The Exchanges

Q A-C-C-Z fund. For more details, please see A-C-C-Z dot com slash disclosures. I am so excited for this conversation today. I've been seeing you post on Twitter. I've been seeing news articles everywhere about what DoNotPay has been experimenting with. And so we'll get into some of those timely topics, but first let's start out with where DoNotPay originated. So how did DoNotPay start and what really inspired this company?

A So it's no secret that I'm a terrible driver. And when I started driving at age 18, I got about 30 parking tickets between the ages of 20, um, in London and also when I moved here to study in college. And I couldn't afford to pay these really expensive tickets. And I learned something remarkable, which is if you know the right things to say, you can save a lot of money. And, um, I got this reputation among my family and friends as the person who can help with parking tickets. And it wasn't long before people were just messaging me, just pictures of their tickets. They wouldn't even say anything. I didn't want to copy and paste all of these documents. And so I thought, why not build an automated solution with templates where a user can select an option and then a defense is generated and sent to the right place. And I really just did it for a few family and friends, and I never could have imagined that it would go globally viral because people hate parking tickets. And that's what made me realize that the idea of helping people with technology and consumer rights is bigger than just tickets. And so I spent the past almost seven years now expanding Do Not Pay from parking tickets to many other areas of the law.

AI assessment note: “when I started driving at age 18, I got about 30 parking tickets”

Q So tell me a little bit more about that particular use case where you are helping someone get a refund or get access to something where it typically would take hours of someone sitting on the phone. How are you actually facilitating that with technology?

A So our motto is the squeaky wheel gets the grease. So if you are on a flight and the in-flight wifi doesn't work and you've paid, it's now 50 dollars for transcontinental in-flight wifi and it doesn't work. Our software will generate a letter and send it off to United Airlines, and it will cite FTC statutes and be really aggressive. United will receive that letter and think it's not worth it. And so, 80% plus of the time, they just grant the refund. And that's what's amazing is just with a template letter, we've managed to achieve all of this success over the past few years. But what's really exciting is in the past kind of six months, we're actually using more and more true AI. Versus decision tree templates.

AI assessment note: “Our software will generate a letter and send it off to United Airlines”

Q to call out a few and get you to quickly explain what this is, how it works, because I think many people are maybe familiar with DoNotPay's parking ticket support, things like crafting a cease and desist letter, but let me just give you a few examples that I was surprised by. So one of them that I saw on your website Is free raffle tickets. What does that mean?

A So there's this obscure law in America that says that, um, you can enter any competition for free. So you hear on the radio, you can pay to enter, but they always bury in the terms of service that if you mail an obscure letter to an obscure address, you can enter for free. So we've built a product that automates free entry into any competition. So you just paste in the terms of service, or you can even just choose from Competitions that our bot scrapes on websites and it enters it for you for free. And this is the thing with do not pay. There are so many laws that help consumers that no one has the time to actually follow through with, and that's a great job for technology.

AI assessment note: “we've built a product that automates free entry into any competition.”

Q necessary and crafting them almost like a template. And then a third generation, which is using AI, which is not just a template, but really bringing in all of the prior examples for a Particular letter and crafting something net new. How do you think about which use cases require step one, step two, or step three, or how are you assessing where to apply some of these new technologies?

A So we started at step two. And so what we did was we said, well, all of these letters that you had to pay a lawyer 300 dollars for, we're going to automate with document automation, which is a very simple technology, but it's something that hadn't been done for these types of letters we were doing. What's really exciting about step three is that sometimes the companies respond and the governments respond and step three with AI allows us to respond back instantly. So instead of helping someone with a hundred dollar dispute with Comcast, we can now work on 10,000 dollar medical bills because Comcast or United might let that hundred dollars go, but no hospital is just going to let 10,000 dollars go just because of one letter. And so you really have to have that conversation back and forth. And so what we're working on now is actually communicating life, um, on medical bills specifically, and I can go into the laws we're using around that. That will be kind of our first major AI product, um, in Do Not Pay.

AI assessment note: “instead of helping someone with a hundred dollar dispute... we can now work on 10,000 dollar medical bills”

Q Something that OpenAI has also done, though, is had humans as part of the training process to really hone it in. Are you also doing that? Are you bringing in lawyers who are specialized in these areas to take a look at the output from your models to hone them in or improve them?

