5 ms·

Mandatory Certification Regarding Generative Artificial Intelligence

125 points by dpifke 3y ago

bdonlan 3y ago
Link appears to be broken.
- dpifke 3y ago
  Works for me, but you can also read the text of the order here: https://reason.com/volokh/2023/05/30/federal-judge-requires-all-lawyers-to-file-certificates-related-to-use-of-generative-ai/ https://reason.com/volokh/2023/05/30/federal-judge-requires-... (The linked blog post is where I discovered this, but I submitted the original source instead.)
  - than3 3y ago
    Works for me too. Nice to see some judges have integrity.
  - jamesliudotcc 3y ago
    In federal courts, when you file something under your account (often, attorneys have staff do the clicking to file), it is the equivalent of signing. And what you sign, you vouch for. This standing order reiterates what any practitioner _should_ know. It a rule which states that you should follow the rules! But as we learned from the Air Avianca filing, at least one lawyer is missing something very basic about what it means to sign a filing in federal court.
- koboll 3y ago
``` All attorneys appearing before the Court must file on the docket a certificate attesting either that no portion of the filing was drafted by generative artificial intelligence (such as ChatGPT, Harvey.AI, or Google Bard) or that any language drafted by generative artificial intelligence was checked for accuracy, using print reporters or traditional legal databases, by a human being. These platforms are incredibly powerful and have many uses in the law: form divorces, discovery requests, suggested errors in documents, anticipated questions at oral argument. But legal briefing is not one of them. Here’s why. These platforms in their current states are prone to hallucinations and bias. On hallucinations, they make stuff up—even quotes and citations. Another issue is reliability or bias. While attorneys swear an oath to set aside their personal prejudices, biases, and beliefs to faithfully uphold the law and represent their clients, generative artificial intelligence is the product of programming devised by humans who did not have to swear such an oath. As such, these systems hold no allegiance to any client, the rule of law, or the laws and Constitution of the United States (or, as addressed above, the truth). Unbound by any sense of duty, honor, or justice, such programs act according to computer code rather than conviction, based on programming rather than principle. Any party believing a platform has the requisite accuracy and reliability for legal briefing may move for leave and explain why. Accordingly, the Court will strike any filing from an attorney who fails to file a certificate on the docket attesting that the attorney has read the Court’s judge-specific requirements and understands that he or she will be held responsible under Rule 11 for the contents of any filing that he or she signs and submits to the Court, regardless of whether generative artificial intelligence drafted any portion of that filing. ```
- yk 3y ago
  > While attorneys swear an oath to set aside their personal prejudices, biases, and beliefs to faithfully uphold the law and represent their clients, generative artificial intelligence is the product of programming devised by humans who did not have to swear such an oath. While I like the idea, the reasoning here is kinda silly, even if some developer had sworn such an oath it is entirely unclear how that should affect a AI. We just don't have good techniques to prevent llms from hallucinating.
  - sigstoat 3y ago
    the hallucination issue was a separate clause. the court does not think that so swearing will fix hallucinations.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    Not just the developer, but anyone who posted any sort of text in the training data. I assume that includes a pretty wide majority of English speakers. That makes the likelihood of actual agreement with the oath for all “participants” in the AI training low, to say the least. That point about swearing an oath is a good one. It’s a reasonable position (assuming it’s the court’s position) that an AI (assuming this is an “AI”) being asked to provide testimony or a legal argument is doing so on behalf of all who trained it. Why would “my” training argue in “your” case? What if one doesn’t agree with the oath?
- RobotToaster 3y ago
  That's surprisingly well informed about tech for a judge.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    One of hardest, time consuming, and most important parts of being a judge is understanding the issues presented before you. Be it generative AI or communal animal husbandry. There are clearly gross examples of judges failing in this duty, but others take that duty extremely seriously and I've read a number of judicial opinions on technology-related cases that demonstrated remarkable, nuanced grokking of the matter at hand.
snitty 3y ago
Lordy this is dumb. There's been exactly one recorded instance of a lawyer using ChatGPT in a brief and not checking it. This isn't a meaningful problem.
- Kon-Peki 3y ago
  There has been one news article that has gained enough traction to get widespread notice. That’s not even remotely the same as “one recorded instance.” The order, already posted on this thread, lists multiple instances where generative AI would be useful in the law, but also a number of issues that I haven’t seen discussed before.
- Arrath 3y ago
  > This isn't a meaningful problem. ...Yet. This isn't a meaningful problem, yet. SimpsonsMeme.jpg Sarcasm aside, there are already cases (I think at least two) of this happening in the wild, why not nip it in the bud before some high profile event really catapults it into the public eye?
- shishy 3y ago
  Would you rather it become a meaningful problem and overload the system before someone implements a simple check to ensure it doesn't?
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
  In court, there is no meaningless problem or detail. Especially any detail pertaining to the structuring of legal arguments. And even more especially any details pertaining to the soundness of legal arguments and evidence. Legal experts obsessing over stuff like this is the only reason it's even vaguely possible to conduct a fair trial at all.
