Angry Workers Use AI to Bombard Businesses With Employment Lawsuits (telegraph.co.uk) 21
An anonymous reader shared this report from the Telegraph:
Workers with an axe to grind against their employer are using AI to bombard businesses with costly and inaccurate lawsuits, experts have warned.
Frustration is growing among employment lawyers who say they are seeing a trend of litigants using AI to help them run their claims, which they say is generating "inconsistent, lengthy, and often incorrect arguments" and causing a spike in legal fees... Ailie Murray, an employment partner at law firm Travers Smith, said AI submissions are produced so rapidly that they are "often excessively lengthy and full of inconsistencies", but employers must then spend vast amounts of money responding to them. She added: "In many cases, the AI-generated output is inaccurate, leading to claimants pleading invalid claims or arguments.
"It is not an option for an employer to simply ignore such submissions. This leads to a cycle of continuous and costly correspondence. Such dynamics could overburden already stretched tribunals with unfounded and poorly pleaded claims."
There's definitely been a "significant increase" in the number of clients using AI, James Hockin, an employment partner at Withers, told the Telegraph. The danger? "There is a risk that we see unrepresented individuals pursuing the wrong claims in the UK employment tribunal off the back of a duff result from an AI tool."
Frustration is growing among employment lawyers who say they are seeing a trend of litigants using AI to help them run their claims, which they say is generating "inconsistent, lengthy, and often incorrect arguments" and causing a spike in legal fees... Ailie Murray, an employment partner at law firm Travers Smith, said AI submissions are produced so rapidly that they are "often excessively lengthy and full of inconsistencies", but employers must then spend vast amounts of money responding to them. She added: "In many cases, the AI-generated output is inaccurate, leading to claimants pleading invalid claims or arguments.
"It is not an option for an employer to simply ignore such submissions. This leads to a cycle of continuous and costly correspondence. Such dynamics could overburden already stretched tribunals with unfounded and poorly pleaded claims."
There's definitely been a "significant increase" in the number of clients using AI, James Hockin, an employment partner at Withers, told the Telegraph. The danger? "There is a risk that we see unrepresented individuals pursuing the wrong claims in the UK employment tribunal off the back of a duff result from an AI tool."
She acts like rising fees are a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
Lawyers designed a system where nothing is concrete. Until there are penalties for throwing crap at a wall and seeing what sticks, nothing will change.
I'd like to hear what penalties the bar associations propose before taking any of this seriously. I suspect penalties will be "a step too far".
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It's a good idea that people pushing frivolous lawsuits should pay a price if the lawsuit is indeed frivolous, but do keep in mind that this also can be subject to abuse.
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Throwing crap at a wall was essentially Trump's legal defense strategy, and it worked by delaying everything long enough for his get out of jail free card to be used. This isn't a new strategy, throwing crap at a wall to slow down the legal system is common. Though this usually required you to have some significant financial resources, as it can be expensive. But AI helps, even if it's bad AI (but that's redundant), because the purpose is not to have good legal arguments but to get stuff filed often.
Now i
Careful what you wish for (Score:2)
This is what companies get when they treat their employees as robots and cogs in a machine rather than human beings - they get to talk to the real robots who they can't just ghost like they don't matter.
Re: DEI Lawsuits. Never hire DEI, because they SUE (Score:1)
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White males are possibly the most beneficiaries of DEI, with black men being lowest. Because DEI isn't a quota system, it's a system that encourages outreach and discourages discrimination. This means hiring more veterans, and most veterans are white males, just by demographics. White women are the second biggest beneficiaries, and yes, I know the trogs freak out if a female is flying a plane but there's no sense in arguing with a trog.
Trump seemed somewhat concerned that someone disabled might be able t
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Congrats on saying something even more retarded that rsilvergun that is a singular achievement.
And the lesson is .. (Score:2)
A dangerous trend (Score:2)
When I first read TFS I thought "Good! Turnabout is fair play, and companies that have been 'administriviating' their employees for decades are getting their just desserts". But then I read TFS:
A big warning label for clients is that uploading certain of their employer’s data to an AI tool is very likely going to constitute a breach of the confidentiality provisions on their employment contract.
I'm still inclined to side with the angry workers, but I hope they don't do anything that makes their own lot in life worse rather than better.
HR script (Score:2)
Playing the HR script back to HR. Seems appropriate.
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Yea. It's A Bad Thing. (Score:4, Insightful)
On one hand, giving the little guy a little more power and leveling the playing field seems like a great situation and use for AI.
But on the other hand, I can easily see this being abused. I can see this being abused by disgruntled employees. I can see this being abused by competitors.
I can see this putting small companies and startups out of business within days. I can see mega corporations raising the price on their products significantly to cover the increased cost of nuisance suits created by AI, which hurts the consumers. We already had a problem with nuisance suits increasing costs for everyone. Automating and accelerating nuisance suits will make things significantly worse.
Yea. AI spewing nuisance suits is a bad thing.
Rigged arbitration agreements (Score:2)
I don't think these grievances matter much. Most companies make you sign an arbitration agreement when you start working for them. This removes your right to sue in a court with a jury. You instead go to a a private arbitrator (Likely paid by your Employer) who delivers a judgement to a court to be recorded. There is no judicial precedent, no jury, and the decision is not appealable.
If companies are protected by arbitration agreements, then they'll probably not respond to the plaintiff and instead scan t
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Even if this were true, the employer still has to show up in court with an attorney and argue that the plaintiff is covered by such an agreement. If the employer fails to show, the immediately lose.
Unless they ban AI for law (Score:2)
I suspect they'll lobby to ban the use of AI and LLMs in law though. Because unlike us programmers lawyers know what side their bread is buttered on. And they have industry groups (read:Unions) that look out for them.
They are smart enough not to call them unions though, I'll give 'em that.
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No one is going to know if AI wrote the suit or not. The AI tools will get better and modified to eliminate the hallucinations.