A Yeah, we have some of the best lawyers in the country helping us, like at Wilson Sonsini and other firms. The AI has been very problematic for us, so there's really two problems with it. The first is that it's dishonest. So with Comcast, for example, it says things like, I've had three internet outages in the past 24 hours, and that might be a good way of getting a refund from Comcast, but it's not true, and it can cause liability issues. And in court, if you lie, that's a crime, and it could send people to jail. The second issue is that it talks too much. With Comcast, or even in a courtroom, there are some questions and human speech that don't require a response. It's like a rhetorical question. So imagine the judge says something like, um, hold on, let me take a look at the case. Uh, AI models would often say, okay, thank you. And by the way, I'm innocent for like these six reasons. The judge will just get annoyed. You have to build other AIs to decide whether to say something, let alone what to say. And so you have to really retrain it and also build these guardrails. Otherwise things get out of control.

AI assessment note: “we have some of the best lawyers in the country helping us, like at Wilson Sonsini”

Q That's, that's a good perspective. I think another amazing thing that I've seen, the technology can be cross-border as well. So Typically, a lawyer is specialized in one very particular area, maybe in one jurisdiction. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you're thinking about the potential for this technology to support people, not just in your region, but really anywhere?

A Yeah, the benefit of AI is it can read 10,000 documents and produce an answer in seconds, and not even the best human lawyer can do that. So I think the example you're talking about is a consumer rights issue relating to a timeshare. We had a elderly consumer in Boston. They got suckered into a timeshare actually in Mexico and do not pay got them out of it because there's a five day law in Mexico to cancel timeshare contracts. And so things like that, where you can help consumers in Boston, uh, for issues in Mexico, most lawyers in Boston don't know about Mexican law, but AI does because you can just feed it all the timeshare cases and it comes out with a way out. And the same is true actually for Comcast. These generic AI models like, um, DaVinci from OpenAI, they're, they're not actually that good at the law. What we've had to do at DoNotPay is you feed it documents. So we say, we feed, fed it all of these outcomes from the templates in many years of operating. And you say, based on these thousand documents, write X. And then it becomes much better than just a generic usage of any of the models.

AI assessment note: “things like that, where you can help consumers in Boston, uh, for issues in Mexico”

Q to call out a few and get you to quickly explain what this is, how it works, because I think many people are maybe familiar with DoNotPay's parking ticket support, things like crafting a cease and desist letter, but let me just give you a few examples that I was surprised by. So one of them that I saw on your website Is free raffle tickets. What does that mean?

A So there's this obscure law in America that says that, um, you can enter any competition for free. So you hear on the radio, you can pay to enter, but they always bury in the terms of service that if you mail an obscure letter to an obscure address, you can enter for free. So we've built a product that automates free entry into any competition. So you just paste in the terms of service, or you can even just choose from Competitions that our bot scrapes on websites and it enters it for you for free. And this is the thing with do not pay. There are so many laws that help consumers that no one has the time to actually follow through with, and that's a great job for technology.

AI assessment note: “we've built a product that automates free entry into any competition.”

Q about how you're thinking about evolving the different services that you offer. I mean, you already offer, as I mentioned, a hundred things on your website. So how, how did you decide, for example, next up, Is medical bills. We're addressing that. Or how do you decide whether, oh, actually we want to go into the physical courtroom. Like what are you doing to understand where your priorities should be?

A We're just trying to create value for people. So we look very carefully about the average amount that a do not pay customer saves on a yearly basis. And we're trying to 10 X that. So instead of it being a few hundred dollars, we, a single medical bill could be 10,000 dollars. And that's where I think AI comes in really raising the value of the cases that the, Robot lawyer can pursue. We've tried things that haven't worked well because it's too emotional. AI is not too good at dealing with emotions. So many years ago, actually, before I turned do not pay into a business, I tried to use do not pay for asylum, like to automate the asylum process. But with these cases, sometimes people are crying in the courtroom, and that's something that software can never really touch because you need the human touch in those sorts of cases.

AI assessment note: “we look very carefully about the average amount that a do not pay customer saves”

Q The corporations that you're fighting against, how have you seen them respond to the work that you're doing? Has there been a pushback from these companies saying, no, no, no, no, no. Like you're, you're kind of messing with the system that we've built. You're giving people information or access to things that we kind of banked on them not having access to.

