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Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused

simonwillison.net

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Re: Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused

#71
post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lying needs intent. ChatGPT does not think therefore it doesn’t lie in that sense.

Thats like saying robots don't murder - they just kill

Which is actually a very good analogy. A lot of things can kill you, but only a human can be a murderer.

Re: Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused

#72
post #7

No, it did not “double-check”—that’s not something it can do! And stating that the cases “can be found on legal research databases” is a flat out lie. What’s harder is explaining why ChatGPT would lie in this way. What possible reason could LLM companies have for shipping a model that does this? It did this because it's copying how humans talk, not what humans do. Humans say "I double checked" when asked to verify so…

GPT4 can double-check to an extent. I gave it a sequence of 67 letter As and asked it to count them. It said "100", I said "recount": 98, recount, 69, recount, 67, recount, 67, recount, 67, recount, 67. It converged to the correct count and stayed there. This is quite a different scenario though, tangential to your [correct] point.

The example of asking it things like counting or sequences isn't a great one because it's been solved by asking it to "translate" to code and then run the code. I took this up as a challenge a while back with a similar line of reasoning on Reddit (that it couldn't do such a thing) and ended up implementing it in my AI web shell thing.

  heavy-magpie|> I am feeling excited.
  system=> History has been loaded.
  pastel-mature-herring~> !calc how many Ns are in nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn
  heavy-magpie|> Writing code.
  // filename: synth_num_ns.js
  // version: 0.1.1
  // description: calculate number of Ns
  var num_ns = 'nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn';
  var num_Ns = num_ns.length;
  Sidekick("There are " + num_Ns + " Ns in " + num_ns + ".");
  heavy-magpie|> There are 20 Ns in nnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.

Re: Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused

#73
post #60
post #7

No, it did not “double-check”—that’s not something it can do! And stating that the cases “can be found on legal research databases” is a flat out lie. What’s harder is explaining why ChatGPT would lie in this way. What possible reason could LLM companies have for shipping a model that does this? It did this because it's copying how humans talk, not what humans do. Humans say "I double checked" when asked to verify so…

ChatGPT did exactly what it is supposed to do. The lawyers who cited them are fools in my opinion. Of course OpenAI is also an irresponsible company to enable such a powerful technology without adequate warnings. With each chatGPT response they should provide citations (like Google does) and provide a clearly visible disclaimer that what it just spewed may be utter BS. I only hope the judge passes an anecdotal order…

The remedy here seems to be expecting lawyers to do their jobs. Citations would be nice but I don’t see a reason to legislate that requirement, especially from the bench. Let the market sort this one out. Discipline the lawyers using existing mechanisms.

Re: Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused

#74
post #10

> No, it did not “double-check”—that’s not something it can do! And stating that the cases “can be found on legal research databases” is a flat out lie. What’s harder is explaining why ChatGPT would lie in this way. What possible reason could LLM companies have for shipping a model that does this? At what point does OpenAI (or any other company) become legally responsible for this kind of behavior from their LLM's? I…

OpenAI or any other company becomes liable when they market a product to be used in place of lawyers (or doctors, engineers, or whatever other profession)

as long as we're hiring professionals to do these jobs, part of that real actual human's job is to accept the liability for their work. if a person want to use a tool to make their job easier, it's also their job to make sure that the tool is working properly. if the human isn't capable of doing that, then the human doesn't need to be involved in this process at all - we can just turn the legal system over to the LLMs. but for me, i'd prefer the humans were still responsible.

in this case, "the experimenter" was the lawyer who chose to use ChatGPT for his work, not OpenAI for making the tool available. and yes, i agree, the experimenter should be held accountable.

Re: Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused

#75
post #23

this is the future of lawyers, doctors, engineers, school teachers... dark times are ahead.

At the same time, the inventiveness of AI sometimes gives quite a few fruitful ideas for a solution. Yes, formally this can be classified as AI hallucinations, but sometimes they are so bright and well-aimed that I get goosebumps.

My favorite one is phind.com - it gave me so many slightly hallucinating but nevertheless useful advices. And I was able to incorporate most of them into my professional work.

The whole situation reminds me of a good friend of mine - he's super talented at inventing things and brainstorming, but he can often be caught misrepresenting the facts, and sometimes outright lying. However, the pros easily outweigh the cons if you know who you're working with.

Re: Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused

#76
post #7

No, it did not “double-check”—that’s not something it can do! And stating that the cases “can be found on legal research databases” is a flat out lie. What’s harder is explaining why ChatGPT would lie in this way. What possible reason could LLM companies have for shipping a model that does this? It did this because it's copying how humans talk, not what humans do. Humans say "I double checked" when asked to verify so…

ChatGPT did not lie; it cannot lie. It was given a sequence of words and tasked with producing a subsequent sequence of words that satisfy with high probability the constraints of the model. It did that admirably. It's not its fault, or in my opinion OpenAI's fault, that the output is being misunderstood and misused by people who can't be bothered understanding it and project their own ideas of how it should function…

It is designed to give the illusion that it reasons the way a human does, which is why many people are using it. To blame the average user--who quite obviously doesn't understand how LLMs work--isn't fair, either.

A lawyer, however, should have vetted a new piece of tech before using it in this way.

Re: Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused

#77
post #7

No, it did not “double-check”—that’s not something it can do! And stating that the cases “can be found on legal research databases” is a flat out lie. What’s harder is explaining why ChatGPT would lie in this way. What possible reason could LLM companies have for shipping a model that does this? It did this because it's copying how humans talk, not what humans do. Humans say "I double checked" when asked to verify so…

Yes, and this points to the real problem that permeates through a lot of our technology.

Computers are dealing with a reflection of reality, not reality itself.

As you say AI has no understanding that double-check has an action that needs to take place, it just knows that the words exist.

Another big and obvious place this problem is showing up is Identity Management.

The computers are only seeing a reflection, the information associated with our identity, not the physical reality of the identity (and that's why we cannot secure ourselves much further than passwords, MFA is really just "more information that we make harder to emulate, but is still just bits and bytes to the computer, the origin is impossible for it to ascertain).

Re: Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused

#78

If I were the judge in this case, I would be looking to throw this lawyer in prison for a month, and ban him from ever being a lawyer again... Deliberately lying to the court, as a professional who should understand the consequences, in a way likely to not be detected, and likely to change the outcome of the case, ought to be met with a really strict punishment.

It's not clear he deliberately lied. He plausibly misunderstood a new tool he had recently been introduced to.

I am curious if an architect or an engineer did this for a design and submitted this, would we extend to them the same "reasonable" explanation and excuse, especially if someone's life was put on the line.

Interestingly, it's exactly the same in court! People's lives are put on the line all the time, and lawyers also sometimes flat out lie. This just further indicts the current legal system because it doesn't really "work" but it's just that the mistakes are often covered-up enough until most people forget about them and move on to something else.

Re: Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused

#79
Hilarious. It’s important to remember:

1) ChatGPT is not a research tool

2) It sort of resembles one and will absolutely act like one if you ask it to, and it it may even produce useful results! But…

3) You have to independently verify any factual statement it makes and also

4) In my experience the longer the chat session, the more likely it is to hallucinate, reiterate, and double down on previous output

Re: Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused

#80
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear he deliberately lied. He plausibly misunderstood a new tool he had recently been introduced to.

And he didn't bother to verify the facts before he presented them in court? That's scientifically/logically/professionally unsound and irresponsible.

But it’s not deliberately lying
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