READ MY SUPERALIGNMENT PITCH FOR LAW TO OPENAI

April 2024, This Drew Attention then Someone was Fired

“Code blinds. Law frees.” GENIUS! (I know.)

Yet I make it even better now April 2024 : “Code BINDS. Law FREES.”

Imagine your excitement when OpenAI gets back to you about your application for a 3-5m “Superalignment Grant.” I’m not even after the money, I was always and only, and still, after the COMPUTE when I sent my materials Dec. 2023. I joke about it on X

DID YOU THINK I EVER THOUGHT I COULD RE-INVENT THE WHOLE DELIVERY OF LAW FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY WORLDWIDE W/O SOME MAJOR COMPUTE

No fren.

Not since YC. Not since bugging SSI. Sequoia. Several independent “Angel Investors” (hi Rick!)

Not since my present compute-stalker obsession “man teasing” my guy TheBruh the RocketManWithThePlan Baby Mama Lama from Anotha Mama “Hero Infinite Zero” my fellow deeply variantly wired Say The Future sythetic imagined (and he does not know yet actual simpatico) homie Elon Musk and xAI compute capital Colossus (I hope you bros are going to see the ducks at the Peabody!)

A year ago I was after OpenAI. (Psst! And shhh. I am after them again rn.)

»»»»»»>IF YOU HAVE AN IN AT OAI OR XAI PLEASE GIVE THEM THE NAME “CYRUS” THANK YOU

Thought you might like to see my proposal at that time which drew Open AI’s interest for the “Superalignment of Law.” My contact was fired, what’s up with that? Then the declined me (politely). Then all those people left for SSI and Thinking Machines and others (and I followed them but nada, yet).

Yet I digress (always, autist, lemme go!).

Here is for the first time made public for you to see ————

* *

Hope this note finds you well.

Here is how lawyers think:

"They said 'end of month', hey we are early there are still three more days. We are early."

With renewed apologies for my prev spellcheck (it was not me, but was mine) error mangling spelling [I hope this did not sink access to these ideas/discussion]

Appended below is my augmented proposal for how OpenAi can serve Superalignment of Ai + Humankind [in Law] -- the field in which I am expert, now into a third decade.

This follows my initial submittal which you were kind to indicate was still under consideration.

This is audacious; a lawyer designing Ai code products, yet (for the reasons I spell out) is the only mode which makes sense in this area. Yet it shall be a happy marriage and change the world.

Finally a joke:

what’s the difference between a lawyer and a developer?

one works very late hours, drinks tons of diet coke, dresses down to focus on grinding to produce what is esoteric to many, but the right build for the right application. the other is a developer.

Thank you LEOPOLD and to your whole team for your time and consideration, and best regards.

PROPOSAL BY CYRUS JOHNSON IN THE SERVICE OF THE SUPERALIGNMENT OF LAW

(UNLOCKING MANKIND THROUGH UNLOCKING LAW)

December 2023 - April 2024

Thank you for your time investment to all who may read this. It is the collection and organization of 20 years of thought by an experienced legal practitioner, now contending with our Ai new age.

This is either crazy or crazy good. I believe it is the latter. You may think it the former and if so that is cool.

Code Blinds, Law Frees

Good Day OpenAI and all who may read this,

Perhaps you know that the largest single risk to Superalignment is that it be planned and accomplished by developers alone.

This is because it would lack the comprehensive scope of mankind's experience and knowledge and fail to be cognizable and inter-operable to everyone.

It is understandable to have a bias toward it being otherwise. Toward "Code as Kind." After all, "We built these tools."

However, it is a bias which is fraught with unspecified future errors because Ai and superalignment will be limited and handicapped from the very beginnings, and developers will fail to see and know why. They will simply keep writing patches and patches (whatever these are called).

Don't laugh. I came by the realization when I realized that lawyers are basically the same as developers, and developers the same as lawyers!

If instead we conceive of the raw materials for Ai (AGI) being the body of human intelligence (instead of code) as data which belongs not to the developers (1-2%?) but to all of humankind, a different picture emerges.

"NON-TECHNICAL" LAWYERS MUST DESIGN CODE TO ENSURE SUPERALIGNMENT IN LAW.

Get back in your chair.

* * *

I'm an attorney of 21+ years. I graduated from the University of San Francisco School of Law in 2002 and since then have mostly served large investor clients with their legal. This has included forming and operating large funds (2004, 2012 India, 2017 Los Angeles, 2018 San Francisco, 2021 Florida) and along with it handling all the legal you could imagine.

