4 ms·

Fair Work Commission condemns 'plain wrong' AI legal advice

60 points by martyvis 1mo ago

KolibriFly 1mo ago
[dead]
paweladamczuk 1mo ago
> applicants to the Fair Work Commission will need to disclose AI use I really don't like where this is going.
- NolF 1mo ago
  It is already the case in many Australian Courts and tribunals E.g. NSW Supremen Court [1] here is another tribunal [2]. Not sure why you would not like the disclosure as to how a document, statement, etc was made when the author was not the individual signing their name and may not represent their words, knowledge, beliefs etc. [1] https://supremecourt.nsw.gov.au/documents/Practice-and-Procedure/Practice-Notes/general/current/PN_SC_Gen_23.pdf https://supremecourt.nsw.gov.au/documents/Practice-and-Proce... [2] https://www.pi.nsw.gov.au/resources/procedural-directions/procedural-direction-pic13-use-of-generative-artificial-intelligence https://www.pi.nsw.gov.au/resources/procedural-directions/pr...
  - paweladamczuk 1mo ago
    I would like everybody to be completely responsible for the words they sign with their own name and present as their own. Regardless of how the words were produced.
    - shakna 1mo ago
      You still will be. Disclosure of AI, helps the court know where to put you in the queue, compared to those that have actually understood the laws in hand. A matter of prioritisation, rather than responsibility. You cannot surrender your legal obligations to an autonomous system, without violating the Commons. You would need to overturn several hundred years of legal precedent first.
      - snypher 1mo ago
        >You cannot surrender your legal obligations to an autonomous system Ha ha. What is the legal system but autonomous, for those without the money to access it fairly?
      - paweladamczuk 1mo ago
        As if the people utilizing the judiciary system before LLMs fully understood the laws themselves. Give me a break. These are the talking points of the elite scared that the playing field is being leveled by technology. I'm on the side of technology on this one.
        shakna 1mo ago
        Australia, the land of LegalAid, is not some place of "elites" in law. Everyone has free access to a lawyer. Everyone has free access to the first consult with law firms.
- KolibriFly 1mo ago
  [dead]
cjs_ac 1mo ago
> A sacked ALDI employee condemned by the Fair Work Commission for using "plain wrong" artificial intelligence (AI) advice in his failed bid to reverse his dismissal says he now plans to use "two or three" different AI agents to help him appeal against the decision. > Sadnan Khan was ordered to pay $1,230 towards the supermarket giant's legal fees after a landmark Fair Work Commission decision found he used AI as a "quasi-legal advisor" to challenge his dismissal, despite repeat warnings his case had "no substantial prospects of success". > "I have taken the very rare step of ordering him to pay some of the employer's legal costs, because his unreasonable conduct caused his former employer to incur those costs unnecessarily," Fair Work Commission deputy president Michael Easton said in the tribunal's decision last week. The article is balanced; it also cites the case of a computer science lecturer at Macquarie University who successfully challenged the university's treatment of him using AI. (Over the past decade or so, Mac Uni has become very attached to the idea that minimum wage is enough for academic staff.) So it's the same story as we've been hearing for more than a year now: LLMs are only useful if you ignore all the fluff where they tell you how great everything is, and know how to extract and interpret the parts where they say something of substance, and actually do the work of determining whether the thing is bullshitting you.
cube00 1mo ago
> The tribunal acknowledged AI was improving access to justice for applicants with genuine, meritorious claims "who might otherwise have been deterred". It's good the tribunal acknowledges we can't all necessarily afford the costs you may incur in those initial discussions with a lawyer. While there are pro-bono lawyers they have to make sure they're taking the cases with the best prospects for success so they don't go out of business themselves. > "Most community members are aware of this kind of property of AI now where it has a kind of sycophantic tendency … and may in fact encourage people to believe that there are legs in a claim they're making when that may not in fact be the case." It'll be interesting to see how the AI providers are going to balance the need for models to be engaging enough to keep the tokens flowing but not so engaging they give bad advice to encourage continued conversations.
- blfr 1mo ago
  [dead]
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
- hakesson 1mo ago
  I have a friend who was drugged (date-rape style drug) and convinced to empty his account in an ATM. Woke up in a hospital without any memory of it. Some EU law forces banks to reimburse you when you didn't get the money of your free will - the LLM informed him about it and helped him to fill in all the forms etc and go through the full procedure, which included appealing the bank's negation to the "banco de España". He got his money. I think there are many cases where the LLM can help people that would never have the money to pay lawyers.