- duskwuff 3y ago
  There's only been one big one which made the news. So far. There have almost certainly been more which have gone under the radar, or which weren't caught.
- meej 3y ago
GaggiX 3y ago
The link only seems to open with an American IP (at least with my little tests).
- yk 3y ago
  For me doesn't open with a German IP but switching on a vpn, it opens with a US one.
EGreg 3y ago
Mandating truthful disclosure to the public and customers is very good! Just like with required list of ingredients. I made a petition for this much more generally: https://www.change.org/p/mandate-disclosures-to-mitigate-spam-from-ai-generated-content https://www.change.org/p/mandate-disclosures-to-mitigate-spa...
- GaggiX 3y ago
  Why do people create petitions with only 10 signatures? How much impact do you think an online petition with a goal of 10 signatures can have? (Maybe the goal is dynamically updated but it still feels weird)
  - EGreg 3y ago
    I don’t think people know in advance the petition will not attract enough attention. Why do people make comments with only 17 views?
  - afavour 3y ago
    Why do people make Hacker News submissions with zero upvotes?
    - EGreg 3y ago
      Zing! Your reply is def better than mine :)
    - GaggiX 3y ago
      Sharing a link on HN doesn't demand the same level of effort nor does it purport to have the same impact as creating a petition on the platform "change".
  - RobotToaster 3y ago
    Change.org dynamically updates the goal I think, it's usually slightly higher than the current signature count, I guess to make people think their signature will help hit that "important" goal.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
neonate 3y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20230530223247/https://www.txnd.uscourts.gov/judge/judge-brantley-starr http://web.archive.org/web/20230530223247/https://www.txnd.u... https://archive.ph/JpSsf https://archive.ph/JpSsf
sour-taste 3y ago
> While attorneys swear an oath to set aside their personal prejudices, biases, and beliefs to faithfully uphold the law and represent their clients, generative artificial intelligence is the product of programming devised by humans who did not have to swear such an oath. As such, these systems hold no allegiance to any client, the rule of law, or the laws and Constitution of the United States (or, as addressed above, the truth). Unbound by any sense of duty, honor, or justice, such programs act according to computer code rather than conviction, based on programming rather than principle Minor quibble: I think the majority of bias would creep in when training, not necessarily during writing the code. If trained on biased data you'll get biased results. RLHF by it's nature is likely to introduce bias, but maybe bias most are ok with, but maybe not lawyers. Later, while actually serving responses, it's possible that OpenAI/others introduce checks for certain things (e.g. does the input contain the word 'gun'? If so refuse to answer) that are also sources of bias. In theory you could also taint the responses by changing the prompt, but that seems unlikely. All this just to say that I think the judge is right to do this, his bias argument is a bit of a miss.
- bourgoin 3y ago
  The whole paragraph except for the first and last sentences may have been composed using an LLM. > All attorneys appearing before the Court must file on the docket a certificate attesting either that no portion of [...] or that any language drafted by generative artificial intelligence was checked for accuracy, using print reporters or traditional legal databases, by a human being [...] held responsible under Rule 11 for the contents of any filing that he or she signs and submits to the Court, regardless of whether generative artificial intelligence drafted any portion of that filing Asking the attorneys to re-acknowledge that documents they file are their official entries into the record, no matter what programs are used to generate them, makes sense in principle as a way to preempt the "algorithm told us to" argument.
- devindotcom 3y ago
  I think the context here suggests that the training is considered part of the overall task of "programming," though people in the industry use that term of art differently in the context of ML development. At any rate the creators of the model or tool were under no oath, nor is (or can be) the tool itself, and the results must be considered in the light of that fact.
perihelions 3y ago
This is a local procedural rule for one federal judge in Texas. It affects a few dozen people (mostly lawyers). Why was it on HN #1? Are people misinterpreting the title, thinking it's something that remotely matters?
- dpifke 3y ago
  It follows from recent HN discussions: ChatGPT-Authored Legal Filing “Replete with Citations to Non-Existent Cases" (62 points, 71 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36092509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36092509 Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused (343 points, 306 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36097900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36097900 A man sued Avianca Airline – his lawyer used ChatGPT (167 points, 129 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36095352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36095352 It's also likely the first of similar local rules in other courts, and it wouldn't surprise me if an equivalent rule is eventually added to the FRCP.
- rylittle 3y ago
  Is it not fascinating to watch changes to our world in real time due to genAi? This is small but its likely the very first of many rules that will become huge
- ldehaan 3y ago
  [dead]
- SllX 3y ago
  It's a good and well-explained rule. It's worth reading regardless of prevalence, and one judge making one procedural change to start with is one of the ways in which the Law can start to evolve and change to adapt to new circumstances.
startupsfail 3y ago
