Angry Workers Use AI to Bombard Businesses With Employment Lawsuits (telegraph.co.uk) 36
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".
Re:She acts like rising fees are a bad thing (Score:4, Informative)
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.
Re: this also can be subject to abuse (Score:1)
Judges already abuse the system.
Been there (mostly as a jourist) and seen that.
Is the judge hungry and tired: Quick and arbitrary decision.
Did the judge loose an argument at home: Quick and arbitrary decision.
Are you of the other political party: Quick and arbitrary decision.
Are you of a race/religion the judge thinks less of: Quick and arbitrary decision.
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Re:She acts like rising fees are a bad thing (Score:5, Insightful)
It is kinda like the rules where everyone has to go to arbitration, but aimed back at the companies. Now they don't like it.
Remember when the big companies would sue the little guy cause they knew the target didn't have the money for a defense?
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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".
Kind of already exists in the UK legal system. Vexatious litigant. Once declared a vexatious litigant, you're not permitted to start civil proceedings without prior approval.
But there seems to be a simple fix, require a human solicitor to sign off on the complaint. In the UK you can easily find legal assistance when you've a legitimate case (especially as the lawyer can extract their fee from the loser if they win, hence you get good lawyers taking on cases no win, no fee) As much as I sympathise with th
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I can't seem to read the paywall article. I assume this is happening in the UK because it's from the Telegraph.
Here in the US (I won't talk about the UK), Vexatious litigation or malicious prosecution is not going to help in this case. It requires that a related lawsuit has already ended in ended in the plaintiff’s favor and that the plaintiff was harmed, and of course that the defendant was the one who brought or continued the lawsuit. Too little too late in my opinion. Basically you have to go throu
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I can't seem to read the paywall article. I assume this is happening in the UK because it's from the Telegraph.
Yep, the fine summary doesn't mention it but yes, it's a UK thing. UK industrial relations law means that companies need to address grievances, thus far it's not even going to a court, someone is just spamming a company with complaints they legally have to answer.
The Torygraph (Telegraph) is paywalled here in the UK too, you're not missing out on much as that publication tends to be light on facts.
Here in the US (I won't talk about the UK), Vexatious litigation or malicious prosecution is not going to help in this case. It requires that a related lawsuit has already ended in ended in the plaintiff’s favor and that the plaintiff was harmed, and of course that the defendant was the one who brought or continued the lawsuit. Too little too late in my opinion. Basically you have to go through a lawsuit, win, then when the losing defendant comes back with more lawsuits you can go after them for malicious prosecution. A judge can issue an order limiting the defendant from filing further lawsuits against the plaintiff, typically with a time limit. These kinds of court orders exist outside of legislation for the most part, although some states have statute on this. (America is complicated!)
There's also regulations on SLAPP (Strategic lawsuits against public participation), which is stronger in some states than others (some states have their own Anti-SLAPP legislation). Depending on the nature of the lawsuits and the dispute between parties, these laws could apply and provide an mechanism to sue the harassers. The advantage here is you can get lawsuits dismissed at the outset.
Court filing fees are around $100 in the cheapest states (assuming that filing in the most cost effective jurisdiction is a possibility). And simply sending a letter without filing anything costs about a $5 in paper and postage. These notices don't really have to be read by anyone. Put it in a filing cabinet, or throw it away (which is what I did with Amazon's). There is some upper limit to the number of lawsuits someone could generate and file before the cost becomes greater than the advantage, especially in states with high court filing fees.
That's not to see we don't have problems with abusive lawsuits in the US. We certainly do. But there are some remedies as well. I suspect the UK is similar in intent but differs in the details.
The thing is, the US has a far bigger problem with abusive law suits than the UK does, it's just that it li
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it's just that it limits the poor from fighting and fighting back.
I think the main barrier in my state (California) for the poor is that people can't take a day off work to go fight a traffic ticket or present their case in small claims court. Time is in even more short supply than money when you're the working poor.
Also, as a little person even if you've got a rock solid case, a bigger organisation can extend the case beyond your ability to fight it.
There are tricks in some states for small claims. If I have a grievance that is under $10k, you can take a business (including Amazon) to kind of court where attorneys are not allowed. They'll send some low-level manager to represent the company and you have s
Careful what you wish for (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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Congrats on saying something even more retarded that rsilvergun that is a singular achievement.
Re: DEI Lawsuits. Never hire DEI, because they SUE (Score:1)
To be clear, white men without the funds to hire an attorney never want to sue employers, or do businesses never wrong non-DEI hires?
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DEI can also sue you for not hiring them. You're playing checkers while us liberals are playing chess.
And the lesson is .. (Score:2)
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.. that regardless of the value or potential of the technology, humans will use it to their immediate personal advantage.
AI is mentally a toddler at best. Still.
Anyone relying on that for legal work, is going to get the expected result.
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Toddlers are waaaaay more intelligent than A"I".
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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:4, Insightful)
Playing the HR script back to HR. Seems appropriate.
Re:HR script (Score:5, Interesting)
I once got in a weird email conversation with a subcontractor. All emails were multiple paragraphs long, well written, but way too verbose, no spelling mistakes. I was experimenting with an LLM at the time so entered the text and asked for a short summary. It made my job easier. I noticed however that the replies came very fast. I sent him an email: "Please, just send the prompts you enter in chatgpt instead of the text generated by it".
Communication became a lot more efficient after that. Stick to being human. Warts and all.
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.
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The current crop of LLMs aren't going to replace lawyers either. They're probably worse at law than anything else because they're incapable of taking legal precedence into account before regurgitating an amalgamation of what they've been trained on. That might work for other domains, but any
Success story? (Score:3, Insightful)
Angry workers found a way to cost the companies money even when the company knows that it is only an angered worker with an AI. Looks like the company has in incentive not to anger their workers.
Leveling (Score:5, Insightful)