A It's an arms race. So we saw this from the very beginning at Do Not Pay, where We had bots do clicking on big company websites, and they would have anti-bots to try and identify our bots and shut them down. And the way we got around that is we have the Do Not Pay app, and it actually uses the IP of the user, so it's like a, it's almost like lots of distributed nodes fighting these companies, and they haven't been able to stop that. On the AI front, the big companies are using AI now to stop consumers even outside of Do Not Pay. And that's one of the things I think is sad about, uh, new technology. It typically gets in the hands of massive corporations and governments first. So our role is give power to the people first. So one example is we have a bot that we're using internally to negotiate Comcast bills. There's Comcast have an online chat and it generates these instant responses to chat with Comcast. And it's obvious that Comcast is already using AI. And so our AI is chatting with Comcast AI. And on the negative side, it's, it's kind of sad that consumers had to chat with AI to get refunds. On the positive side, at least now the AI is doing the work on both sides and saving the humans from the bureaucracy.

AI assessment note: “they would have anti-bots to try and identify our bots and shut them down.”

Q And what specifically about that experiment was against the rules in their eyes?

A The legal industry is very protectionist. So to even become a lawyer, you have to pass the bar exam, take a test, have a government stamp of approval. Even for something as minor as a traffic ticket. And their view was that even though the laws weren't written, they could never have imagined that when the laws were written in the 1819 hundreds, that AI would be practicing law. This applied to that situation. But our view at Do Not Pay was that it didn't apply to that situation because in these laws, it says a person can't practice law without passing the bar. And AI is not a person. It's, it's a technology. And the person is just representing themselves with the help of AI.

AI assessment note: “their view was that even though the laws weren't written... This applied to that situation”

Q I'm sure there are many controversial products that you facilitate. What about this one? This one's not so controversial, but I thought it was interesting. Find my lost pet.

A Every city or most cities have these forms where if your pet is lost, um, you can fill it out. And if, if the pet is found on the street and it walks towards a flight fire station or a police officer, Um, they'll deal with it and then they will put it into the system to see if someone's reported it as lost. And this is another area where people don't have time to fill in these obscure government forms. The same is true for airport lost property forms. We've automated all of these lost property forms at major airports. So do not pay is really about saving people time with obscure consumer rights laws and also government services.

AI assessment note: “Every city or most cities have these forms where if your pet is lost”

Q about how you're thinking about evolving the different services that you offer. I mean, you already offer, as I mentioned, a hundred things on your website. So how, how did you decide, for example, next up, Is medical bills. We're addressing that. Or how do you decide whether, oh, actually we want to go into the physical courtroom. Like what are you doing to understand where your priorities should be?

A We're just trying to create value for people. So we look very carefully about the average amount that a do not pay customer saves on a yearly basis. And we're trying to 10 X that. So instead of it being a few hundred dollars, we, a single medical bill could be 10,000 dollars. And that's where I think AI comes in really raising the value of the cases that the, Robot lawyer can pursue. We've tried things that haven't worked well because it's too emotional. AI is not too good at dealing with emotions. So many years ago, actually, before I turned do not pay into a business, I tried to use do not pay for asylum, like to automate the asylum process. But with these cases, sometimes people are crying in the courtroom, and that's something that software can never really touch because you need the human touch in those sorts of cases.

AI assessment note: “we look very carefully about the average amount that a do not pay customer saves”

Q But they obviously don't seem to buy into this. I also want to understand your perspective around, you said this one person seemed very adamant, very, very emotional about this idea of bringing AI into the courtroom. What do you think that is a reflection of? Like, why was there such effort to stop this experiment?

A Lawyers love rules and they love accusing people of breaking the rules. And I think they're scared of this technology. Um, it's like the dinosaurs suing to stop the ice age. Lawyers really don't want this technology to move forward that much because they realize that a lot of their job is copying and pasting documents. Not all lawyers are like that, but some of them are. And if AI can just do that and replace them, it puts a lot of them out of work. And so it's a combination of loving rules, being worried about their profession, and also just Disliking these young kind of CS students trying to take them down. Um, I'm not part of the legal establishment and I'm trying to fight against them. So I also think there's like a cultural mismatch.