- shakna 1mo ago
  LegalAid (and other state-based services), actually do not need to make sure they're taking the cases with the best prospects for success. Because they're a state service. The problem is more one of proximity to a city where they're based, rather than one of cash, or one of being an Australian citizen - the service is only for citizens.
solresol 1mo ago
The second case mentioned in the article is interesting because no other case about employee choice had gone to merits before. Thus it might be the first example of AI winning a case that sets some kind of precedent. At the very least it shows that AI can put together coherent legal arguments even when there are no close precedents or case law it can refer to. This was something a lot of lawyers didn't believe would be possible for AI to do.
- shakna 1mo ago
  > He said he used ChatGPT to "grill" him to prepare for cross-examination at the tribunal hearing, but admitted, "things did not go the way I was expecting." I would put the success more on the person, than the AI, for that particular case.
dgellow 1mo ago
> Research commissioned by the workplace umpire shows its cases have recently grown by 40 per cent, in part due to litigants using AI. A recent thought I had about the AI rollout: it’s such a massively unbalanced bet. We are experiencing right now the negative aspects of AI, we are paying for that. For a chance that maybe some hypothetical, sci-fi-like technology exists in the future. So we know we will always suffer the losing end of the bet, and we have no idea if we will win, or even how that would look like to win. In this example we see how the commission is under stress, something we see across the board, and the benefits so far have been that software and emails are written faster, and maybe something more will come at some point in the future (that we also know will have its own set of externalities). It’s insane that such a small group can decide to play that gamble for the rest of society, worldwide
- watwut 1mo ago
  THEY are rolling it out in a way that WE experience negative aspects of it. And all that for their hope THEY get to become all powerful rulers over us. It is unbalanced, but you are hiding the unbalance behind "we". Some are rolling it out in a way to cause maximal damage to others now. The "others" are experiencing negative aspects.
  - dgellow 1mo ago
    Sure, I consider that implied in any AI discussion, we all know people at the top are (mostly) insulated from negative consequences
    - watwut 1mo ago
      Yeah but I think it is worth not hiding in the language. Because otherwise it ends up as the situation where the ones doing it are not blamed and everyone else is. You see that in politics a lot - the "politicians" in general or the institutions are blamed for acts sone ovewhelmingly mostly one party. In the long term, it enables bad actors. And back in AI diacussion, those bad actors are really trying to frame themselves as saviors ... from danger they are creating by own hype.
simonw 1mo ago
I found this formal decision PDF for the Khan case: https://fwcgovau.sharepoint.com/teams/group252c29c/_layouts/15/download.aspx?UniqueId=343f78c1-0289-44ca-9554-80f961be58d0&Translate=false&tempauth=v1.eyJzaXRlaWQiOiI1MWI3MjZmYi0xNjE3LTRkOTktYWEyNS02NTFiZmEwMGQwOGUiLCJhcHBfZGlzcGxheW5hbWUiOiJwdWJkZXYiLCJuYW1laWQiOiI0NDY2OTQ5ZC1jZmUwLTQ0OWQtODhmMS05YjUyZDg0MmJlOTJAN2YwMzlmNWItNGUxMi00NzkwLWFmOTgtYzlmMjFhOWYyNjAzIiwiYXVkIjoiMDAwMDAwMDMtMDAwMC0wZmYxLWNlMDAtMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwL2Z3Y2dvdmF1LnNoYXJlcG9pbnQuY29tQDdmMDM5ZjViLTRlMTItNDc5MC1hZjk4LWM5ZjIxYTlmMjYwMyIsImV4cCI6IjE3ODgxMDIyODYifQ.CkAKDGVudHJhX2NsYWltcxIwQ0tIbDBOUUdFQUFhRmxCb00wRkZUbTQ1WTFWbGJsVXhiM0V6WWtWSVFVRXFBQT09CjIKCmFjdG9yYXBwaWQSJDAwMDAwMDAzLTAwMDAtMDAwMC1jMDAwLTAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMAoKCgRzbmlkEgI2NBILCI7suem1qsM_EAUaDTIwLjE5MC4xNDIuNDAqLDl2MytML3NHQXlrbmNSYWVvQndZd3VyRVRXS2NROE9NN3dUMWZpdDNoVW89MIoBOAFCEKI2Uph5QACAepg0B5eL8pJKEGhhc2hlZHByb29mdG9rZW56ATG6ASpzZWxlY3RlZHNpdGVzIGFsbHNpdGVzLnJlYWQgYWxsc2l0ZXMud3JpdGXIAQE.nb0OED20jE8eqdIRfc5DlbG9IWFVUFYgtuzp9gvP2Xo&ApiVersion=2.0 https://fwcgovau.sharepoint.com/teams/group252c29c/_layouts/... Key section: > Two days after Mr Khan filed his claim, Fair Work Commission staff sent Mr Khan an email advising that the Commission may not have the power to deal with his case because he had not worked for the minimum employment period. [...] > In the morning of Friday 31 July 2026 I took the time to write to Mr Khan and explain to him in plain English why his case was unlikely to succeed. Mr Khan was encouraged to discontinue his application, and advised that there could be costs consequences if he did not discontinue his claim. [...] > Khan sent a reply email that same morning. Mr Khan’s AI generated email once again addressed the wrong end date and repeated the same irrelevant AI-generated arguments. Mr Khan’s email did not engage, at all, with the matters raised in the earlier email from the Commission
- adamtaylor_13 1mo ago
  I think I'm beginning to see why Mr. Khan was let go. That's a mind-numbing lack of care put forth there.
  - roosterIllusi0n 1mo ago
    But keep in mind, they are citing the dumbest case that doesn't matter as justification to disrupt other people's cases. It's absurd.