>> As such, these systems hold no allegiance to any client, the rule of law, or the laws and Constitution of the United States (or, as addressed above, the truth). Note that while AI systems can be misaligned in general and can hold no allegiances, they are not above the law. Nothing is above the law.
- riwsky 3y ago
  Except, say, nature. Can’t much legislate gravity out of existence, can we.
- sdenton4 3y ago
  [flagged]
xp84 3y ago
This is super reasonable, as all it demands at minimum is that a human has reviewed and checked the work of any AI-generated filing. That’s an obvious necessity - which, if my attorney failed to do, I would fire him before leaving the courtroom! How could anyone think that was ok, in court, where consequences of an error could be severe.
helsinkiandrew 3y ago
> Accordingly, the Court will strike any filing from an attorney who fails to file a certificate on the docket attesting that the attorney has read the Court’s judge-specific requirements and understands that he or she will be held responsible under Rule 11 for the contents of any filing that he or she signs and submits to the Court, regardless of whether generative artificial intelligence drafted any portion of that filing Surely an attorney should be held responsible for any and all of the contents they file to a court. How much of that is generated/prepared by junior or trainee attorneys, paralegals, or researchers etc.

125 points by dpifke 3y ago

bdonlan 3y ago

Link appears to be broken.

dpifke 3y ago
Works for me, but you can also read the text of the order here: https://reason.com/volokh/2023/05/30/federal-judge-requires-all-lawyers-to-file-certificates-related-to-use-of-generative-ai/ https://reason.com/volokh/2023/05/30/federal-judge-requires-... (The linked blog post is where I discovered this, but I submitted the original source instead.)
- than3 3y ago
  Works for me too. Nice to see some judges have integrity.
- jamesliudotcc 3y ago
  In federal courts, when you file something under your account (often, attorneys have staff do the clicking to file), it is the equivalent of signing. And what you sign, you vouch for. This standing order reiterates what any practitioner _should_ know. It a rule which states that you should follow the rules! But as we learned from the Air Avianca filing, at least one lawyer is missing something very basic about what it means to sign a filing in federal court.
koboll 3y ago
``` All attorneys appearing before the Court must file on the docket a certificate attesting either that no portion of the filing was drafted by generative artificial intelligence (such as ChatGPT, Harvey.AI, or Google Bard) or that any language drafted by generative artificial intelligence was checked for accuracy, using print reporters or traditional legal databases, by a human being. These platforms are incredibly powerful and have many uses in the law: form divorces, discovery requests, suggested errors in documents, anticipated questions at oral argument. But legal briefing is not one of them. Here’s why. These platforms in their current states are prone to hallucinations and bias. On hallucinations, they make stuff up—even quotes and citations. Another issue is reliability or bias. While attorneys swear an oath to set aside their personal prejudices, biases, and beliefs to faithfully uphold the law and represent their clients, generative artificial intelligence is the product of programming devised by humans who did not have to swear such an oath. As such, these systems hold no allegiance to any client, the rule of law, or the laws and Constitution of the United States (or, as addressed above, the truth). Unbound by any sense of duty, honor, or justice, such programs act according to computer code rather than conviction, based on programming rather than principle. Any party believing a platform has the requisite accuracy and reliability for legal briefing may move for leave and explain why. Accordingly, the Court will strike any filing from an attorney who fails to file a certificate on the docket attesting that the attorney has read the Court’s judge-specific requirements and understands that he or she will be held responsible under Rule 11 for the contents of any filing that he or she signs and submits to the Court, regardless of whether generative artificial intelligence drafted any portion of that filing. ```
- yk 3y ago
  > While attorneys swear an oath to set aside their personal prejudices, biases, and beliefs to faithfully uphold the law and represent their clients, generative artificial intelligence is the product of programming devised by humans who did not have to swear such an oath. While I like the idea, the reasoning here is kinda silly, even if some developer had sworn such an oath it is entirely unclear how that should affect a AI. We just don't have good techniques to prevent llms from hallucinating.
  - sigstoat 3y ago
    the hallucination issue was a separate clause. the court does not think that so swearing will fix hallucinations.
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    Not just the developer, but anyone who posted any sort of text in the training data. I assume that includes a pretty wide majority of English speakers. That makes the likelihood of actual agreement with the oath for all “participants” in the AI training low, to say the least. That point about swearing an oath is a good one. It’s a reasonable position (assuming it’s the court’s position) that an AI (assuming this is an “AI”) being asked to provide testimony or a legal argument is doing so on behalf of all who trained it. Why would “my” training argue in “your” case? What if one doesn’t agree with the oath?
- RobotToaster 3y ago
  That's surprisingly well informed about tech for a judge.
  - flangola7 3y ago
    One of hardest, time consuming, and most important parts of being a judge is understanding the issues presented before you. Be it generative AI or communal animal husbandry. There are clearly gross examples of judges failing in this duty, but others take that duty extremely seriously and I've read a number of judicial opinions on technology-related cases that demonstrated remarkable, nuanced grokking of the matter at hand.

