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Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from ChatGPT

theguardian.com

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Re: Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from ChatGPT

#51

Post by hunter2_ »

echelon wrote: post #43
sarchertech wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re very wrong about the perception of doctors. According to polls, doctors are the 2nd most trusted profession. https://news.gallup.com/poll/388649/military-brass-judges-am... My wife runs the resident eduction for her division and they are very aware of the dangers of sending an incompetent doctor out into the world to practice. They’ll force them through extra training and make them repeat residency if they hav…

> According to polls, doctors are the 2nd most trusted profession. n=1 anecdote here: When I was in research track biochem and bumped into premed students, nearly the entire population of premed didn't seem to care about the science behind what they were learning. They formed a very different social clique. The "top students" in that set were sharing previous years' organic chemistry exams and none of them would read…

This seems analogous to a programmer who knows all the sort functions offered by their language of choice and when to use each, but has never learned how to write their own sort algorithm, and therefore can't hold a conversation about doing so. Plenty of employers and customers would be thrilled with such a programmer, if the job at hand is just to ensure that the data gets properly sorted.

Re: Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from ChatGPT

#52

Post by jeroenhd »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #44

I think many commenters here are unaware of exactly how forehead-slappingly WTF it is that these lawyers did. Even if ChatGPT were replaced with a well respected human legal expert saying exactly the same things, they still cited case law that they couldn't verify the existence of, let alone that the context of the ruling was actually helpful to their cause. Then when a judge told them "hey, we can't find any of thes…

When criticized about the made up cases they even showed (undated) screenshots of them asking ChatGPT if the cases were real.

This is like your local major getting tricked into buying the Eiffel tower using public funds and then defending himself by saying he asked the guy he bought the Eiffel tower from and the guy said he was totally legit.

Re: Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from ChatGPT

#53

Post by [deleted] »

notavalleyman wrote: post #35

> Levidow, Levidow & Oberman said in a statement on Thursday that its lawyers “respectfully” disagreed with the court that they had acted in bad faith. “We made a good-faith mistake in failing to believe that a piece of technology could be making up cases out of whole cloth,” it said. Seems like they still don't get it. It's not good faith representation of your client, it's not good lawyering to interrogate a chatbo…

[deleted]

Re: Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from ChatGPT

#54

Post by gautamdivgi »

echelon wrote: post #43
sarchertech wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re very wrong about the perception of doctors. According to polls, doctors are the 2nd most trusted profession. https://news.gallup.com/poll/388649/military-brass-judges-am... My wife runs the resident eduction for her division and they are very aware of the dangers of sending an incompetent doctor out into the world to practice. They’ll force them through extra training and make them repeat residency if they hav…

> According to polls, doctors are the 2nd most trusted profession. n=1 anecdote here: When I was in research track biochem and bumped into premed students, nearly the entire population of premed didn't seem to care about the science behind what they were learning. They formed a very different social clique. The "top students" in that set were sharing previous years' organic chemistry exams and none of them would read…

I think a lot of your general practitioners are bound to follow protocol set forth by various medical organizations. So in that sense a lot of diving into research won’t help them. They need to understand and diagnose without having to worry about every little research paper. A lot of research papers aren’t truth - they are peer reviewed opinions.

Once you get to medical research groups that formulate those protocols, that’s where research becomes important.

Re: Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from ChatGPT

#55

Post by eastbound »

notavalleyman wrote: post #35

> Levidow, Levidow & Oberman said in a statement on Thursday that its lawyers “respectfully” disagreed with the court that they had acted in bad faith. “We made a good-faith mistake in failing to believe that a piece of technology could be making up cases out of whole cloth,” it said. Seems like they still don't get it. It's not good faith representation of your client, it's not good lawyering to interrogate a chatbo…

The risk of ChatGPT is not that people take it seriously, since no-one does even those lawyers; The risk is that it is becomes acceptable to pretend to not understand the shortcomings of ChatGPT, and pretend that it does not make the person an irresponsible adult.

Like editing Wikipedia then citing the contents. Impossible to defend in good faith, but passes as a legit excuse in a public court.

Some people really know how to use public naivety to enforce the public’s powerlessness.

