Stanford student Josh Browder received a lot of ink last summer as word of his successful lawyer chatbot made the rounds. Browder created the chatbot named DoNotPay because he felt that most parking tickets were unfair and targeted people with little means of recourse. The bot quickly answered legal questions for someone that would explain what their legal options were, if they had options. Browder creates with computers and code to help the world and he has already worked with a bunch of human rights groups. Taking his parking-ticket bot, Mr. Browder is repurposing it now to help refugees claim asylum.
Browder says this new functionality for his robot lawyer is “long overdue”. He told the Guardian: “I’ve been trying to launch this for about six months – I initially wanted to do it in the summer. But I wanted to make sure I got it right because it’s such a complicated issue. I kept showing it to lawyers throughout the process and I’d go back and tweak it.
“That took months and months of work, but we wanted to make sure it was right.”
Browder began working on this project before Donald Trump’s election as US president but he said he feels it’s more important now than ever. “I wanted to add Canada at the last minute because of the changes in the political background in the US,” he said.
Browder’s bot takes asylum seekers through a series of simplified questions that allow them to figure out what their next legal moves should be in order to achieve the safety they are desperate for. The bot also works to protect the privacy of the user.
Browder is also doing everything he can to protect users. The information obtained to autofill applications is only stored long enough to be transferred and deleted within 10 minutes of the app's use. The chatbot can also put users in touch with legal representation if requested.
This bot's success will be much more difficult to enumerate, but it's building on Browder's past successes. Since the debut of DoNotPay, Browder's legal assistance bots have helped UK citizens obtain reimbursement for delayed planes/trains and helped homeless individuals seek emergency housing.
Kids these days.