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Lawyers blame ChatGPT for tricking them into citing bogus case law

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Re: Lawyers blame ChatGPT for tricking them into citing bogus case law

#161

Post by CPLX »

vkou wrote: post #159
CPLX wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah it was bad. Disbarment is equivalent to taking away his entire life's work. Two minute hate on the internet every day is fun and all but it's not that severe.

> Disbarment is equivalent to taking away his entire life's work. 'Lawyer' is the kind of profession which actually holds its practitioners to a standard, because the system falls apart when they stop behaving honestly. This wasn't an oopsie-daisies, this was dishonesty, followed by further dishonesty, when they supplied bogus references for these cases.

But it wasn't dishonesty it was total obliviousness, maybe negligence.

Re: Lawyers blame ChatGPT for tricking them into citing bogus case law

#162

Post by geon »

CPLX wrote: post #131
code_runner wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These exemptions we are passing out are insane. This guy claims he thought it was a search engine? Lawyers use specific case law databases and they SHOULD approach any new tools with healthy skepticism. And if he googled it and cited a fake case would it be better? Why wouldn’t you vet the information.

Yeah it was bad. Disbarment is equivalent to taking away his entire life's work. Two minute hate on the internet every day is fun and all but it's not that severe.

We expect doctors to not pump us full with chlorine, even if chatgpt says it's good for us. Why are lawyers exempt from responsibility?

Re: Lawyers blame ChatGPT for tricking them into citing bogus case law

#163

Post by mtrpcic »

CPLX wrote: post #161
vkou wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disbarment is equivalent to taking away his entire life's work. 'Lawyer' is the kind of profession which actually holds its practitioners to a standard, because the system falls apart when they stop behaving honestly. This wasn't an oopsie-daisies, this was dishonesty, followed by further dishonesty, when they supplied bogus references for these cases.

But it wasn't dishonesty it was total obliviousness, maybe negligence.

A negligent civil engineer that failed to verify construction details provided by GPT, which later led to a bridge collapse, would lose their license. A negligent doctor that failed to vet a treatment protocol to a patient that later caused them harm would lose their license. Negligence is a fair, reasonable, and valid reason for someone to be determined unqualified to practice their profession in the future.

Re: Lawyers blame ChatGPT for tricking them into citing bogus case law

#164

Post by LASR »

gumballindie wrote: post #160
rank0 wrote: post #97

Disbarment is appropriate here. Why not blame your laptop manufacturer for creating the hardware you used to file your fraudulent court documents?

> Why not blame your laptop manufacturer for creating the hardware you used to file your fraudulent court documents? Because your laptop manufacturer doesnt claim your laptop “thinks”, is “intelligent”, doesnt build an entire fud marketing campaign around the two, doesnt claim it “creates” ideas on its own, doesnt claim it “learns like a human”, doesnt claim it has cognitive abilities and so on.

Come on. We're dealing with qualified professionals here. The buck stops with them.

A professional civil engineer blaming a new untested simulation software after a bridge fails and causes injury - does it matter what the software claimed to do? It could claim itself to be god, but it's still up to the professionals to evaluate and select the tools they choose to use.

It's not like they were using an industry-standard tool they've been using for many years and it suddenly did something unexpected.

This is clearly carelessness. A basic out-of-bound check on the cases it hallucinated would be part of basic due-diligence. Digitized case indices are available within minutes.

What's even more egregious is that they went to the same tool to confirm its own reliability after they got some indication that it was unreliable. It doesn't take a professional to have commonsense.

Re: Lawyers blame ChatGPT for tricking them into citing bogus case law

#165

Post by vba616 »

travisjungroth wrote: post #153
seydor wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

now imagine believing that this electric motor can self-drive itself to the supermarket

ChatGPT isn’t just an LLM. It’s literally not. There’s a web server, interfaces, plugins, etc. LLMs are this super powerful thing (like a motor) and people are getting to play around with it before it’s fully harnessed. There’s this strange phenomenon where because it’s not totally harnessed, people just rip on it. I don’t know if they think it makes them sound smart, but it sure doesn’t to me. It’s like seeing a mot…

I think you've got hold of the wrong end of your analogy.