AI assessment note: “it's a combination of loving rules, being worried about their profession”

Q That's, that's a good perspective. I think another amazing thing that I've seen, the technology can be cross-border as well. So Typically, a lawyer is specialized in one very particular area, maybe in one jurisdiction. Can you tell me a little bit more about how you're thinking about the potential for this technology to support people, not just in your region, but really anywhere?

A Yeah, the benefit of AI is it can read 10,000 documents and produce an answer in seconds, and not even the best human lawyer can do that. So I think the example you're talking about is a consumer rights issue relating to a timeshare. We had a elderly consumer in Boston. They got suckered into a timeshare actually in Mexico and do not pay got them out of it because there's a five day law in Mexico to cancel timeshare contracts. And so things like that, where you can help consumers in Boston, uh, for issues in Mexico, most lawyers in Boston don't know about Mexican law, but AI does because you can just feed it all the timeshare cases and it comes out with a way out. And the same is true actually for Comcast. These generic AI models like, um, DaVinci from OpenAI, they're, they're not actually that good at the law. What we've had to do at DoNotPay is you feed it documents. So we say, we feed, fed it all of these outcomes from the templates in many years of operating. And you say, based on these thousand documents, write X. And then it becomes much better than just a generic usage of any of the models.

AI assessment note: “most lawyers in Boston don't know about Mexican law, but AI does”

Q And what specifically about that experiment was against the rules in their eyes?

A The legal industry is very protectionist. So to even become a lawyer, you have to pass the bar exam, take a test, have a government stamp of approval. Even for something as minor as a traffic ticket. And their view was that even though the laws weren't written, they could never have imagined that when the laws were written in the 1819 hundreds, that AI would be practicing law. This applied to that situation. But our view at Do Not Pay was that it didn't apply to that situation because in these laws, it says a person can't practice law without passing the bar. And AI is not a person. It's, it's a technology. And the person is just representing themselves with the help of AI.

AI assessment note: “their view was that... AI would be practicing law.”

Q think there's maybe one thread in particular that's gone viral, but I think some pushback is saying these services aren't high quality, but others are just saying, you know, this isn't really using the AI that I thought it was. And do you just have any responses to maybe generally the pushback that the company has received, especially as it's gotten more and more attention in recent weeks and months?

A Do not pay as in a transition from a template company to an AI company, and you don't need AI to write an angry letter to your former landlord to request a security deposit refund. It's just a question of the amount and, uh, sticking that into an angry letter so that the small claims court can see that you at least tried to ask something. There's not much that can go wrong. What these lawyers have been doing is they've been signing up, creating fake cases, and creating these dramatic scenarios. So what they'll do is they'll say, I had a 100,000 security deposit. Why hasn't the AI supposed AI told me that, uh, the small claims limit is 10,000 dollars. And the answer is because that's not a real case. And if you create a fake case, of course, you're going to have a fake outcome. And so there's nothing that can go wrong with these consumer rights cases that they've been trying. Um, the true AI is coming and that's what we've been working on. ChatGPT is a brand new technology released in November of last year. So I would just say to them, relax. It's not all that serious. It's not the end of the world to get an in-flight Wi-Fi refund.

AI assessment note: “What these lawyers have been doing is they've been signing up, creating fake cases”

Q to happen inevitably. But what does that mean, really? Does that mean that, for example, an AI needs to pass its own version of the bar, and then it can represent people? Do you think that It'll just take another generation of people who are maybe more inclined to welcome technology into this space. Like, what, what will it take for this technology to really be maybe more so welcomed?

A Despite the legal industry being very protectionist, they have a serious problem, which is that over 80% of people who need legal help can't afford it. And so these courts will have to eventually modernize and allow people to have their AI assistants helping them in all sorts of cases. My role at Do Not Pay is starting with consumer rights, and we have literally hundreds more products to build with AI, and that's what we're focusing on at first. But I think people will have assistance in courtrooms. I think that consumer rights, they'll have AI general counsels sitting on their shoulder, making sure that these companies aren't ripping them off, and it will just create a more efficient world where companies with business models of kind of ripping off consumers Uh, won't be able to continue because the AI will just spam them with lawsuits and legal demands.

