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British programmer Joshua Browder is helping people save a lot of money on legal fees with his latest project – the world’s first robot lawyer. The 19-year-old developed a free service that allows users to ask any kind of legal question and receive relevant answers autogenerated by bots.
英國程序員約書亞•布勞德只有19歲，他的新項目——世界上第一個機器人律師，能幫人們省下不少法律費用。用戶詢問的任何法律問題，機器人程序都可以自動生成相關答案，而且此項服務是免費的。
Browder first started the project last summer as a free website to help people appeal unfair parking tickets. He came up with the idea after getting a series of tickets himself for “trivial reasons”. Having wasted several hours on writing appeals to these tickets, he realised that many people do not have the time, legal knowledge or even the energy to appeal. So he decided to create an automatic appeal generator, using previously successful letters as a template. He aptly named the service DoNotPay, given that the legal fees involved in challenging tickets could mount up to sizable amounts between $400 to $900.
這個項目去年夏天剛開始啟動，當時布勞德只是想做一個免費網站，幫助人們對不公平的停車罰單進行上訴。他萌生出這個想法是因為他自己就因“無關緊要的原因”被開了一連串的罰單。在浪費了幾個小時寫上訴書后，他意識到很多人并沒有時間、法律知識、甚至精力對這些罰單進行上訴。所以他決定做一個自動申訴生成器，以之前成功的申訴書為模板。鑒于對罰單進行上訴的法律費用可以達到400至900美元之多，他恰當地給這項服務命名為“不要付錢”。
DoNotPay was a huge success, and the tech genius has now gone a step further with the website, converting it into a full fledged robo lawyer equipped to help with a range of legal issues. “I realised that the best way to help people would be to create a computer program that could talk to users, generate appeals, and answer questions like a human,” he told Mashable. “The robot can currently handle parking ticket appeals, payment protection insurance (PPI) claims and delayed flights/trains. It can also answer some general legal questions like ‘I can’t afford my ticket. What do I do?’”
“不要付錢”取得了巨大的成功，這個科技天才在網站的基礎上又向前邁出了一步，把網站轉化成一個受過充分訓練的機器人律師，可以幫助人們解決許多法律問題。他對新聞網站Mashable說：“我意識到幫助人們的最好方式就是創造一個電腦程序，這個程序可以與人對話、生成上訴書、回答問題，就像人一樣。目前，這個機器人可以處理停車罰單上訴問題、支付保護保險（PPI）索賠問題和飛機、火車延誤問題。它還可以解答一些基本的法律問題，比如‘我付不起罰單，該怎么辦？’”
“I am ultimately looking to give it as much functionality as possible in the spirit of trying to replace the large group of exploitative lawyers,” he added. To use the service, users need to go to the website donotpay.co.uk and sign up for free. Once signed in, the robot will ask the user a series of questions about their situation. When it has collected enough information, and if the person has legal grounds for an appeal, the robot will then generate a letter for the person to use.
他還說：“秉著設法避免被大批律師剝削的精神，我總是盡可能地給它多添加功能”。使用這項服務，用戶需要到網站donotpay.co.uk免費注冊。注冊成功后，機器人會向他們詢問一系列有關自身情況的問題。收集到足夠信息后，如果用戶的申訴有法律依據，機器人就會生成上訴書。
Browder told Mashable that he received good advice from his professors at Stanford University, where he is currently a freshman. “Initially, I thought the best way to go about it was to create lots of individual rules for it to follow,” he explained. “However, I quickly failed with this approach because there are thousands of ways to say the same thing and it would be impossible to catch every one. The breakthrough came when I learned how to create a way for the robot to learn and compare phrases itself, so that it doesn’t matter how the user phrases his or her requests.”
現在布勞德在斯坦福大學讀大一，他告訴Mashable說教授給了他很好的建議。他解釋說：“一開始，我認為做這個程序最好的方法就是設定許多規則讓它遵守。但是，很快我就放棄了這個方法，因為表達同一件事有幾千種方式，我不可能為每種方式都設定規則。當我學會如何讓機器人自身去學習和分辨措辭時，這才有了突破。這樣一來用戶提問的方式就不成問題了。”
So he programmed the robot to use text comparison that includes keywords, word order and pronouns. And the more that people use the robot, the better the algorithm gets. But there are situations where the robot can’t help, there’s a response ready for that too. “If the robot can’t answer, it provides generic and helpful message offering the user some sample phrases or the option of contacting me directly,” Browder said. “On the backend, whenever the robot can’t answer, I get notified and I work as quickly as possible to add functionality for any future requests of a similar nature.”
因此他給機器人裝上了文本對比程序，包括對比關鍵詞、詞序和代詞。并且使用機器人的用戶越多，這套算法就越完善。但是總會有機器人無法解答的問題，對此他也有對策。布勞德說：“如果機器人不能回答某個問題，他就會給用戶提供一些通用的、有用的信息，比如一些樣本措辭，或者選擇直接與我聯系。在后臺，一旦機器人遇到不會回答的問題，我都會得到通知，然后我就會盡快為它補充相關功能，這樣以后遇到類似問題它就可以解決了。”