Working closely with my clients, it has been mine to assist and understand every area, working with retained legal - some of the most leading firms and attorneys in the world.

I have also worked with big and small clients, pro bono, entrepreneurs and individuals, corporate companies, and in litigation, and Fortune 500 technology contracting (the "USA-India story" 2007-2010 bpo technology and related).

You would consider me to be "non-technical," and developers tell me this all the time. I do not write code (but I am learning). My background is not in computer science, but in law.

Yet I will tell you (as I tell others) that I am every bit as technical as a developer (and in many cases much more so) just in a different way. The Law, in every area, represents a highly technical series of rules and qualifiers. Lawyers content with large data sets, data aggregates (complete, and partial, and unknown) parse them, extract valuable 'code', and manipulate it in order to achieve desired results.

It is my thesis that Lawyers and Developers are kin, and if you think about it (put on a lawyer hat) this is so.

Esoteric priest class practictioners of a select technique from training and skill from practice. They are the same.

And with respect to Ai, their missions have emerged to be the same, completely parallel in my view.

* * *

At its beginnings in Ancient Greece and Rome, lawyers were "illegal." It was not legal for a person to pay another to advocate on their behalf. This is because someone else speaking for you (instead of a person contending for himself) was seen as inherently unreliable and biased.

I think this is so.

Fast forward thousands of years, and now hundreds of years of Law in America and the West, and our legal system would be a shock to the system/conscience of those ancient lawmakers and practitioners.

Everyone knows that the Law became "commercialized" almost at its beginnings. (N.B. Even in Ancient Rome, it became the practice to have someone's "friend" advocate on their behalf (this was a sham, a person paid secretly to act as 'friend' to the subject).

Harvard Business School once aptly called the modern law practice, "the most successful profit center invented in history."

"The Benefit of Going to Law" is a poem by genius Benjamin Franklin, and I paste at the end here.

It basically says what we know about law: two people fight, and the lawyer gets the money.

* * *

So Superlignment is about much much more than code in my area (Law). It is fixing a broken model (Law). Only Ai can (should/must) do this.

We are not simply writing code. We have the opportunity to design new Ai systems to better serve humankind through serving all of humankind's data sets of Law. We will write a new Law through code (which we call Ai/ml) to provide superalignment of the law and humankind with Ai/ml.

N.B. The biggest major effort to remake Law was Atrium. Yet Atrium only put "technology seasoning" on the old law model. There was an inherent conflict. A new model is needed. Our models are first thinking.

I am thinking for years and working for decades with the dataset of Law. Law is data. It’s nothing other than that. When I realized this, and saw the rise of Ai in 2022, and learned a little about how it works, I said,

"Eureka - THIS is what I have been looking for." It was like a puzzle piece fitting right into place!

What I had been looking for since early in my legal career was a way to help people in the Law without the three primary systemic problems of the system as it had been designed (by lawyers and law firms) over generations:

1 - Billable hour - making time the metric for value is a mistake, especially when it isn't even the client's time but the lawyers' time - that creates an inherent and immediate conflict of interest. Lawyers tell clients to pay retainer then pay for each of their hours and minutes.

2 - Information arbitrage - be design, data flows to the lawyer, not the client. Client education is not only not a feature of Law, it is seen as a "bug" of lawyers and clients alike. Lawyer works on templates and wants (like a developer) only the binary 0/1 (confirm/deny) for lawyer's templates. "Extra" data gets in the way. The more a client talks, the more it will cost them. Lawyers for their part do not explain to clients. This would "give away" their expertise and would "complicate" the work (because educated clients are seen as a problem as they can monitor/check the work of attorney and also "waste time." This is a design flaw, because we know in every other field of life (other than law and code perhaps) that more information is a GOOD and helps to ensure better outcomes. Four crayons versus the "big box" of 64.

3 - Control over results. Clients are told basically to pay and go away. "Hold my beer." In addition to 2 above "do not talk to me" current modality for Law is for lawyer to handle a "matter" more or less independently. They gain inputs from the client on a "need" basis only. And who decides the need? The attorney and not the client. Attorney controls the work and the results. Yes, this is why we hire and pay such talented experts. However it also represents a design flaw because (a) two resources is always better than one, (b) client has more knowledge about the situation always and (c) attorney is not bringing his knowledge to the discrete unique client situation so much as he/she is "running a script" (activating a template overlaid in different environments.

