
Is it Bosco?
Edwin Hong:
It’s not. Well, now I got to change it, shit.
Bob Simon:
I knew it.
Edwin Hong:
Yeah, it’s scary. And now, even in politics. They have all these deep fake videos coming out, politicians saying things that they haven’t said. Even I think the GOP recently released a campaign video that was built with AI, it’s insane. It’s crazy.
Bob Simon:
A lot of the masses are just too unsophisticated to figure it out, and sometimes it’s going to be so tricky. One that’s going to be where someone’s going to have a video of somebody and you have to say, “That’s not me.” What’s going to be the limus test for that?
Edwin Hong:
Yeah, and now they have AI tools that detect AI. Back in college, you use websites like turnitin.com and it would scan the internet and see what percentage of your essay was plagiarized. Now, it’s what percentage of your essay or how likely is it that AI wrote your essay?
Bob Simon:
Really?
Edwin Hong:
Yeah, there’s a lot of [inaudible 00:12:16].
Bob Simon:
Ed, if you don’t know, is also a professor of law.
Edwin Hong:
I am in my spare time, which I don’t know how much there is.
Bob Simon:
Well, tell us, where are you a professor at?
Edwin Hong:
Western State College of Law. I’m teaching a civil pre-trial litigation class.
Bob Simon:
I took that type of class in law school and I always thought that the most practical thing you could do if you’re a law student listening, is take classes taught by people actually practicing. We had that class, they were usually after hours, is yours after hours?
Edwin Hong:
Yeah. Well, mine’s 3:00 to 5:00 to make it a little bit more accessible.
Bob Simon:
It was always like our trial practice one, real lawyer teaching how to try cases, or our civil litigation one, and that’s where I found the most value. Listening to stuff like this I think, is a lot more value than learning tax law, which you’ll never apply.
Edwin Hong:
Yeah, or family law, which I’ll never practice, hopefully. But it’s a fun class. I have half the class suing the other half. So they did a complaint, they did an answer back, some written discovery back and forth, and then depositions with-
Bob Simon:
Did they end it in trial by combat?
Edwin Hong:
I tried to suggest that, but the dean said no, but I guess they don’t have to find out.
Bob Simon:
Ugh, sounds like this dean’s going to get replaced by Jarvis. Yeah, but I’ve seen some other, Google’s coming out with a product. Everybody’s racing into the… Hopefully they’ve been waiting for this in launch, but I’ve seen a lot of people rushing to the, “We now have AI.” It’s like, “You didn’t have it a month ago and now you have this whole new product that does things? Come on.”
Edwin Hong:
Everyone says they have AI. And AI, even the chess game that you play on your computer against yourself, that’s AI. It just takes an input and spits out an output. But right now, we’re seeing machine learning happen a lot where you’re actually learning a lot. And these tools, you can even say, “Hey, how do I better ask this question? What information do you need from me for me to get a better response?” And it’ll say, “Well, tell me what jurisdiction you’re in. Tell me the specific injuries at play,” and all sorts of stuff. It’ll help you learn how to use it, which is kind of cool and scary at the same time.
Bob Simon:
And be concerned, if something sounds too good to be true, fact check it. I saw somebody was putting ads out on Instagram saying, “I used AI to get my car crash settlement. I got $145,000.” Legit, I saw this. They held up a check. It was obviously a handwritten check, like her mom sent it.
Edwin Hong:
It’s always a personal check folded in half or something.
Bob Simon:
Yeah, like the insurance company sent you something like that. Yeah, GTFO. And then, you do a little clicking, you realize, is some lawyer trying to advertise for this unethically?
Edwin Hong:
Yeah.
Bob Simon:
Come on. If you see an AI product or someone that says they have it, one vet it, two, ask people. I like to go to crunchbase.com and see is this is a real company? Is it well funded? Or is this just a popup that’s just literally white labeling somebody else’s product?
Edwin Hong:
Pretty much, yeah. And that’s a lot of what it is, they just say the word AI to get you interested, right? That’s kind of it.
Bob Simon:
Yeah. I think that’s why we hired you. You said you came with AI.
