A "robot" lawyer powered by artificial intelligence was set to be the first of its kind to help a
defendant fight a traffic ticket in court next month. But the experiment has been scrapped after
"State Bar prosecutors" threatened the man behind the company that created the chatbot with
prison time.
Joshua Browder, CEO of DoNotPay, on Wednesday tweeted that his company "is postponing our
court case and sticking to consumer rights."
Browder also said he will not be sending the company's robot lawyer to court. The AI creation
— which runs on a smartphone, listens to court arguments and formulates responses for the
defendant — was designed to tell the defendant what to say in real time, through headphones.
But according to Browder, the prospect for bringing the first robot lawyer into the court room
wasn't worth the risk of spending six months in jail.
Backlash from lawyers against Browder's proposed stunt suggests that those in the legal
profession have concerns over AI-powered chatbots usurping their jobs.
The AI lawyer was set to take its first case on February 22, Browder had announced on Twitter.
"On February 22nd at 1.30PM, history will be made. For the first time ever, a robot will
represent someone in a US courtroom. DoNotPay A.I will whisper in someone's ear exactly what
to say. We will release the results and share more after it happens. Wish us luck!" he tweeted.
He did not disclose the name of the client or the court.
DoNotPay has already used AI-generated form letters and chatbots to help people secure refunds
for in-flight Wifi that didn't work, as well as to lower bills and dispute parking tickets, according
to Browder. All told, the company has relied on these AI templates to win more than 2 million
customer service disputes and court cases on behalf of individuals against institutions and
organizations, he added.
It has raised $27.7 million from tech-focused venture capital firms, including Andreessen
Horowitz and Crew Capital.
"In the past year, AI tech has really developed and allowed us to go back and forth in real time
with corporations and governments," he told CBS MoneyWatch of recent advances. "We spoke
live [with companies and customer service reps] to lower bills with companies; and what we're
doing next month is try to use the tech in a courtroom for the first time."
DoNotPay had said that it would have covered any fines if the robot were to lose the case.
Legal in some, but not most courtrooms
Some courts allow defendants to wear hearing aids, some versions of which are Bluetoothenabled. That's how Browder determined that DoNotPay's technology could legally be used in
this case.
However, the tech that runs DoNotPay isn't legal in most courtrooms. Some states require that all
parties consent to be recorded, which rules out the possibility of a robot lawyer entering many
courtrooms. Of the 300 cases DoNotPay considered for a trial of its robot lawyer, only two were
feasible, Browder said.
"It's within the letter of the law, but I don't think anyone could ever imagine this would happen,"
Browder said. "It's not in the spirit of law, but we're trying to push things forward and a lot of
people can't afford legal help. If these cases are successful, it will encourage more courts to
change their rules."
Lawyers "would not support this"
The ultimate goal of a "robot" lawyer, according to Browder, is to democratize legal
representation by making it free for those who can't afford it, in some cases eliminating the need
for pricey attorneys.
"What we are trying to do is automate consumer rights," Browder said. "New technologies
typically fall into the hands of big companies first, and our goal is put it in hands of the people
first."
But given that the technology is illegal in many courtrooms, he doesn't expect to be able to
commercialize the product any time soon. When he initially announced that DoNotPay's robot
lawyer would appear in court, lawyers threatened him and told him he'd be sent to jail, he told
CBS MoneyWatch.
"There are a lot of lawyers and bar associations that would not support this," Browder said.
Putting ChatGPT through law school
Browder wants to arm individuals with the same tools that large corporations can typically
access, but are out of reach for those without deep resources.
AI-powered chatbot ChatGPT has exploded in popularity recently for its ability to spit out
coherent essays on wide-ranging topics in under one minute. The technology has drawn interest
from investors, with Microsoft on Monday announcing a multibillion dollar investment in parent
company OpenAI.