People, if I had ten cents for each time a client (including a client paying 3-5m on a major engagement, including a pro bono free client) has told me the exact same thing.

1. "What the FUCK is going on. I do not understand."

2. "How does it cost THIS MUCH. What did they DO? Fix that bill."

3. "They don't give a FUCK about what is happening to me."

As a lawyer talking, I can tell you these statements are no empty venting. They come from a broken model.

* * *

Revolutionaries or Friends?

So, then what are we to do?

"Burn it all down, man”?

Am I talking about making war on lawyers and law firms? Taking their jobs?!

No! This would be me making war on myself and my profession.

I am talking about the precise opposite.

These circumstances suggest enabling the Law, and lawyers, and all the people worldwide but Re-Inventing Law.

We will re-employ lawyers (since, spoiler alert, pandemic killed the old model and said model is running on fumes which desperate lawyers looking for a new Way).

We can! We must (Superalignment)! We will! For clients. For lawyers. For all humankind.

This is why Ai came into the world, into the field of Law where I am fruit of the hard work of so many "developers" beginning with my hero who I am studying - Alan Turing.

It is the key which unlocks "rooms of problems" allowing us to let everything (everything) fall out, and clean them up, and organize them, and make them "hum" (work so well in alignment with society - Superalignment - that humankind is happier, better educated, more successful and our enterprises grow more quickly and effectively than ever before in history).

My 2022 beginning project I call gist. A gist is an extremely discrete summary of a very large area. And this is Ai.

* * *

LET’S TURN LAW INTO THOUGHT - LAW AS EDUCATION INSTEAD OF PROFESSION, YET INSIDE THE PROFESSION

The purpose of gist is to "turn law into thought."

What does this mean?

It means that instead of relying upon a permissioned-gates priest class penitent system, in which the compensation metric is temporal (the billable hour, irrespective of result), in which the client knows nothing and the lawyer everything, in which client comes out no smarter from a representation than they were before, and all the excess costs pains frustrations enterprise and idea-progress halting that this inflicts on the world (on humankind)...

We will deliver law by Education. In ways only Ai/ml can accomplish.

In this way we will not so much align Ai with Humankind (in the area of law).

Instead, we CAN (should/must/will!) ALIGN LAW WITH PEOPLE (through Ai/ml).

Where to begin?

Not a law school.

Not a college.

Not online courses (Though this is a terrific idea too and probably what Justin Kan should be doing with his time right now LawTwitch. Yes, I suggested to him but am a stranger.)

Let us found 1 million (Nano) Law Schools w Ai!

People are dismissive of bots. Especially developers. "Just a bot." This is because they are easy to create and are hokey. Many of them are 3very bad and less helpful than they need to be or even promise to be. Bots are also negative in mind.

But this is thinking as a developer.

[N.B. As a baby lawyer of the 1990s Bay Area I recall the "so, you built a website (it's just a website)" dismissive meme.

Hey, ChatGPT is "just a website!"

But how does this lawyer see chatbots (qua "lawbots")?

The lawbot will become the normative modality for people to access the law. And they are super effective amazing tools which repair the above defects in the Law: no information, excessive cost, no ability of client to link the knowledge that they only possess with legal principles - TO ENSURE A GREATER RESULT.

Devs think of the code. Lawyers think of the use case. Thinking of these as code they are trivial. Thinking of these from a use case perspective makes them monumental and history making.

One does not need HUGE data sets to create lawbots which help the lay person. In fact, the opposite is true less is more.

SLMs which is what I called them. Parametered gardens - a pristine swimming pool, versus a wild ocean.

Designed to purpose. To the use case. Education must be simple and easy. "Small is the new big."

(Limiting inputs limits hallucination and in this case, it also limits liability when we cite to all sources.)

* * *

So, with even people clowning me I decided "building bespoke lawbots" was the mission of gist. This has been my study since late 2022. We have built four demonstrations. You can build 999,996 more.

I am working with others. @@@ and the team at @@@ as my core dev team, @@@ of @@@ as my senior adviser, my OG original muse peer (dev to my lawyer) @@@ for the alpha lawbot and thought partnering and marketing.......... and all sorts of other people today and along the way.

* * *

A marriage between a lawyer and a developer is a most beautiful marriage. But they can be the most difficult to make.