Edwin Hong:
I literally do right here. I’m not doing any of the work. It’s all this.
Bob Simon:
Well, he was wearing an Allen Iverson jersey.
Edwin Hong:
Practice.
Bob Simon:
There we go. We throw it back to hoops at the end. All right.
Edwin Hong:
Practice, have practice.
Bob Simon:
Talk about practice.
Edwin Hong:
Talk about practice.
Bob Simon:
Now, we don’t need to practice so much for this ask ChatGPT some shit. Yeah. Any other practical advice before we jump in and out? ‘Cause we’re going to try to keep the AI series here a little short ’cause it evolves.
Edwin Hong:
Yeah, it does. Practical advice for law in general? Work in a community, talk to people, get mentors, get colleagues. Trying to practice law on your own, I think you’re very limited, not just in knowledge but in skills and abilities and everything. It doesn’t hurt to be able to spitball a case with someone, get a new angle of the liability damages.
Bob Simon:
I wonder if it could reach the point where we keep teaching AI to look for our flaws in this case, instead of using focus groups, you just have AI start to shoot holes in it. Shit.
Edwin Hong:
So, actually in Casetext’s CoCounsel, what they did was they actually did it on Today’s Show or something like that. They uploaded all the material used for the January 6th committee for the insurrection. “Insurrection,” maybe. And they said, “Hey, what evidence in here can be used to support the fact that Trump incited these riots?” And conversely, “What can we use to say that he didn’t?” And it doesn’t just take those words to say, “Don’t riot, don’t riot.” But it actually tries to understand your language and it spits out responses that can arguably go back and forth.
Bob Simon:
Wow.
Edwin Hong:
Text messages or emails and phrases that can be construed one way or another. It’s like the other day we had an example, “Would the Cat in the Hat be a good babysitter?” And it took things even out of context. The phrases that the little fish in the fishbowl said that could be used to say that he wasn’t a good babysitter. Or conversely what the kids might have liked about the Cat in the Hat. So, it’s pretty insane and amazing how it’s growing already, but it’s kind of scary too.
Bob Simon:
Yeah. I think as we said before, trust but verify before you sign your name on that pleading or motion or discovery response. ‘Cause it is your work product and it is your ass.
Edwin Hong:
Or do what I do and just sign Bob Simon’s name.
Bob Simon:
You don’t even need AI for that.
Edwin Hong:
No, I have it on a PDF. I just copy paste.
Bob Simon:
Yeah, it’s pretty easy. Just scribble, scribble, put a period and then people ask me, “Hey, did you sign that?” I’ll be like, “Probably. I don’t fucking know.” Man, I’ll be listening to this podcast in penitentiary.
Edwin Hong:
There we go.
Bob Simon:
Hopefully, I get the light security one like Elizabeth Holmes, she looks pretty comfortable in there.
Edwin Hong:
She does look pretty cozy, but it seems to be the way.
Bob Simon:
She’ll be there for quite some time. Well Edwin, thanks for coming on. Edwin Hong, how can our listeners find you?
Edwin Hong:
Email [email protected].
Bob Simon:
How about your social handles?
Edwin Hong:
My socials are, I have Hong Office, which is mostly fun. 90% fun, 10% serious. Probably less serious actually than fun. [email protected]. You can text me at (949) 414-4664, which I’ve had for a long time now. Or my Instagram handle also is lawyer something, I don’t know. It’s out there somewhere.
Bob Simon:
There you go. You’ve got some creeper accounts AI told him to have, to look at jurors and things. You have any questions about AI or how to use it in your practice or any about a case evaluation, maybe we can help you with as real lawyers and maybe Edwin’s just going to drop it in ChatGPT and let it spit back out to you. But it’s still never going to take away that human element, ladies, gentlemen, because you still got to communicate with a jury and draw some emotion and be able to come to a very reasonable compensation, which we like to think is very high.
Edwin Hong:
Yeah, it’s a good thing I have very little human element to begin with.
Bob Simon:
1001000001, thank you for coming on.
Edwin Hong:
Thank you.
