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Lawyer who used ChatGPT faces penalty for made up citations
- kayodelycaon 3y agoI agree with the “lesson has been learned” justification of not having any penalty added. At this point, it wouldn’t really add much. Penalties are supposed to stop people from violating the law. Getting your face and firm known across the world seems to be sufficient deterrent to future offenders because the “oops I didn’t know” defense won’t apply a second time.
- TX81Z 3y agoThat is true, but sanction in the court of public opinion isn’t the same as sanction in a real court. I’m not sure a judge should be taking bad publicity into account when handing out punishment - they should likely be treated as independent.
- zephyrthenoble 3y agoIf someone wasn't a lawyer and did something similar, they would face little to no negative effects socially. Why should a lawyer get a free pass, especially considering they should know better?
- rjmunro 3y agoI think the sanction in the court of public opinion is probably much worse.
- krger 3y agoThe Court of Public Opinion can't suspend or take away your law license.
- harles 3y agoUnless he wasn’t the first and this possibly wasn’t his first time. All we really know is it’s the first time for someone to get caught and penalized for this. Serious penalties seem reasonable in my opinion.
- kayodelycaon 3y agoIf it wasn’t his first time, the I didn’t know defense doesn’t apply and he needs the book and the gavel thrown at him.
- harles 3y agoIt’s possibly his first offense (no knowledge on that). What I was trying to say is that folks rarely get caught their first time doing something nefarious, which makes stiffer penalties important in my opinion.
- nerdponx 3y agoWhat's the penalty for asking your friend to make something up instead of writing it yourself? This should be equivalent.
- rjmunro 3y agoOf course you're allowed to ask others to help you. He's probably got a team of people to help him. This isn't a kid faking his school homework. The purpose of this writing is not to assess the skill of the lawyer.
- londons_explore 3y agoNote that it appears the lesson was not learned... This lawyer at first cited these (fake) cases, and then when asked to provide copies of the cases then faked the copies too, also using ChatGPT. In my view, that is being caught (asked to provide copies, which is unusual in the legal world, and presumably only done because the judge had failed to find them), and then doing the crime again (using chatgpt to fake these cases)
- ceejayoz 3y agoYeah, that second bit is what got him in really deep trouble. Spidey sense should've kicked in there, but instead he doubled down.
- circuit10 3y agoOr he just viewed ChatGPT as a reliable search engine and thought it had found something hard to find
- circuit10 3y agoWhy was this downvoted? I don’t think that means he did the right thing, but that’s probably what he thought rather than being actively malicious. That makes him incompetent, sure, but there’s no point in making up motivations that probably don’t exist because you’re annoyed with him
- code_runner 3y agoYeah you should be allowed to file more than just a handful of fake cases before you’re penalized by the body that exists to make sure you don’t. I mean, as long as the internet is mean to you about it. Now, if the internet isn’t mean enough you should be penalized some amount that accounts for how mean the internet was. In fact, I think doctors that amputate the wrong limb should not face malpractice lawsuits if the greater metropolitan areas local news station ran more than 2 stories about it reaching a population of at least 2 million viewers.
- JohnFen 3y agoI strongly disagree. "Professional embarrassment" isn't really much of a punishment. > sufficient deterrent to future offenders because the “oops I didn’t know” defense won’t apply a second time. I disagree with this as well, because the error this attorney made wasn't really about using AI. It was about not doing due diligence. Surely even freshly minted lawyers are well aware that doing due diligence is most of what people pay lawyers for in the first place.
- gnfargbl 3y ago> "Professional embarrassment" isn't really much of a punishment. That really depends on the profession. If you're a line cook at Waffle House and you get fired for coughing on the eggs, then that's probably not career-ending. If you're a software developer who deletes the production database and causes a week of downtime then that's worse, but likely still not terminal. On the other hand, this guy's income depends to a large extent on convincing his clients that they will be represented competently. Being known primarily for breathtaking incompetence will probably have a pretty significant effect on his future income.
- JohnFen 3y ago> Being known primarily for breathtaking incompetence will probably have a pretty significant effect on his future income. Perhaps so, but most people won't ever know the he's breathtakingly incompetent. It's certainly not a career-ending thing. For an error of this scale, I think that a strong argument can be made that he should choose a different career.
- m3047 3y ago"Penalties are supposed to stop people from violating the law." That only works based on prior evidence. Either somebody prior to the potential violation was penalized or the weren't; either people fear, based on the prior, suffering the same penalty, or no worries mate the prior offender wasn't punished.
- RobotToaster 3y agoAre they going to ask ChatGPT what penalty he should be given?