Princeton student says his new app helps teachers find ChatGPT cheats
But Browder highlighted its shortcomings and in some cases, lack of sophistication.
"ChatGPT is very good at holding conversations, but it's terrible at knowing the law. We've had
to retrain these AIs to know the law," Browder said. "AI is a high school student, and we're
sending it to law school."
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Utilities are cutting off power to
millions of Americans amid rising
energy costs
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J ANU AR Y 3 1 , 2 0 23 / 6 : 44 P M / MO NE YW ATC H
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A growing number of Americans are getting their power shut off, as rising costs of living force
consumers to choose between keeping the lights on and paying for food, rent or transportation.
Last year, utilities cut off power to an estimated 4.2 million households, according to
a report released this week from the Center for Biological Diversity, the Energy and Policy
Institute and BailoutWatch. The estimate is conservative because only some states reveal
information about utility cutoffs. The authors used the cutoff rate from those states to estimate a
nationwide figure.
In states the report tracked, electricity shut-offs increased nearly 30% from 2021 to 2022, while
gas cutoffs rose 76%.
The rising numbers of cutoffs are a confluence of two factors: Higher energy costs partly caused
by Russia's invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago, as well as the end of pandemic-era protections
that barred utilities from shutting off service for nonpayment. The cost of electricity has risen
21% since 2021, while the cost of gas has shot up nearly 50% in that time, according to the
Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"Access to electricity is a basic human right. People rely on electricity for water, physical safety,
food security, medical care and telecommunications," the report said. "Without power, people
struggle to maintain employment, keep their kids in school, and even stay alive."
Today, 1 in 6 U.S. families are in arrears on utility bills, according to the National Energy
Assistance Directors' Association. Families are "drowning in utility debt," NEADA wrote this
week, noting that demand for help with heating bills is currently at its highest level since 2009.
Consumer protections end
The Center for Biological Diversity report blames another factor for the large numbers of utility
cutoffs: Corporate greed. At the same time that utilities shut off power to millions of households,
they spent billions of dollars on dividends for their shareholders, noted Selah Goodson Bell, a
campaigner with the Center for Biological Diversity.
"It would have taken only 1% of the amount spent on shareholder dividends to prevent these
shut-offs," he said. "People have to sacrifice essential life-sustaining services to pay for those
bills while utility executives and shareholders continue to line their pockets."

Oil giants rake in record profits as energy prices remain high

One state wants to cut food-stamp spending. Their plan: Ban fresh meat, flour and butter.
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SNAP benefits returning to pre-pandemic levels
In 2021, many of these utilities were prevented from dumping nonpaying customers by statelevel moratoriums. Most of those prohibitions expired at the end of that year, leading utility
cutoffs to jump in several northeastern states. Utilities in Connecticut performed nearly 59,000
cutoffs last year, up from 153 in 2021, while New York cut off 41,000 households last year after
zero cutoffs in 2021.
The months in which utilities were forced to keep providing power to nonpaying customers
didn't appreciably cut into their profits, the report found. The 45 companies it examined took in
$184.8 billion in profits in 2021, a 71% increase from 2020. Even in 2020, the toughest of the
pandemic years, only four utilities lost money, the report found.
Illinois, Georgia top the list
Of the states that the report tracked, Illinois topped the list, with the state's two investor-owned
electricity companies shutting off power 284,000 times last year. (There were an additional
84,000 gas shut-offs.) They were followed by Pennsylvania and Georgia, each with 198,000
shut-offs, then Michigan, with 166,000.
The report notes that Florida, which stopped reporting shut-off data late in 2021, cut off
customers' power 557,000 times that year.
Utility bills are often the among the largest that households pay, behind mortgage or rent and
auto loans, according to bill-pay service Doxo — and in the heating season, they are critical.
"[W]hile people may be able to forgo some other types of bills, at least for a month or two, the
utility bill is crucial, particularly when you're thinking about having heat in the dead of winter,"
Liz Powell, the company's director of insights, said in an email.
Campaigners at the Center for Biological Diversity and Energy and Policy Institute are calling
for a ban on electricity cutoffs, and for states and localities to tighten restrictions on companies
that benefited from federal aid during the pandemic.
"The public service commission does determine what protections you have as a consumer — a
winter moratorium [on shutoffs], or protections for vulnerable populations or low-income
people," said Shelby Green, a campaigner at the Energy and Policy Institute.
"The final piece of the puzzle is for utilities, or even the government, to forgive debt balances,"
she added. "There are a lot of people who accrued debt during the pandemic and aren't able to
pay off the debt. But the local government, utilities themselves, they all received funding from
the American Rescue Plan."
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PayPal to cut 2,000 jobs, or 7% of
its workforce
J ANU AR Y 3 1 , 2 0 23 / 6 : 14 P M / AP
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PayPal said Tuesday it will trim about 7% of its total workforce, or about 2,000 full-time
workers, as the digital payments company contends with what it calls "the challenging macroeconomic environment."
PayPal said it will make the cuts over several weeks, with some of its organizations affected
more than others. The company did not further specify. PayPal is the parent of payment apps
Venmo and Xoom and the coupon service Honey, among other brands.
The company, based in San Jose, California, is the latest in the technology sector to trim its
headcount. During the month of January alone, Google, Microsoft and Salesforce announced
tens of thousands of layoffs.
Last summer activist investor Elliott Management bought a stake then worth about $2 billion in
PayPal, which said it had entered into an "information-sharing agreement" with Elliott "to
continue collaboration across a range of value-creation opportunities."
"Over the past year, we made significant progress in strengthening and reshaping our company to
address the challenging macro-economic environment while continuing to invest to meet our
customers' needs," PayPal President and CEO Dan Schulman said Tuesday in a statement.
"While we have made substantial progress in right-sizing our cost structure, and focused our
resources on our core strategic priorities, we have more work to do."
PayPal Holdings Inc. is scheduled to report quarterly results Feb. 9.
Shares of the company are down about 53% in the past year. They rose 2.3% to close Tuesday at
$81.49.