Re: Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from ChatGPT

#56

Post by kurthr »

echelon wrote: post #43
sarchertech wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re very wrong about the perception of doctors. According to polls, doctors are the 2nd most trusted profession. https://news.gallup.com/poll/388649/military-brass-judges-am... My wife runs the resident eduction for her division and they are very aware of the dangers of sending an incompetent doctor out into the world to practice. They’ll force them through extra training and make them repeat residency if they hav…

> According to polls, doctors are the 2nd most trusted profession. n=1 anecdote here: When I was in research track biochem and bumped into premed students, nearly the entire population of premed didn't seem to care about the science behind what they were learning. They formed a very different social clique. The "top students" in that set were sharing previous years' organic chemistry exams and none of them would read…

Studying for the test and taking easy classes, especially as premeds, has been a (likely accurate) stereotype of the medical profession since at least the 1970s & 80s.

Re: Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from ChatGPT

#57

Post by mindcrime »

Ensorceled wrote: post #10
mindcrime wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree with the notion that it should be "career ending", but I do think they got off pretty light.

They doubled down on their original mistake rather than admit what they did, even when it was quite clear the judge and opposing council was on to them. They should be disbarred.

They should be disbarred.

I just can't agree. To my way of thinking there are very few (if any) things that should be "career ending" the first time they happen. And the main guy involved here, as I recall, has a long career with what has been a spotless record until now. I just can't see the justification for ending that career over one fuck-up.

But, again... the punishment does seem lighter than I expected. I was thinking that any fine associated with this should be enough to hurt a bit. Something like $250,000 or something. This amounts to a slap on the wrist.

Just to clarify my position here: I do think this is a major fuck-up. Like, really major. To the extent that I think the punishment should not be "career ending" it's just a reflection of my seeing "career ending" punishments as something of a "nuclear option" that should be avoided in all but the absolute most extreme cases. I guess I would say that if punishments spanned a scale from 1-10 with "10" being "disbarment" then this should probably be about an 8 or 9 in my mind.

Re: Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from ChatGPT

#58

Post by elforce002 »

add-sub-mul-div wrote: post #27
BlakeSimpson wrote: post #9

It blows my mind that a lawyer would go through all the schooling and DEBT just to use ChatGPT and risk losing their BAR card. Sure, I see plenty of uses for ChatGPT in their field, but to not even check the output before submitting it is what blows my mind.

It shouldn't be so mindblowing. People are lazy and dumb, as much so as they're allowed to be. We're a year away from this tech being completely mainstream to the point where we'll find out what happens when an entire society at once stops trying to think/work because there's a machine to do it for them now.

This. We thought that it was bad enough when people used google to diagnose themselves. We're entering uncharted territory now.

Re: Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from ChatGPT

#59

Post by furyofantares »

JohnFen wrote: post #30
cyrialize wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To add onto this - the lawyers failed to verify their resources! This is something that every lawyer carefully pays attention to before submitting anything. The fact that they did no research on ChatGPT, and they didn't verify the output from ChatGPT, is pretty bad. They're being punished more so on how they used their resources, not for using ChatGPT.

> They're being punished more so on how they used their resources, not for using ChatGPT Yes, exactly. If they'd used a human intern instead of ChatGPT, it wouldn't change the situation at all.

Huh, I think it would? It's still really bad, the quality of the service the client got is still abysmal, and it's still ultimately the lawyer's responsibility. That much is certainly unchanged, it would also be considered a much more understandable mistake.

Re: Two US lawyers fined for submitting fake court citations from ChatGPT

#60

Post by jawns »

Every version of ChatGPT that I have used, going back to the beginning of January 2023, has had a disclaimer appear when you first load up the page that specifically tells you, "May occasionally generate incorrect information."

This is why the law firm's contention that they were acting in good faith is laughable.

When the tool itself shows a prominent disclaimer that it "May occasionally generate incorrect information," then the law firm can't reasonably argue that "We made a good-faith mistake in failing to believe that a piece of technology could be making up cases out of whole cloth."

It was either gross negligence or intentional malfeasance.

The most interesting thing to me is why the firm is continuing to try to excuse its actions, rather than taking full responsibility for them. I guess they assume that the classic Shaggy "It Wasn't Me" defense is less likely to lose them business, because they think so little of the clients they're trying to attract that they're wagering they'll buy it.

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