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Any AI/service that can translate legal writings to a more understandable version? (lemmy.ca)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml
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Any AI/service that can translate legal writings to a more understandable version?

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[โ€“] -5 points 11 months ago (5 children)

That's a bit extreme? In general yes they should get a lawyer but I'm not calling mine every time Facebook updates their eula or whatever. But more than that, are we going to pretend that having the answer doesn't make solving a math problem easier? You might have gotten the wrong answer yourself but with the key you can figure out how to get there. Or with language, I have maybe an a2 reading comprehension in Turkish, but if I have the translation already I can be sure I'm remembering words correctly and suddenly I'm more like b1. I won't trust the translation 100% if it's Google translate or whatever but it still gets me a lot further than if I had nothing.

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  • [โ€“] 13 points 11 months ago (3 children)

    The reason you ask a lawyer and not an LLM if you can't understand the original document is because LLMs regularly misinterpret and hallucinate, and you might have no way to verify that what it says is true.

    The LLM doesn't know things. It isn't "the key" or "the answer". I don't think this user is talking about translating a legal document from another actual language or anything.

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  • [โ€“] -3 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    Google translate isn't the key or the answer either, it's constantly slightly wrong, but it's still useful because you can combine it with your own partial understanding to get the right translation.

    It feels like you're either missing or ignoring my point entirely here, I'm not saying use Google translate for the legal document, I'm giving examples of how imperfect tools can still help you get to where you need to go. You're saying it's completely useless because sometimes it's going to be wrong, I'm just saying that's an un-nuanced take. Yes if they're signing a contract, absolutely get a lawyer if you don't understand what you're signing, but occasionally you just need to look up a law or accept a eula, and it would be nice to be able to have some help reading it, even if it's from an imperfect tool.

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  • [โ€“] 8 points 11 months ago (1 child)

    Being slightly wrong in a translation is bad, for sure, but doesn't (often) invent new facts. I still would not trust it for a legal document, personally.

    I did actually originally ask what your point was in the comment I wrote, but I couldn't phrase it in a way that didn't feel hostile - which I hope I'm not coming across as. I just couldn't quite grasp the point you were trying to make, and I think it's because we disagree on a fundamental level here.

    Yes if they're signing a contract, absolutely get a lawyer if you don't understand what you're signing, but occasionally you just need to look up a law or accept a eula, and it would be nice to be able to have some help reading it, even if it's from an imperfect tool.

    I agree with the first part about signing a contract, but totally disagree with the second. If I need to look up a law, or anything at all, I would never run it through a machine that regularly invents "facts" from whole cloth, or misinterprets, while agreeing and confidently backing any implications I give it. LLMs are inherently untrustworthy, in my opinion, partly because they're programmed to be "yes-men" who engage the user constantly in order to sell them a service, and partly because they don't "know" anything - they just essentially scrape the web and then uncritically mash whatever they find together and return it in convincing natural language.

    I think they are dangerous to engage with at any level.

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  • [โ€“] 2 points 11 months ago*

    Totally fair disagreement to have there. I'm extremely critical of llms for many of the same reasons as you, plus environmental and economical concerns. Having said that however for summarization, simplification, and rephrasing they don't tend to hallucinate. Exactly as you say, they don't know anything, but they're instructed to always answer, so when something that doesn't match their training data comes along they hallucinate. For this kind of task though a specialized llm is actually a pretty good fit. As long as such a tool is used responsibly and carefully I don't see why it couldn't exist and be moderately helpful.

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