They hate each other in many instances. They see the other as a hokey mechanic that should just do as told.

Yet this marriage will transform the world and history through bringing a New Law - superalignment of the Law with Humankind for the first time in history, ever. Transforming our present and future world to one where people are better educated, more capable, more successful, more helpful..........accelerating humankind and its many Enterprises (not just businesses meant here.........thoughts into projects into reality).

My article on Substack, "A Modest Proposal, It's Time to Build Hippie Harvey" lays out my thesis. Here I will add more detail and the commercializations component since I am asking you for money and more importantly a development partnership and your leadership and guidance to change the world together.

'Over One Billion Served' (like McDonalds, but with People!) in a year in/with/through the Law

Let's build "just a website"

It’s a jukebox. (I call it a "jukebots", aren’t I clever -ha!)

A repository for lawbots on every categorical you can imagine, and on several THOUSAND categoricals that you as a non-lawyer like me cannot imagine.

But we spark a "movement."

Anyone, anywhere in the world, anytime. How about tonight? This weekend...

Two person teams: a developer and a lawyer.

Developer ensures the technical qa. Lawyer ensures the legal qa.

Guys these are authors. These are creators. These are artists. These are workers on behalf of humankind.

Create TOOLS OF EDUCATION (Law).

E.g. s Veterinary law in Michigan, capital-raising law in Florida, my divorce in North Dakota........AND......Canada, England, Singapore, Uruguay, Russia, China...?

Each has a developer-creator. Each has a lawyer-creator.

These can be "assigned" but better would be organically growing through website license/

Put 10,000 developers to work.

Retrain 10,000 lawyers.

What can be achieved from this development environment excites me very much. And I know that you can see even farther vistas than I can from active worldwide retail collab of developers and lawyers, UNDER OPENAI SPONSORSHIP.

Remember Napster? I was a user in law school (true story). Had high end speakers connected to a laptop and cords which went down the stairway from upstairs to down to the speakers there. This is how I see it in my mind.

Choosing by

-Artist

-Developer

-Lawyer

-Areas of law

-Jurisdiction

Again these are tools of EDUCATION and also ENABLEMENT of CODE DEVELOPMENT IN AI (SUPERALIGNMENT) also ENABLEMENT of the creation of a whole new modality of LAW which is BETTER DESIGNED to serve Clients and HUMANKIND, aligning for the first time in history in a real way (like Ancient Rome) the law with people's discrete individual personal interests.

People, this also fixes the major problems w retail legal ai use by people: they do not know what they are supposed to say, they don’t know how to understand what is said (nomenclature probloem).

It also ensures someone is responsible for safeguarding the content delivered.

It gives any lawyer/law firm anywhere new purpose, direction, training, mission, opportunity.

[I would like to have a whole other discussion with your corporate finance people about this.........in private equity we call it a "roll up" and how about a roll up of lawyers, impossible due to licensure restrictions (only lawyers may own law firm in the far majority of states), entirely possible with the right technology - which I believe this to be possibility. So, this is potentially a deca-Billion possibility discussion, in addition to the revenues below.]

'A lawyer with every bot' (That was my joke on the "Chicken in every pot" - help for all not just some)

$ licenses for devs to access gist (law as code) site

$ licenses for lawyers to access gist (law as code) site, believe you me they WILL, anything for visibility, and the better they "build" (work well with your dev partner, counselor, and be fruitful) their visibility "status" authority will grow

$ user fees from those who want to buy a lawbot

$ user fees from those who want to buy a gist subscription

$ enterprise user fees from those entities wanting subscriptions for its people

$ enterprise user fees from those entities which want private bespoke building

$ ad revenue (?) (a bad word) for tieing in other interests in the "traffic" gist is certain to create

$ revenue from law firms relying upon this technology

I have been capturing my thinking this year at two locations:

@aicounseldallas (on X)

ailawbot.substack.com (Substack)

You will find this thinking further expanded there on various sub-topicals.

Here is my "Hippie Harvey" thought piece

Here is my LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/cyrus-johnson-69b96178/

Here is my hokey site on carrd (lol, guys my clients have kept me not needing to market myself, and did not want me to market myself anyhow) cyrusjohnson.carrd.co

[-AIC (now April 12, 2025) comment - ha my personal website STILL/YET/AGAIN under construction a year later, gonna be great, should be done this week.]