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Lawyer cited 6 fake cases made up by ChatGPT; judge calls it “unprecedented”

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11–20 of 212 posts

Re: Lawyer cited 6 fake cases made up by ChatGPT; judge calls it “unprecedented”

#12
Sigh, I'm getting very sick of hearing about how "ChatGPT" makes stuff up. Yes, 3.5 made a lot of stuff up, 4.0 still does, but it's much rarer.

I wish people would mention this, it's all treated as the same thing. It's like talking about how unreliable these "Airplanes" are when they are talking about prop planes, even though jets are out.

Re: Lawyer cited 6 fake cases made up by ChatGPT; judge calls it “unprecedented”

#14
post #10

It would have taken about 1 minute to put each of them into a tool like Casetext, Lexis, WL, or Bloomberg Law to determine they didn't exist.

To do that you first need to distrust AI, and a lot of people don't. They think of GPT like Google-but-written-in-English. That is a large part of the problem.

Re: Lawyer cited 6 fake cases made up by ChatGPT; judge calls it “unprecedented”

#15

Sigh, I'm getting very sick of hearing about how "ChatGPT" makes stuff up. Yes, 3.5 made a lot of stuff up, 4.0 still does, but it's much rarer. I wish people would mention this, it's all treated as the same thing. It's like talking about how unreliable these "Airplanes" are when they are talking about prop planes, even though jets are out.

If I had an airplane that usually flew just fine as long as I didn't use it for business, but would sometimes crash directly into the ground for no apparent reason, I would be talking about how unreliable it is too. Especially if the maker of the airplane touted its unusual benefits for searching for information in a business setting.

Re: Lawyer cited 6 fake cases made up by ChatGPT; judge calls it “unprecedented”

#16

Sigh, I'm getting very sick of hearing about how "ChatGPT" makes stuff up. Yes, 3.5 made a lot of stuff up, 4.0 still does, but it's much rarer. I wish people would mention this, it's all treated as the same thing. It's like talking about how unreliable these "Airplanes" are when they are talking about prop planes, even though jets are out.

None of this reporting or line of criticism is good and I completely agree, but it is worthwhile to remember that most users are using the free version and so to most people that's what ChatGPT is.

Re: Lawyer cited 6 fake cases made up by ChatGPT; judge calls it “unprecedented”

#17
Check out one of the fake opinions: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.57.... It even makes up a panel comprising real federal appellate judges (although one is from the fifth circuit while the fake case is from the eleventh circuit). I can see how someone unfamiliar with what GPT can do could get fooled.

Re: Lawyer cited 6 fake cases made up by ChatGPT; judge calls it “unprecedented”

#18

Sigh, I'm getting very sick of hearing about how "ChatGPT" makes stuff up. Yes, 3.5 made a lot of stuff up, 4.0 still does, but it's much rarer. I wish people would mention this, it's all treated as the same thing. It's like talking about how unreliable these "Airplanes" are when they are talking about prop planes, even though jets are out.

Most people are using 3.5 since that's the free model.

Re: Lawyer cited 6 fake cases made up by ChatGPT; judge calls it “unprecedented”

#19
I asked ChatGPT to tell me a riddle.

It was “What is always hungry, needs to be fed, and makes your hands red?” (Or something like that)

I asked for a hint about 5 times and it kept giving more legitimate sounding hints.

Finally I gave up and asked for the answer to the riddle, and it spit out a random fruit which made no sense as the answer to the riddle.

I then repeated the riddle and asked ChatGPT what the answer was, and it gave me the answer (“Fire”) which makes sense as the answer to the riddle.

But it was giving extremely bad hints, like “it starts with the letter P” and “it’s a fruit”.

That was a great way to show my non-tech family members the limitations of AI and why they shouldn’t trust it.

Playing “20 questions” with ChatGPT is another great way to expose its limitations. It knows the game and tries to play, but is terrible at asking questions to narrow down possible answers.

There really needs to be some confidence or accuracy score/estimation displayed alongside its output.

Or, learn how to say “I don’t know”

Re: Lawyer cited 6 fake cases made up by ChatGPT; judge calls it “unprecedented”

#20
post #14
post #10

It would have taken about 1 minute to put each of them into a tool like Casetext, Lexis, WL, or Bloomberg Law to determine they didn't exist.

To do that you first need to distrust AI, and a lot of people don't. They think of GPT like Google-but-written-in-English. That is a large part of the problem.

Well, leaving aside whether a lot of people don't distrust and whether a lawyer would or should be among those people, lawyers typically don't cite things without checking them first. I work at a biglaw firm, can't imagine it never getting caught that the cases don't exist. This sounds like a midsize firm, should be fairly similar.

There are a few small law firms/sole prop type guys, however, who I have crossed paths with for whom this kind of stupidity and carelessness would be on brand though.

Guess he was just in a rush and figured this would be one of the 2/10 times he files something without at least taking a look at the opinions first, and it ended up being a massive error.

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