Joshua Browder (born 1997) is a British-American entrepreneur. He is the founder of DoNotPay, the first chatbot that allows motorists to appeal their parking tickets automatically.
Video Joshua Browder
Early life and education
Born in London in 1997, Joshua Browder is the son of Bill Browder and Melanie Browder. He gained US citizenship by his father having been American-born. Bill Browder gave up his U.S. citizenship for a British one in 1998, to avoid U.S. taxes on foreign investments. Melanie is a British national, and Joshua has dual citizenship.
Bill Browder was co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Hermitage Capital Management, which operated chiefly in Russia for more than ten years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Bill Browder has strongly criticized Russian corporate governance. After being expelled from the country in 2006, Bill Browder wrote a book about Russian corruption and the death of his former lawyer Sergei Magnitsky. Browder claimed that the attorney "was murdered as my proxy."
As of 2017, Browder is still studying at Stanford University, his father's alma mater. He considers his studies at Stanford a "side project" and has thought of dropping out of university.
Browder's grandfather Felix Browder and his two brothers became notable mathematicians. His great-grandfather was Earl Browder, born in Wichita, Kansas, who joined the progressives and later the communist party. In the 1930s he became leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) and ran for US President in 1936 and 1940. He was expelled from the CPUSA in 1946, for promoting the idea of collaboration between the US and the Soviet Union, even as the Cold War developed.
Browder has stated that his grandmother fled Austria in the 1930s to escape Nazi persecution, which he says is a motivating factor for his human rights work with refugees.
Maps Joshua Browder
DoNotPay chatbot
Browder grew up in Hendon, London. At the age of 18, he began to drive and to incur numerous parking tickets. Having formed the perception that these tickets were disproportionately targeting the elderly and disabled, and noticing the "formulaic nature" of the process by which they could be appealed, Browder created a chatbot named 'DoNotPay'. Since its launch, the site has attracted over 175,000 successful users. According to Browder, it has saved UK and New York motorists an estimated $5 million.
According to Forbes, Browder programmed the entirety of the website between the hours of 12am and 3am. He taught himself to code at age 12.
In an article on DoNotPay, Roland Vogl, executive director at CodeX, the Stanford Center for Legal Informatics in the United States, said that "chatbots are fairly limited in what they can accomplish and, in this early stage, are more effective at handling narrow tasks."
'Robot lawyer' expansion of DoNotPay (ongoing project)
On 12 January 2015, The Daily Mail, a British tabloid newspaper, announced that Browder was expanding DoNotPay into the UK's first 'robot lawyer'.
Browder said that he ultimately hopes to replace "25,000 exploitative lawyers" with robots that can respond to questions with appropriate human emotions powered by artificial intelligence. According to Browder, "lawyers all over the world should be very scared of this technology".
Browder deliberately moved into the house which Facebook founder and entrepreneur Mark Zuckerberg used to rent. Browder started sustaining his long hours of coding through a diet consisting primarily of Diet Coke and the "vile" food replacement liquid Soylent. Browder's goal for his new program, plus a busy work schedule, led Legal Cheek to describe him as either "ambitious" or "ridiculous".
Browder's technology has received mixed reviews. For example, a writer at The Guardian noted that it "just drafted an impressive notice under the Data Protection Act 1998 not to use my personal information for direct marketing." Similarly, a woman writer with The American Lawyer noted that, "one of DoNotPay's chatbots helped me draft a strong, well-cited and appropriately toned letter requesting extended maternity leave."
However, in 2016, the Legal Cheek tested Browder's chatbot with "fairly basic legal questions" and noted that it failed to answer most of them.
Human rights work
Outside of his business, Browder is known to be actively involved in the intersection between technology and human rights. At the age of 16, he programmed an iPhone application for Freedom House, the oldest human rights organization in the United States. He worked with David J. Kramer, an Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, to bypass Chinese censorship and make the Freedom of the World Report available in 155 countries. The app has been downloaded 17,000 times and is regularly used by members of Congress and the media.
Browder has described mobile apps as the "new technology" for fighting for human rights. As an International Bridges to Justice Youth Fellow, he created an app to educate lawyers in Burundi, Cameroon and Ghana how to effectively defend economically disadvantaged clients.
He contributes to a blog at the Washington, D.C political newspaper The Hill, where he writes about civil rights and the death penalty.
Awards and recognition
- On January 16, 2017, Browder became the youngest member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in the Law and Policy category.
- 2015 Huffington Post Entrepreneur Of The Week
- 2015 Times of London 15 Smartest Kids On The Planet
- UNESCO European Youth Award Finalist
References
External links
- Joshua Browder on Twitter
- DoNotPay - get free legal help in under 30 seconds.
Source of article : Wikipedia
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