- engineer_22 3y agoChatGPT: I am not a lawyer, but I can offer some general information about lawyer sanctions. The appropriate sanction for a lawyer who submits fraudulent court filings can vary depending on the jurisdiction and the specific circumstances of the case. However, generally, lawyer sanctions are intended to maintain the integrity of the legal profession and protect the public. Some potential sanctions that a lawyer may face for submitting fraudulent court filings could include: Reprimand: A reprimand is a formal expression of disapproval by the bar association or disciplinary board. It is typically the mildest form of disciplinary action. Suspension: Suspension involves the temporary removal of a lawyer's license to practice law for a specified period. During the suspension, the lawyer is unable to practice law. Disbarment: Disbarment is the most severe sanction that can be imposed on a lawyer. It permanently revokes the lawyer's license to practice law, effectively ending their legal career. Probation: Probation can be imposed along with other sanctions or as an alternative to more severe sanctions. It typically involves specific conditions that the lawyer must meet, such as additional education or supervision. Monetary fines: The lawyer may be required to pay fines as part of the disciplinary process. These fines are intended to serve as a penalty for the lawyer's misconduct. It's important to note that each case is unique, and the actual sanction imposed will depend on the specific facts, the jurisdiction's rules, and the discretion of the disciplinary authority. Legal precedent may be considered in determining the appropriate sanction, but the final decision will be based on the facts and circumstances of the case at hand. For a more accurate assessment of the potential sanctions in a specific jurisdiction, it would be advisable to consult with a legal professional or review the rules and regulations of the relevant bar association.
- dimmke 3y agoPenalty?! He should be disbarred.
- jstummbillig 3y agoWhy?
- SanderNL 3y agoHe didn’t check his work and delivered literally pure bullshit.
- drdeca 3y agoLiterally?
- snapcaster 3y agoIt's a correct use of literally, the actual dictionary definition has been changed. You'll have to find a new thing to be pedantic about
- dllthomas 3y agoIt's a correct use of literally, but I think the change to the dictionary definition is in error. It's simply an example of hyperbole, which is a thing you can do with any word.
- meghan_rain 3y agoLmao, you got caught erroneously trolling somebody and now double down?
- dllthomas 3y agoDid you respond to the wrong comment, or confuse me for someone else? The comment you replied to was my only one in this thread, so if neither of those then I have (ahem) literally no idea what you're on about.
- sdfghswe 3y agoI don't understand what kind of person wouldn't check. What was he thinking? "Oh I have a computer now that knows how to be a lawyer, so I don't need to know how to be a lawyer any more"...?
- jsheard 3y agoA funny detail is that he did have the sense to doubt the accuracy of the information, but delegated verifying its accuracy to the same bot which manufactured it in the first place. > Lawyer: "Is Varghese a real case" > ChatGPT: "Yes" > L: "What is your source" > C: "Upon double-checking, I found that the case Varghese v South China Airlines [...] does indeed exist." > L: "Are the other cases you provided fake" > C: "No, the other cases I provided are real and can be found in reputable legal databases"
- krapp 3y agoRobot, experience this tragic irony for me!
- simondw 3y agoI'm struggling to imagine a mental model of the LLM for which that would make sense. A human who's willing to a lie a little, but comes clean when called out? A robot that mostly doesn't make mistakes, and is more likely to catch its own than make more?
- x86x87 3y agoIt's not a mental model and the bot isn't thinking. This is a limitation of the tech.
- roywiggins 3y agoGP means the mental model that the lawyer had of ChatGPT: why did he think that he could check ChatGPT's work by just asking it "hey are you sure about that"?
- 3y ago
- sremani 3y agoThere will be an eco-system of tooling that will come either in form of other GPTs or standard software that will have to perform audit on ChatGPT responses. Only use ChatGPT if you have a way to audit the response, example: if you asked it to write some code - compile it immediately. Both Bard and ChatGPT gave me code that is near complete but failed compilation. Or ConnsensusGPT -- where you have to get near similar response from 3 GPT models to go to next step. Experts can chime in. The idea of using a GPT model to validate another is recursive and powerful, if it is possible.
- status200 3y ago"I simply had no idea that ChatGPT was capable of fabricating entire case citations or judicial opinions, especially in a manner that appeared authentic" This is the main criticism of the service, how did a lawyer miss this talking point?
- sebzim4500 3y agoI guess he's one of today's unlucky 10,000.
- Izkata 3y agoI mentioned it before, but I think the wording around this hype cycle has duped non-technical people into thinking the true singularity-level AI revolution just happened.
- tiedieconderoga 3y agoHe was probably in a rush. People use these tools to offload work they might otherwise have done if they had more time. People who understand the systems limit their use to tasks where small occasional errors are acceptable. People who don't understand the systems are happy to accept any plausible-soundong results, especially if they don't have time to do the work themselves. I would not be surprised if, sometime in the next year, we see a doctor or two being sued for malpractice after accepting an incorrect diagnosis from ChatGPT. When people are rushed and overworked, and the system is usually correct, these kinds of incidents are almost certain to happen at the scale of an entire society or profession.