AI assessment note: “over 80% of people who need legal help can't afford it. And so these courts”

Q here with do not pay currently while the technology is in the place that it is to just focus on these consumer rights issues where getting it wrong is actually doesn't really have much downside. Or how do you think about maybe the progression you mentioned ideally you 10 X the value that Do not pay offers to consumers. How do you think about taking it to that next level?

A Yeah, so we're trying to focus on consumer rights, but consumer rights, to your point, could be a 20,000 dollar medical bill refund, and that creates real value for people. My goal is to make it so the average person doesn't need to see a lawyer. If you're being accused of burning down someone's house, you should probably still see a lawyer, but normal people don't deal with that. They just deal with Comcast, United, Their hospital, et cetera. And that's what we're trying to automate with Do Not Pay. The second thing is that we really want to test these AI products, much more so when they deal with serious issues and also when it's not deterministic technology. So going back to the speeding ticket, one member of the Do Not Pay team actually has a speeding ticket case coming up, and we're thinking that we can get around all of these unauthorized practices of law rules if they're representing themselves using technology they've created. And so we're looking to push forward, be very responsible by testing everything before releasing it. And I would say that consumer rights is not rocket science. And so far they haven't actually found someone who's actually where something's gone wrong. It's all have been, it's been these lawyers coming up with theoretical problems, but people really need help and technology can help them.

AI assessment note: “we're trying to focus on consumer rights, but consumer rights... creates real value”

Q were online. And that was a totally new dynamic. More police officers are showing up. More people are showing up to fight their cases. And so the change in the system required people to, to rethink, like, are we doing this properly? And so have you seen that at all? Or are you expecting that where companies are going to have to rethink The way that they're engaging with customers.

A Yeah, I think this is one of the biggest risks to do not pay. What if all the problems in America get solved? Fortunately, um, America, I mean, it sounds hypocritical with my accent, but America has a lot of work to be done, and I think it will take a long time before everything is perfect. And if it is, we'll all be living such a good life. On the courtroom front, it's really interesting because I think COVID has accelerated the legal industry by 20 years. A lot of the things stopping a company like Do Not Pay were these bottlenecks that were introduced Sometimes over a hundred years ago, like you have to show up to fill in this form. You have to have a wet signature for this document. So one product we have is we automate the filing of AT-III elections, which is an obscure tax form for startup employees. And up until COVID, the IRS required a wet signature on that document. But during COVID, they relaxed and said, you can have a digital signature allowing us to build the product. And the same is true with these Zoom court hearings and sometimes filing of documents online. And that's actually moved us forward. And what's exciting is we continue to be forward in 2023 with all these relaxed regulations, but traffic tickets now are going back into court. So we're having all the benefits with few of the disadvantages.

AI assessment note: “I think COVID has accelerated the legal industry by 20 years.”

Q to happen inevitably. But what does that mean, really? Does that mean that, for example, an AI needs to pass its own version of the bar, and then it can represent people? Do you think that It'll just take another generation of people who are maybe more inclined to welcome technology into this space. Like, what, what will it take for this technology to really be maybe more so welcomed?

A Despite the legal industry being very protectionist, they have a serious problem, which is that over 80% of people who need legal help can't afford it. And so these courts will have to eventually modernize and allow people to have their AI assistants helping them in all sorts of cases. My role at Do Not Pay is starting with consumer rights, and we have literally hundreds more products to build with AI, and that's what we're focusing on at first. But I think people will have assistance in courtrooms. I think that consumer rights, they'll have AI general counsels sitting on their shoulder, making sure that these companies aren't ripping them off, and it will just create a more efficient world where companies with business models of kind of ripping off consumers Uh, won't be able to continue because the AI will just spam them with lawsuits and legal demands.

AI assessment note: “over 80% of people who need legal help can't afford it. And so these courts”

Q Technology companies that will like help you write a will or like help manage your estate planning, things like that. But it doesn't really feel like there's been a company that has tackled this with the scope also that Do Not Pay is addressing. And so has there been a fundamental technology shift or what is enabling Do Not Pay to really tackle this in the way that it is?