snitty 3y ago

Lordy this is dumb. There's been exactly one recorded instance of a lawyer using ChatGPT in a brief and not checking it. This isn't a meaningful problem.

Kon-Peki 3y ago
There has been one news article that has gained enough traction to get widespread notice. That’s not even remotely the same as “one recorded instance.” The order, already posted on this thread, lists multiple instances where generative AI would be useful in the law, but also a number of issues that I haven’t seen discussed before.
Arrath 3y ago
> This isn't a meaningful problem. ...Yet. This isn't a meaningful problem, yet. SimpsonsMeme.jpg Sarcasm aside, there are already cases (I think at least two) of this happening in the wild, why not nip it in the bud before some high profile event really catapults it into the public eye?
shishy 3y ago
Would you rather it become a meaningful problem and overload the system before someone implements a simple check to ensure it doesn't?
mtlmtlmtlmtl 3y ago
In court, there is no meaningless problem or detail. Especially any detail pertaining to the structuring of legal arguments. And even more especially any details pertaining to the soundness of legal arguments and evidence. Legal experts obsessing over stuff like this is the only reason it's even vaguely possible to conduct a fair trial at all.
duskwuff 3y ago
There's only been one big one which made the news. So far. There have almost certainly been more which have gone under the radar, or which weren't caught.
meej 3y ago

GaggiX 3y ago

The link only seems to open with an American IP (at least with my little tests).

yk 3y ago
For me doesn't open with a German IP but switching on a vpn, it opens with a US one.

EGreg 3y ago

Mandating truthful disclosure to the public and customers is very good! Just like with required list of ingredients. I made a petition for this much more generally: https://www.change.org/p/mandate-disclosures-to-mitigate-spam-from-ai-generated-content https://www.change.org/p/mandate-disclosures-to-mitigate-spa...

GaggiX 3y ago
Why do people create petitions with only 10 signatures? How much impact do you think an online petition with a goal of 10 signatures can have? (Maybe the goal is dynamically updated but it still feels weird)
- EGreg 3y ago
  I don’t think people know in advance the petition will not attract enough attention. Why do people make comments with only 17 views?
- afavour 3y ago
  Why do people make Hacker News submissions with zero upvotes?
  - EGreg 3y ago
    Zing! Your reply is def better than mine :)
  - GaggiX 3y ago
    Sharing a link on HN doesn't demand the same level of effort nor does it purport to have the same impact as creating a petition on the platform "change".
- RobotToaster 3y ago
  Change.org dynamically updates the goal I think, it's usually slightly higher than the current signature count, I guess to make people think their signature will help hit that "important" goal.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

