d0odk

it's not securities fraud if investors make a lot of money

Yes, that's what I'm addressing with my comment above.

Ethically, if you extend this reasoning, are we not obligated to find a position in the most morally repulsive organization we are aware of, and then coast?

If you show revenue, people will ask "How much?" And it will never be enough, but if you have no revenue, you can say you're pre-revenue. You're a potential pure play. It's not about how much you earn, it's about what you're worth. And who's worth the most? Companies that lose money.

My gut instinct is that this would be a hugely underperforming investment strategy on both an absolute and risk adjusted basis. I would welcome empirical evidence contradicting my gut.

I directionally agree with you. But there are plenty of examples of scientists being extremely petty, political or egotistical further back in history. Newton and Leibniz. Gauss withholding publication of non-Euclidean geometry presumably due to fear of Kant.

I wonder if there is any empirical analysis of what has historically funded/supported scientific work (private funding vs. academic systems).

I also wonder whether a lone genius in it for the "love of the game" could make much progress in cutting edge science nowadays, given the cost of experiments and the specialization of fields.

Really interesting food for thought.

The article has several paragraphs addressing these points...

You can just sell the options. You don't need to exercise.

Dan Simmons' books often include AI plot elements and contemplate the consequences of humans becoming overly reliant on AI such that they lose basic competencies.

Ah, that makes sense. Given your original comment, I was considering unevenly distributed life across an infinite universe. But you're right of course, that is irrelevant to the fermi paradox.

Isn't that just the observable universe?

With AI, there can be more content, produced faster and probably more cheaply, that is tailored to individual users.

Do you think every business owns the land and building it operates in? Real estate is expensive. Maintaining a building is expensive. There are plenty of businesses that rent to avoid the capital requirement and headache of property ownership.

Critique of Pure Reason is Kant. I thought you were making a joke based on the earlier mixup between Kant and Wittgenstein. Late Wittgenstein is Philosophical Investigations. There are also good texts on philosophy of language that excerpt from the major authors (including Wittgenstein) without requiring you to read the entirety of their books.

lol

Have you read later Wittgenstein?

My gripe is that the commenter above cites early Wittgenstein as an example of the failure of philosophy as a whole, while ignoring (or perhaps being unaware) that later Wittgenstein is what is philosophical "canon". I'll concede there is some debate about how Wittgenstein's views evolved over his life and the extent to which he repudiated his earlier work. But I think you're going a bit far by characterizing what I said as "confidently wrong history," if that's directed at what I wrote.

Okay, but you initially criticized Wittgenstein, the philosopher, not Tractatus, the work. Wittgenstein himself would agree that Tractatus is deeply flawed. He wrote his more influential works later, and they went in a completely different philosophical direction. You're criticizing a philosopher as "pooh-pooh-able" for a work that he personally disavowed and does not represent the positions he is best known for.

Someone who is discrediting all of philosophy shouldn't confuse Wittgenstein and Kant.

Further, Wittgenstein disavowed Tractatus as a failed project and completely revised his approach to philosophy. His most important and influential works came afterwards.

The gp gets carry

Any particular papers you would recommend? The links are to blogs with lots of papers.

Thanks. Appreciate your feedback.

Do you think LLMs have meaningfully greater capabilities than existing tools (like Kira)?

I take your point on low stakes contracts vs. sophisticated work. There has been automation at the "low end" of the legal totem pole for a while. I recall even ten years ago banks were able to replace attorneys with automations for standard form contracts. Perhaps this is the next step on that front.

I agree that rewriting existing contracts is more useful than generating new ones--that is what most attorneys do. That said, I haven't been very impressed by the drafting capabilities of the LLM legal tools I have seen. They tend to replicate instructions almost word for word (plain English) rather than draw upon precedent to produce quality legal language. That might be enough if the provisions in question are term/termination, governing law, etc. But it's inadequate for more sophisticiated revisions.

In fairness some lawyers will too, haha. I take your point, though. Good lawyers care about their reputation and strive to protect it.

How do you think organizations can best use the contractual interpretations provided by LLMs? To expand on that, good lawyers don't just provide contractual interpretations, they provide advice on actions to take, putting the legal interpretation into the context of their client's business objectives and risk profile. Do you see LLMs / tools based on LLMs evolving to "contextualize" and "operationalize" legal advice?

Do you have any views on whether context window limits the ability of LLMs to provide sound contractual interpretations of longer contracts that have interdependent sections that are far apart in the document?

Has your level of optimism for the capabilities of LLMs in the legal space changed at all over the past year?

You mentioned that lawyers hoard templates. Most organizations you would have as clients (law firms or businesses) have a ton of contracts that could be used to fine tune LLMs. There are also a ton of freely available contracts on the SEC's website. There are also companies like PLC, Matthew Boender, etc., that create form contracts and license access to them as a business. Presumably some sort of commercial arrangement could be worked out with them. I assume you are aware of all of these potential training sources, and am curious why they were unsatisfactory.

Thanks for any response you can offer.

It's a logical reaction, at least superficially, to the touted capabilities of Gen AI and LLMs. But once you start trying to use the tech for actual legal applications, it doesn't do anything useful. It would be great if some mundane legal tasks could be automated away--for example negotiation of confidentiality agreements. One would think that if LLMs are capable of replacing lawyers, they could do something along those lines. But I have not seen any evidence that they can do so effectively, and I have been actively looking into it.

One of the top comments on this thread says that LLMs are going to better at summarizing contracts than generating them. I've heard this in legal tech product demos as well. I can see some utility to that--for example, automatically generating abstracts of key terms (like term, expiration, etc.) for high-level visibility. That said, I've been told by legal tech providers that LLMs don't do a great job with some basic things like total contract value.

I question how the document summarizing capabilities of LLMs will impact the way lawyers serve business organizations. Smart businesspeople already know how to read contracts. They don't need lawyers to identify / highlight basic terms. They come to lawyers for advice on close calls--situations where the contract is unclear or contradictory, or where there is a need for guidance on applying the contract in a real-world scenario and assessing risk.

Overall I'm less enthusiastic about the potential for LLMs in the legal space than I was six months ago. But I continue to keep an eye on developments and experiment with new tools. I'd love to get some feedback from others on this board who are knowledgeable.

As a side note, I'm curious if anyone knows about the impact of context window on contract interpretation a lot of contracts are quite long and have sections that are separated by a lot of text that nonetheless interact with each other for purposes of a correct interpretation.

Please elaborate with some examples of what legal work you think will be optimized with AI tools.

Someone remind the admin his password is hunter2

Yes, absolutely.

"Generally" is inaccurate in the LLC context. Same goes for the rest of the paragraph.

For LLCs, fiduciary duties can be, and often are, waived under Delaware law.