- isp 3y agoRelated: "A man sued Avianca Airline – his lawyer used ChatGPT" (12 days ago, 174 points, 138 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36095352 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36095352 Original court documents: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63107798/mata-v-avianca-inc/ https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63107798/mata-v-avianca... Some highlights from the latest added documents: - #48 (Exhibit D) - Copy of original ChatGPT prompts and responses with the hallucinated "bogus" cases: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.48.9.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.57... - #48 (Exhibit E - Part 1) - Includes a copy of the NYT article about the court case! https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.48.10.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.57... As a non-expert, the legal argument against sanctions for the lawyers appear to boil down to that no malice was involved (ignoring the point about whether a reasonable lawyer would have made the mistakes), and that the "professional embarrassment" from news coverage is sanction enough. (Detail is in #45 - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368/gov.uscourts.nysd.575368.45.0_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.nysd.57... ) We will see what happens after the court appearance scheduled for today at 12:00 EDT.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- tjoff 3y agoShowing appalling judgment and no respect for the legal process should have consequences imho.
- TremendousJudge 3y agoYeah airlines should start actually compensating the passangers their injure without making them go through an expensive trial, straining the courts.
- tjoff 3y agoOne does not exclude the other.
- FpUser 3y agoI think he should be disbarred. He either deliberately ignored to check the validity of references using real sources or he is an imbecile who took AI answers for granted and imbeciles should not be allowed to practice law.
- snapcaster 3y agoI understand what you're saying, but have you ever made a mistake at work? Ending someone's career permanently is a really really big punishment
- JohnFen 3y ago> but have you ever made a mistake at work? Plenty. But I've never made a mistake that is on this level of incompetence. If I did, I'd not only expect to be fired, I'd be looking at quitting in shame.
- stevesimmons 3y agoUnlike say, trying to end the career of the other party in the court case, using false information?
- FpUser 3y agoSince when does the US have a problem with harsh punishment? And no it is not a mistake. It is deliberate act of using false information potentially ruining someone's life.
- phoe-krk 3y ago> “I simply had no idea that ChatGPT was capable of fabricating entire case citations or judicial opinions, especially in a manner that appeared authentic,” Mr. Schwartz said in a declaration filed on Tuesday with the judge, P. Kevin Castel of Federal District Court. Your whole occupation literally depends on not inventing bullshit on the spot, and yet you use technology that is marked, by its creator, with big letters, as a bullshit inventer. What can go wrong?
- elforce002 3y agoThis. Can you imagine sending someone to jail or leaving someone to walk free just because you were too lazy to actually do your job?? I'm not for heavy regulations myself but for Medicine, Law, Civil engineering we can make a case on why we need regulations in these areas.
- sidewndr46 3y agoWell, that does exist: https://reillytop10.com/previous-lists/2018-list/sentencing-software/ https://reillytop10.com/previous-lists/2018-list/sentencing-...
- engineer_22 3y agoAgreed, and happily they're already regulated. Practitioners of engineering and medicine can be criminally liable for negligence. The government also regulates the profession by granting licenses and preventing people from practicing in these fields without a license. Law, well, it's self regulated...
- Someone1234 3y ago> Can you imagine sending someone to jail or leaving someone to walk free just because you were too lazy to actually do your job?? This was a civil lawsuit wherein a passenger got injured on an aircraft. I'm not trying to lessen what occurred, just trying to accurately characterize the risks associated with this professional misconduct.
- tikhonj 3y ago
- gizmo686 3y agoMore in depth video coverage of the case: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OCS9v2fmUM&t=2580s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3OCS9v2fmUM&t=2580s The santion hearing is scheduled to happen shortly, and this channel is scheduled to cover it live
- isp 3y agoLive coverage (EDIT - cancelled): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxaBMALE7LQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxaBMALE7LQ EDIT: Due to the problems with the air quality in New York, the channel now apparently won't include live coverage
- Nursie 3y agoI dislike this notion of “hallucination”, because it makes it seem as if it’s unusual. LLMs are language models, not repositories of facts. They have a lot of facts at their disposal, so they know how to make something look factual. “Hallucinating” is just them doing what they’re supposed to. It’s not aberrant. As such, anyone relying on them as some sort of oracle is doing things very wrong.
- low_tech_punk 3y agoConsider the opposite headline in a foreseeable future: "Lawyer sued by client for *not* using GPT to make a strong case"
- pajko 3y agoIt's not about whether ChatGPT is bulshitting or not. Basically they did not care about the crafted cases at all. At least could have requested citations and more details from ChatGPT, possibly leading to more bulshitting, but making the fact checking easier.
- croes 3y ago>I simply had no idea that ChatGPT was capable of fabricating entire case citations or judicial opinions, especially in a manner that appeared authentic At least he could have looked up the mentioned cases. This was just pure laziness. If you use a ghostwriter, no matter if human or a computer, check the results.
- g42gregory 3y agoAs he should … because he is the one submitting the filings, not ChatGPT.
- Borrible 3y ago"ignorantia legis neminem excusat" Black's Law Dictionary, 5th Edition, pg. 673 JudgeChat: I AM THE LAW.