neonate 3y ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20230530223247/https://www.txnd.uscourts.gov/judge/judge-brantley-starr http://web.archive.org/web/20230530223247/https://www.txnd.u... https://archive.ph/JpSsf https://archive.ph/JpSsf

sour-taste 3y ago

> While attorneys swear an oath to set aside their personal prejudices, biases, and beliefs to faithfully uphold the law and represent their clients, generative artificial intelligence is the product of programming devised by humans who did not have to swear such an oath. As such, these systems hold no allegiance to any client, the rule of law, or the laws and Constitution of the United States (or, as addressed above, the truth). Unbound by any sense of duty, honor, or justice, such programs act according to computer code rather than conviction, based on programming rather than principle Minor quibble: I think the majority of bias would creep in when training, not necessarily during writing the code. If trained on biased data you'll get biased results. RLHF by it's nature is likely to introduce bias, but maybe bias most are ok with, but maybe not lawyers. Later, while actually serving responses, it's possible that OpenAI/others introduce checks for certain things (e.g. does the input contain the word 'gun'? If so refuse to answer) that are also sources of bias. In theory you could also taint the responses by changing the prompt, but that seems unlikely. All this just to say that I think the judge is right to do this, his bias argument is a bit of a miss.

bourgoin 3y ago
The whole paragraph except for the first and last sentences may have been composed using an LLM. > All attorneys appearing before the Court must file on the docket a certificate attesting either that no portion of [...] or that any language drafted by generative artificial intelligence was checked for accuracy, using print reporters or traditional legal databases, by a human being [...] held responsible under Rule 11 for the contents of any filing that he or she signs and submits to the Court, regardless of whether generative artificial intelligence drafted any portion of that filing Asking the attorneys to re-acknowledge that documents they file are their official entries into the record, no matter what programs are used to generate them, makes sense in principle as a way to preempt the "algorithm told us to" argument.
devindotcom 3y ago
I think the context here suggests that the training is considered part of the overall task of "programming," though people in the industry use that term of art differently in the context of ML development. At any rate the creators of the model or tool were under no oath, nor is (or can be) the tool itself, and the results must be considered in the light of that fact.

perihelions 3y ago

This is a local procedural rule for one federal judge in Texas. It affects a few dozen people (mostly lawyers). Why was it on HN #1? Are people misinterpreting the title, thinking it's something that remotely matters?

dpifke 3y ago
It follows from recent HN discussions: ChatGPT-Authored Legal Filing “Replete with Citations to Non-Existent Cases" (62 points, 71 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36092509 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36092509 Lawyer cites fake cases invented by ChatGPT, judge is not amused (343 points, 306 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36097900 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36097900 A man sued Avianca Airline – his lawyer used ChatGPT (167 points, 129 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36095352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36095352 It's also likely the first of similar local rules in other courts, and it wouldn't surprise me if an equivalent rule is eventually added to the FRCP.
rylittle 3y ago
Is it not fascinating to watch changes to our world in real time due to genAi? This is small but its likely the very first of many rules that will become huge
ldehaan 3y ago
[dead]
SllX 3y ago
It's a good and well-explained rule. It's worth reading regardless of prevalence, and one judge making one procedural change to start with is one of the ways in which the Law can start to evolve and change to adapt to new circumstances.

startupsfail 3y ago

>> As such, these systems hold no allegiance to any client, the rule of law, or the laws and Constitution of the United States (or, as addressed above, the truth). Note that while AI systems can be misaligned in general and can hold no allegiances, they are not above the law. Nothing is above the law.

riwsky 3y ago
Except, say, nature. Can’t much legislate gravity out of existence, can we.
sdenton4 3y ago
[flagged]

xp84 3y ago

This is super reasonable, as all it demands at minimum is that a human has reviewed and checked the work of any AI-generated filing. That’s an obvious necessity - which, if my attorney failed to do, I would fire him before leaving the courtroom! How could anyone think that was ok, in court, where consequences of an error could be severe.

helsinkiandrew 3y ago

> Accordingly, the Court will strike any filing from an attorney who fails to file a certificate on the docket attesting that the attorney has read the Court’s judge-specific requirements and understands that he or she will be held responsible under Rule 11 for the contents of any filing that he or she signs and submits to the Court, regardless of whether generative artificial intelligence drafted any portion of that filing Surely an attorney should be held responsible for any and all of the contents they file to a court. How much of that is generated/prepared by junior or trainee attorneys, paralegals, or researchers etc.