A When I started Do Not Pay, Andreessen Horowitz was, was my first pre-seed investor. And I made a deal with them, which is I don't have to drop out of school. I can stay at Stanford and they would invest. And I had other offers, but I decided to go with them because they gave me that deal. And that allowed me to really take time to develop the right strategy. And with any idea, it seems obvious that something like do not pay should exist. Why haven't people done it before? And why aren't people doing it now? And the reason that I developed by taking it slightly slower at the beginning was that do not pay is only successful because it's a horizontal company that Average person, unless you're a bad driver like me, only gets a parking ticket once a year. And so you can't be able to build a real company around that. And so because we've gone horizontal and done all of these use cases over time, it's allowed us to build a retentive customer base, which makes it a successful company. But that's taken seven years and I see Do Not Pay as my life's work. So I think it was this unique insight about being horizontal, plus the effort of seven years to actually kind of build it out that has allowed us to be unique. And there are companies like even offered by lawyers that allow you to get out of your tickets, but there's no one trying to tackle all of consumer rights with the tools necessary…

AI assessment note: “it was this unique insight about being horizontal, plus the effort of seven years”

Q Something that OpenAI has also done, though, is had humans as part of the training process to really hone it in. Are you also doing that? Are you bringing in lawyers who are specialized in these areas to take a look at the output from your models to hone them in or improve them?

A Yeah, we have some of the best lawyers in the country helping us, like at Wilson Sonsini and other firms. The AI has been very problematic for us, so there's really two problems with it. The first is that it's dishonest. So with Comcast, for example, it says things like, I've had three internet outages in the past 24 hours, and that might be a good way of getting a refund from Comcast, but it's not true, and it can cause liability issues. And in court, if you lie, that's a crime, and it could send people to jail. The second issue is that it talks too much. With Comcast, or even in a courtroom, there are some questions and human speech that don't require a response. It's like a rhetorical question. So imagine the judge says something like, um, hold on, let me take a look at the case. Uh, AI models would often say, okay, thank you. And by the way, I'm innocent for like these six reasons. The judge will just get annoyed. You have to build other AIs to decide whether to say something, let alone what to say. And so you have to really retrain it and also build these guardrails. Otherwise things get out of control.

AI assessment note: “Yeah, we have some of the best lawyers in the country helping us”

Q were online. And that was a totally new dynamic. More police officers are showing up. More people are showing up to fight their cases. And so the change in the system required people to, to rethink, like, are we doing this properly? And so have you seen that at all? Or are you expecting that where companies are going to have to rethink The way that they're engaging with customers.

A Yeah, I think this is one of the biggest risks to do not pay. What if all the problems in America get solved? Fortunately, um, America, I mean, it sounds hypocritical with my accent, but America has a lot of work to be done, and I think it will take a long time before everything is perfect. And if it is, we'll all be living such a good life. On the courtroom front, it's really interesting because I think COVID has accelerated the legal industry by 20 years. A lot of the things stopping a company like Do Not Pay were these bottlenecks that were introduced Sometimes over a hundred years ago, like you have to show up to fill in this form. You have to have a wet signature for this document. So one product we have is we automate the filing of AT-III elections, which is an obscure tax form for startup employees. And up until COVID, the IRS required a wet signature on that document. But during COVID, they relaxed and said, you can have a digital signature allowing us to build the product. And the same is true with these Zoom court hearings and sometimes filing of documents online. And that's actually moved us forward. And what's exciting is we continue to be forward in 2023 with all these relaxed regulations, but traffic tickets now are going back into court. So we're having all the benefits with few of the disadvantages.

AI assessment note: “COVID has accelerated the legal industry by 20 years.”

Q time, I feel like DoNotPay has done an excellent job of kind of keeping up with the times, and so something I saw you build recently is the ChatGPT extension. Which you can basically understand the terms and conditions of a website more effectively. So how are you thinking about the gaps that still exist for consumers and maybe what other opportunities there are to give consumers their rights back?

A When new technology comes out, we think, how can it help people? And terms and conditions is a great example because people can't understand the changes being made, what they're giving up. So this is actually our first public product relating to true AI. Where you can paste in any terms and conditions, upload a document, including leases, and it will go through and tell you all the things that are non-standard and also things you should watch out for. And that's really important because people don't have time to read a hundred page document, um, which is what are some of the, some of these leases are, especially in New York. And so that can be really helpful. Really, we're trying to be like David and David versus Goliath. So the AI can turn David into Goliath versus Goliath. And, and help ordinary people.

AI assessment note: “When new technology comes out, we think, how can it help people?”

Q What makes you think that people will actually implement a law like that? Or are there other rules that you see on the horizon based on your experiences with companies, with lawyers who are pushing back against some of this new technology?

