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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

#81

Post by Ekaros »

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…

From country where medschool is done by entrance exams the whole "premed" always sounded extremely weird and wasteful. They already have longest training time and then more is added on top?

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

#83

Post by brucethemoose2 »

damnesian wrote: post #3

Everyone letting ChatGPT do their jobs, and the people training ChatGPT are too lazy to do the work themselves, they actually use ChatGPT to train ChatGPT... what could possibly go wrong in this scenario?

I wouldn't say OpenAI is "lazy," but this is still an excellent point about LLMs.

The researchers training the ones we use now are in a massive hurry. They aren't meticulously curating datasets, checking usage rights, hiring a huge field of human curators, or thoroughly field testing them. They are madly working on a new improvement, publishing it in a paper, then moving onto the next thing.

This has been a cultural issue in AI land for years. These experimental models were never meant for the general public, yet here we are.

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

#84

Post by dragonwriter »

jeroenhd wrote: post #46

LegalEagle did a video on this case two weeks ago, digging into it in some more depth: https://youtu.be/oqSYljRYDEM They lied to a judge, doubled down, showed further incompetence by admitting to not knowing how the legal reference they supposedly quoted was even structured, then lied to a judge again trying to get more time to get their story straight, and all it cost them was $5000? And even then they have the guts…

> They lied to a judge, doubled down, showed further incompetence by admitting to not knowing how the legal reference they supposedly quoted was even structured, then lied to a judge again trying to get more time to get their story straight, and all it cost them was $5000?

Well, no, they also have to right letters and attach the sanctions order, and the transcript of the sanctions hearing to:

(1) their client in the case, and

(2) each of the real judges to whom they (on the basis of ChatGPT “research”) falsely attributed a decision.

But, yes, sanctions are fairly light (particularly the absence of a disciplinary referral).

> I can understand how the rubber stamping lawyer signing all the paperwork got off easy; he was just signing documents because the lawyer who supposedly did all the work for the case couldn't operate in the court the case was transfered to.

> The other lawyer, the one who did the AI equivalent from copy pasting from the summary page of Google, should not be deemed fit to practice law.

They both failed their duty in nearly identical ways; passing of someone else’s work to which they did not apply independent professional analysis as their professional work. If anything, the one doing so directly to the court should be more, not less, liable to outside sanction (if the issue was sanctions within the firm, that’s a different story, maybe.)

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

#85

Post by dragonwriter »

Zetice wrote: post #79
jcranmer wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> and all it cost them was $5000? They also have to write written apologies to their client, and all of the judges who were mentioned in their fake cases, with proof filed in the docket. And they are the brunt of a very well-publicized lawsuit. The judge is effectively saying that all that publicity is punishment enough; he doesn't need to do anymore. He doesn't need to refer them to the bar for disbarment--the bar a…

> They also have to write written apologies to their client, and all of the judges who were mentioned in their fake cases, with proof filed in the docket. I thought the judge said he couldn't force them to do that because it wouldn't be sincere.

Whether or they choose to apologize, they do have to send letters that include a copy of the transcript of the hearing on sanctions and the sanctions order.

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

#87

Post by brewdad »

bitshiftfaced wrote: post #48
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…

> Seems like they still don't get it. Oh they get it. ChatGPT explained it to them, and then suggested that they take this position because it was the least bad option.

Right. They aren't completely finished with potential punishments. A review by the Bar is likely still ongoing. They can't do anything but pretend it was all done in good faith. Much like a person or company who may end up in a lawsuit can't issue a "real" apology when they screw up lest it be used against them.

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

#88

Post by sarchertech »

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…

Something like 17% of premed students end up actually becoming physicians.

That’s a very different sample. Then you have to consider that the people that you are most likely to notice are the most vocal self identified “premed” students since most colleges don’t actually have premed degrees.

As far as interactions with doctors. GPs are the least likely to get into specifics because of the generalist nature of their work. Expecting them to remember something that they haven’t used in 10+ years is asking a lot.

Understanding calculus is incredibly useful to software engineers. But try asking a practicing software engineer 10 years out of school some textbook calculus questions.

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

#89

Post by dragonwriter »

AmVess wrote: post #33
emilsedgh wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why so eager to end someone's career? He did a lazy/stupid thing. People do far worse things. The client may want to sue them and seek damages or something and that'd be fair but I don't think their career should end. That's harsh.

Things like this is what causes lawyers to lose cases for their clients. Imagine being a client of a lawyer who uses ChatGPT. You lose the case and then your livelihood or worse. These twits should be disbarred, and without hesitation.

> Things like this is what causes lawyers to lose cases for their clients.

Or to waste a lot of their clients money on cases that they should have known could not be won from the outset, as is the case here.

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

#90

Post by dragonwriter »

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #38
AmVess wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Things like this is what causes lawyers to lose cases for their clients. Imagine being a client of a lawyer who uses ChatGPT. You lose the case and then your livelihood or worse. These twits should be disbarred, and without hesitation.

> Imagine being a client of a lawyer who uses ChatGPT. You lose the case and then your livelihood or worse. This presupposes that the use of ChatGPT is the reason the case was lost. In this case, the judge found the mistake, called it out, and fined the lawyers for their carelessness. It doesn't necessarily follow that p1) ChatGPT was used, p2) Case was lost, c) Case would have been won if ChatGPT was not used.

No, the use of ChatGPT is the only reason that they thought they had a colorable argument that the case could be won.
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