4 ms·
> In a blind evaluation of nearly 3,000 anonymized comparisons, professors rated AI responses significantly higher than answers written by other professors, wit
by wilg 4mo ago
> In a blind evaluation of nearly 3,000 anonymized comparisons, professors rated AI responses significantly higher than answers written by other professors, with AI winning 75% of head-to-head matchups.
75% win rate seems pretty good!
Paper link: https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/salinas_et_al.pdf https://law.stanford.edu/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/salinas_...
- causal 4mo agoI wonder to what degree the AI was just better at communicating. My experience with attorneys is that they are often some of the worst writers.
- applicative 4mo agoThe writing is always fluid and grammatically flawless. This carries much more weight with us than we believe. I know the illusion well from decades of grading college papers. Many of the highest quality students use English as a second language, and I know this, but an American well trained in writing, grammar, spelling always gives an impression of superiority. (Being well trained in writing, grammar, spelling etc is of course high merit, which is how the illusion forms - it is basically an illusion of global 'intelligence')
- jshier 4mo agoI do wish they'd used some more objective criteria. Simply being preferable one of the things LLMs have trained for since the beginning, hence its sycophantic nature.
- wilg 4mo agoWhat criteria would you use for judging legal arguments?
- mylifeandtimes 4mo agomaybe seeing if the case law it cited was real or imagined? Just one idea, IANAL
- gamerDude 4mo agoWell, they had the data around if the answer would be harmful to the students learning. AI was scored at 3.5% harmful answers and 12% of law professor answers were considered harmful.
- mitkebes 4mo agoThe arguments need to be based on actual law, and any cited reference cases need to be real. There's been a lot of news stories about lawyers using AI, and then getting in trouble for citing hallucinated laws or cases. It doesn't matter if the AI response is "preferred" over the human one if it gets thrown out when put under the scrutiny of a real case.
- adornKey 4mo agoMaybe sycophantic nature is a good fit for the legal system. A successful lawyer once told me that the most important thing is to know your judge. Objectivity isn't a big thing in court. They'll cite random newspaper articles as evidence and throw out expert opinions - if they like. There might be a way to appeal - but that road often is not functional.
- falcor84 4mo agoYeah, 75% win rate is a ~200 points Elo difference, which is quite massive.