A The fear when any technology comes out is huge, and it doesn't help that people like me are stirring things up. And fear creates action on behalf of governments and big companies, and so that's very worrying. The good news is that there are a lot of things in the law. We have over a hundred years of law to deal with that. If you jump through the right hoop and follow the correct processes, you can get results. Like one thing we automate is, um, credit report disputes. And they say that if you, um, submit a correct letter and it's signed in the correct way and all of this stuff, you can dispute something on a credit report. And this allows us to kind of get old or inaccurate items off people's reports. And even if it's coming from AI and we have to tell the big company that this was written by AI, it's not going to be influenced. They still have to respond to that letter. And so there's all these rights that people have, and I don't think that they can strip them all away with one law, but it is worrying about where, where the kind of Congress is heading.

AI assessment note: “fear creates action on behalf of governments and big companies, and so that's very worrying.”

Q time, I feel like DoNotPay has done an excellent job of kind of keeping up with the times, and so something I saw you build recently is the ChatGPT extension. Which you can basically understand the terms and conditions of a website more effectively. So how are you thinking about the gaps that still exist for consumers and maybe what other opportunities there are to give consumers their rights back?

A When new technology comes out, we think, how can it help people? And terms and conditions is a great example because people can't understand the changes being made, what they're giving up. So this is actually our first public product relating to true AI. Where you can paste in any terms and conditions, upload a document, including leases, and it will go through and tell you all the things that are non-standard and also things you should watch out for. And that's really important because people don't have time to read a hundred page document, um, which is what are some of the, some of these leases are, especially in New York. And so that can be really helpful. Really, we're trying to be like David and David versus Goliath. So the AI can turn David into Goliath versus Goliath. And, and help ordinary people.

AI assessment note: “Really, we're trying to be like David and David versus Goliath.”

Q Technology companies that will like help you write a will or like help manage your estate planning, things like that. But it doesn't really feel like there's been a company that has tackled this with the scope also that Do Not Pay is addressing. And so has there been a fundamental technology shift or what is enabling Do Not Pay to really tackle this in the way that it is?

A When I started Do Not Pay, Andreessen Horowitz was, was my first pre-seed investor. And I made a deal with them, which is I don't have to drop out of school. I can stay at Stanford and they would invest. And I had other offers, but I decided to go with them because they gave me that deal. And that allowed me to really take time to develop the right strategy. And with any idea, it seems obvious that something like do not pay should exist. Why haven't people done it before? And why aren't people doing it now? And the reason that I developed by taking it slightly slower at the beginning was that do not pay is only successful because it's a horizontal company that Average person, unless you're a bad driver like me, only gets a parking ticket once a year. And so you can't be able to build a real company around that. And so because we've gone horizontal and done all of these use cases over time, it's allowed us to build a retentive customer base, which makes it a successful company. But that's taken seven years and I see Do Not Pay as my life's work. So I think it was this unique insight about being horizontal, plus the effort of seven years to actually kind of build it out that has allowed us to be unique. And there are companies like even offered by lawyers that allow you to get out of your tickets, but there's no one trying to tackle all of consumer rights with the tools necessary…

AI assessment note: “it was this unique insight about being horizontal, plus the effort of seven years”

Q What makes you think that people will actually implement a law like that? Or are there other rules that you see on the horizon based on your experiences with companies, with lawyers who are pushing back against some of this new technology?

A The fear when any technology comes out is huge, and it doesn't help that people like me are stirring things up. And fear creates action on behalf of governments and big companies, and so that's very worrying. The good news is that there are a lot of things in the law. We have over a hundred years of law to deal with that. If you jump through the right hoop and follow the correct processes, you can get results. Like one thing we automate is, um, credit report disputes. And they say that if you, um, submit a correct letter and it's signed in the correct way and all of this stuff, you can dispute something on a credit report. And this allows us to kind of get old or inaccurate items off people's reports. And even if it's coming from AI and we have to tell the big company that this was written by AI, it's not going to be influenced. They still have to respond to that letter. And so there's all these rights that people have, and I don't think that they can strip them all away with one law, but it is worrying about where, where the kind of Congress is heading.

AI assessment note: “fear creates action on behalf of governments and big companies, and so that's very worrying.”