If you just hold it the right way you will be illuminated and we will all agree how relevant it is.

If someone announces to the public, they have a revolutionary new motor that is going to transform personal transportation and solve climate change...

...but it is presented with a chat interface - the motor itself is directed through typing text and it demonstrates its motion/power through text messages in response - rather being connected to a vehicle or generator, rather than a transmission, then it's BS beyond a reasonable doubt.

Even though there is no logical or technical reason preventing such a setup, it's just not how professionals do things. If the motor were so damn useful, then people who like to use motors would use it for the things that they do use motors for!

There is no logical or legal requirement in science to use LaTeX Computer Modern fonts...but as a layperson if I can't tell if someone is a crank or doing advanced physics, I'm going to be exponentially more skeptical if they are using Times or Palatino.

Re: Lawyers blame ChatGPT for tricking them into citing bogus case law

#166

Post by JumpCrisscross »

LASR wrote: post #164
gumballindie wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why not blame your laptop manufacturer for creating the hardware you used to file your fraudulent court documents? Because your laptop manufacturer doesnt claim your laptop “thinks”, is “intelligent”, doesnt build an entire fud marketing campaign around the two, doesnt claim it “creates” ideas on its own, doesnt claim it “learns like a human”, doesnt claim it has cognitive abilities and so on.

Come on. We're dealing with qualified professionals here. The buck stops with them. A professional civil engineer blaming a new untested simulation software after a bridge fails and causes injury - does it matter what the software claimed to do? It could claim itself to be god, but it's still up to the professionals to evaluate and select the tools they choose to use. It's not like they were using an industry-standar…

> professional civil engineer blaming a new untested simulation software after a bridge fails and causes injury

Which bridge failed and physically injured someone here?

Re: Lawyers blame ChatGPT for tricking them into citing bogus case law

#167

Post by kcplate »

DtNZNkLN wrote: post #26

The lawyer said: “I did not comprehend that ChatGPT could fabricate cases." I wonder how many other people using ChatGPT do not comprehend that ChatGPT can be a confident bullshitter... I'm surprised that this one case is getting so much attention because there must be so many instances of people using false information they got from ChatGPT.

> I wonder how many other people using ChatGPT do not comprehend that ChatGPT can be a confident bullshitter...

AI isn’t going to destroy us in some Terminator/Matrixy scenario. We are gonna be the agents of our own demise by just blindly walking off a cliff created from our own laziness.

Re: Lawyers blame ChatGPT for tricking them into citing bogus case law

#168

Post by vkou »

CPLX wrote: post #161
vkou wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disbarment is equivalent to taking away his entire life's work. 'Lawyer' is the kind of profession which actually holds its practitioners to a standard, because the system falls apart when they stop behaving honestly. This wasn't an oopsie-daisies, this was dishonesty, followed by further dishonesty, when they supplied bogus references for these cases.

But it wasn't dishonesty it was total obliviousness, maybe negligence.

It crossed the line from stupidity into dishonesty when the judge asked him "Wtf is this court case that you're citing", and the lawyer sent the judge a fabricated document.

https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.57...

How can anyone trust anything a lawyer does, when they are willing to fabricate documents, in order to continue to lie to a judge? This is Better Call Saul-level chicanery.

He could have fessed up and apologized when called out on it, but he doubled down.

Re: Lawyers blame ChatGPT for tricking them into citing bogus case law

#170

Post by ipython »

jcranmer wrote: post #52

While the lawyers blamed ChatGPT, the totality of the circumstances seem to indicate that they're less than honest in doing so. There is a live-tweet of the hearing here: https://twitter.com/innercitypress/status/166683852676213965... , and you can follow along with the lawyerly cringe there. Okay, lawyer #1 (LoDuca, the one on the case in the first place) appears to have played essentially no role in the entire case…

100% agree. They are trying to deflect blame onto "old lawyer scared of scary new technology". Why they thought they'd get away with making up entire cases out of whole cloth, who knows...
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