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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 C

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.

hospitalJail 3y ago
They didn't know it could lie? But also, pretty sure Doctors and Lawyers are among the least trusted/highest corruption professions. All that schooling is a barrier to entry to keep outsiders away, it doesnt guarantee competence. Basically once you get in, graduation rates are close to 100%.
- sarchertech 3y ago
  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-among-professions-new-image-lows.aspx 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 have to. Residents also drop out of their programs and move into other ones. It’s rare for them to drop out completely because they’d still be on the hook for $200k+ in loans. But medicine is a big field and it’s rare that someone who made it into and through med school to not be able to find something they are competent and capable at. Maybe you’re not great with patients, but you can look through a microscope all day as a pathologist etc… Incompetent and corrupt doctors still make it through the process of course, but far far fewer than in our profession and just about any other profession I can think of. As for lawyers: Law schools have around a 77% graduation rate nation wide. And about 90% of law school graduates eventually pass the bar exam. So we’re look at somewhere around 70% of people making it through after a pretty selective filter to begin with.
  - echelon 3y ago
    > 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 papers or get involved in research. They were entirely disinterested in the science. In my interactions with general practitioners, I like to talk about medicines' method of actions, pharmacology, the actual biochemistry behind diseases. Most of them seem to have no clue or retention of this information. I'm not trying to challenge them, either -- I'm generally curious to learn. That's not to say all doctors are like that. A lot of the surgeons and specialists I know are walking tomes of information.
    - appletrotter 3y ago
      I don’t really know, but it might be okay for them to not focus on that knowledge.
      - echelon 3y ago
        Seems like we could train a lot of people for a lot cheaper if that was the case, though.
        sarchertech 3y ago
        That’s essentially what Physicians Assistants and Nurse Practitioners are.
    - hunter2_ 3y ago
      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.
add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
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.
- elforce002 3y ago
  This. We thought that it was bad enough when people used google to diagnose themselves. We're entering uncharted territory now.
- Ekaros 3y ago
  Before it was handful of mad people with things like sovereign citizen and stupid instructions on Internet. But now it seems even trained folks will follow whatever something they have not verified says... Also I wonder how well the training data was cleaned from all potentially harmful stuff like for example the sovereign citizen ideas...
  - xen2xen1 3y ago
    And I'm a French model..
- xen2xen1 3y ago
  If they used ChatGPT to find real cases that's not lazy, that's smart. The dumb and lazy part was NOT CHECKING ON THE NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR SOMETHING YOU SENT TO A JUDGE. Sorry for the caps, but so, so stupid. IIRC they asked ChatGPT if it lied, and it said no..
  - bcrosby95 3y ago
    And they doubled down on dumb and lazy when the judge first raised the flag that something was wrong with what they submitted.
- themaninthedark 3y ago
lotsofpulp 3y ago
> risk losing their BAR card. Did they risk it? Even after it being obvious the lawyer was lying and trying to cover up, and not acquiescing to their wrongdoing even after all of it, all they had to pay was $5k.
- smcl 3y ago
  Do we know for sure that absolutely no further action is being taken? I really don't know processes, so I dunno if this is it or if this is just one of the consequences, and that the bar association (is that the right org?) they're part of would want to weigh in on it.
- filoleg 3y ago
  > all they had to pay was $5k. They still risk being disbarred (not just hypothetically, it might actually happen) + taking a massive hit to the reputation (their own + the firm). The latter one alone is a strong punishment, given how widely-publicized this incident was in the media. It cost the firm a lot of potential clients, and the lawyer might struggle with finding a decent position after the fact (given how much more reputation-based the legal field seems to be compared to something like engineering).
  - xen2xen1 3y ago
    Name change in 3..2..1..
    - mplewis9z 3y ago
      It’s all good, man.
droopyEyelids 3y ago
Everyone is piling onto you here, but another aspect is that many lawyers already don't do their own research, they use paralegals to do it for them. With that information I think it's less mind-blowing, they were simply assuming ChatGPT could do the work of a paralegal
- xen2xen1 3y ago
  I've worked with legal software professionally a few times, and kept thinking software won't replace lawyers, it'll replace paralegals. Not all, but a great deal of grunt work could be replaced with AI and good forms. Now if we could get them not to lie?
  - ssnistfajen 3y ago
    There still needs to be a human manually proofreading them, even if it's as trivial as looking up whether the cited cases actually exist. Same goes for code outputs from currently available AI tools: some still needs to debug them to make sure it works, and fix any troubles that spring up during deployment and production. Of course after some number of iterations, AI may gain the ability to self-check and self-correct to the point of achieving 100% accuracy, but I think that milestone will quickly lead to AGI and job security will quickly become an obsolete topic for every industry anyways.
    - xen2xen1 3y ago
      Maybe. But I keep thinking it's not going to replace the single paralegal that a single lawyer has, but it might reduce the 9 paralegals to 6, and then 4, and then..
      - ssnistfajen 3y ago
        That's a fair point, but AI tools could also unlock higher potential for them to take on more workloads. Perhaps by maintaining the same number of paralegals or even hiring more, they could take on an exponentially higher number of cases than before. There's infinite room for new litigation as long as human society persists.
jrm4 3y ago
Well, one thing is that "law" was often the "field-of-choice" for the well-schooled who didn't know where to go next? Now many, if not likely most, of the well-schooled are generally intelligent, but of course there are also quite a few rich idiots as well. (Today, of course, most of the latter go into tech.)

hospitalJail 3y ago

They didn't know it could lie? But also, pretty sure Doctors and Lawyers are among the least trusted/highest corruption professions. All that schooling is a barrier to entry to keep outsiders away, it doesnt guarantee competence. Basically once you get in, graduation rates are close to 100%.

sarchertech 3y ago
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-among-professions-new-image-lows.aspx 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 have to. Residents also drop out of their programs and move into other ones. It’s rare for them to drop out completely because they’d still be on the hook for $200k+ in loans. But medicine is a big field and it’s rare that someone who made it into and through med school to not be able to find something they are competent and capable at. Maybe you’re not great with patients, but you can look through a microscope all day as a pathologist etc… Incompetent and corrupt doctors still make it through the process of course, but far far fewer than in our profession and just about any other profession I can think of. As for lawyers: Law schools have around a 77% graduation rate nation wide. And about 90% of law school graduates eventually pass the bar exam. So we’re look at somewhere around 70% of people making it through after a pretty selective filter to begin with.
- echelon 3y ago
  > 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 papers or get involved in research. They were entirely disinterested in the science. In my interactions with general practitioners, I like to talk about medicines' method of actions, pharmacology, the actual biochemistry behind diseases. Most of them seem to have no clue or retention of this information. I'm not trying to challenge them, either -- I'm generally curious to learn. That's not to say all doctors are like that. A lot of the surgeons and specialists I know are walking tomes of information.
  - appletrotter 3y ago
    I don’t really know, but it might be okay for them to not focus on that knowledge.
    - echelon 3y ago
      Seems like we could train a lot of people for a lot cheaper if that was the case, though.
      - sarchertech 3y ago
        That’s essentially what Physicians Assistants and Nurse Practitioners are.
  - hunter2_ 3y ago
    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.

add-sub-mul-div 3y ago

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.

elforce002 3y ago
This. We thought that it was bad enough when people used google to diagnose themselves. We're entering uncharted territory now.
Ekaros 3y ago
Before it was handful of mad people with things like sovereign citizen and stupid instructions on Internet. But now it seems even trained folks will follow whatever something they have not verified says... Also I wonder how well the training data was cleaned from all potentially harmful stuff like for example the sovereign citizen ideas...
- xen2xen1 3y ago
  And I'm a French model..
xen2xen1 3y ago
If they used ChatGPT to find real cases that's not lazy, that's smart. The dumb and lazy part was NOT CHECKING ON THE NEW TECHNOLOGY FOR SOMETHING YOU SENT TO A JUDGE. Sorry for the caps, but so, so stupid. IIRC they asked ChatGPT if it lied, and it said no..
- bcrosby95 3y ago
  And they doubled down on dumb and lazy when the judge first raised the flag that something was wrong with what they submitted.
themaninthedark 3y ago

lotsofpulp 3y ago

> risk losing their BAR card. Did they risk it? Even after it being obvious the lawyer was lying and trying to cover up, and not acquiescing to their wrongdoing even after all of it, all they had to pay was $5k.

smcl 3y ago
Do we know for sure that absolutely no further action is being taken? I really don't know processes, so I dunno if this is it or if this is just one of the consequences, and that the bar association (is that the right org?) they're part of would want to weigh in on it.
filoleg 3y ago
> all they had to pay was $5k. They still risk being disbarred (not just hypothetically, it might actually happen) + taking a massive hit to the reputation (their own + the firm). The latter one alone is a strong punishment, given how widely-publicized this incident was in the media. It cost the firm a lot of potential clients, and the lawyer might struggle with finding a decent position after the fact (given how much more reputation-based the legal field seems to be compared to something like engineering).
- xen2xen1 3y ago
  Name change in 3..2..1..
  - mplewis9z 3y ago
    It’s all good, man.

droopyEyelids 3y ago

Everyone is piling onto you here, but another aspect is that many lawyers already don't do their own research, they use paralegals to do it for them. With that information I think it's less mind-blowing, they were simply assuming ChatGPT could do the work of a paralegal

xen2xen1 3y ago
I've worked with legal software professionally a few times, and kept thinking software won't replace lawyers, it'll replace paralegals. Not all, but a great deal of grunt work could be replaced with AI and good forms. Now if we could get them not to lie?
- ssnistfajen 3y ago
  There still needs to be a human manually proofreading them, even if it's as trivial as looking up whether the cited cases actually exist. Same goes for code outputs from currently available AI tools: some still needs to debug them to make sure it works, and fix any troubles that spring up during deployment and production. Of course after some number of iterations, AI may gain the ability to self-check and self-correct to the point of achieving 100% accuracy, but I think that milestone will quickly lead to AGI and job security will quickly become an obsolete topic for every industry anyways.
  - xen2xen1 3y ago
    Maybe. But I keep thinking it's not going to replace the single paralegal that a single lawyer has, but it might reduce the 9 paralegals to 6, and then 4, and then..
    - ssnistfajen 3y ago
      That's a fair point, but AI tools could also unlock higher potential for them to take on more workloads. Perhaps by maintaining the same number of paralegals or even hiring more, they could take on an exponentially higher number of cases than before. There's infinite room for new litigation as long as human society persists.

jrm4 3y ago

Well, one thing is that "law" was often the "field-of-choice" for the well-schooled who didn't know where to go next? Now many, if not likely most, of the well-schooled are generally intelligent, but of course there are also quite a few rich idiots as well. (Today, of course, most of the latter go into tech.)