60 points by martyvis 1mo ago

KolibriFly 1mo ago

[dead]

paweladamczuk 1mo ago

> applicants to the Fair Work Commission will need to disclose AI use I really don't like where this is going.

NolF 1mo ago
It is already the case in many Australian Courts and tribunals E.g. NSW Supremen Court [1] here is another tribunal [2]. Not sure why you would not like the disclosure as to how a document, statement, etc was made when the author was not the individual signing their name and may not represent their words, knowledge, beliefs etc. [1] https://supremecourt.nsw.gov.au/documents/Practice-and-Procedure/Practice-Notes/general/current/PN_SC_Gen_23.pdf https://supremecourt.nsw.gov.au/documents/Practice-and-Proce... [2] https://www.pi.nsw.gov.au/resources/procedural-directions/procedural-direction-pic13-use-of-generative-artificial-intelligence https://www.pi.nsw.gov.au/resources/procedural-directions/pr...
- paweladamczuk 1mo ago
  I would like everybody to be completely responsible for the words they sign with their own name and present as their own. Regardless of how the words were produced.
  - shakna 1mo ago
    You still will be. Disclosure of AI, helps the court know where to put you in the queue, compared to those that have actually understood the laws in hand. A matter of prioritisation, rather than responsibility. You cannot surrender your legal obligations to an autonomous system, without violating the Commons. You would need to overturn several hundred years of legal precedent first.
    - snypher 1mo ago
      >You cannot surrender your legal obligations to an autonomous system Ha ha. What is the legal system but autonomous, for those without the money to access it fairly?
    - paweladamczuk 1mo ago
      As if the people utilizing the judiciary system before LLMs fully understood the laws themselves. Give me a break. These are the talking points of the elite scared that the playing field is being leveled by technology. I'm on the side of technology on this one.
      - shakna 1mo ago
        Australia, the land of LegalAid, is not some place of "elites" in law. Everyone has free access to a lawyer. Everyone has free access to the first consult with law firms.
KolibriFly 1mo ago
[dead]

cjs_ac 1mo ago

> A sacked ALDI employee condemned by the Fair Work Commission for using "plain wrong" artificial intelligence (AI) advice in his failed bid to reverse his dismissal says he now plans to use "two or three" different AI agents to help him appeal against the decision. > Sadnan Khan was ordered to pay $1,230 towards the supermarket giant's legal fees after a landmark Fair Work Commission decision found he used AI as a "quasi-legal advisor" to challenge his dismissal, despite repeat warnings his case had "no substantial prospects of success". > "I have taken the very rare step of ordering him to pay some of the employer's legal costs, because his unreasonable conduct caused his former employer to incur those costs unnecessarily," Fair Work Commission deputy president Michael Easton said in the tribunal's decision last week. The article is balanced; it also cites the case of a computer science lecturer at Macquarie University who successfully challenged the university's treatment of him using AI. (Over the past decade or so, Mac Uni has become very attached to the idea that minimum wage is enough for academic staff.) So it's the same story as we've been hearing for more than a year now: LLMs are only useful if you ignore all the fluff where they tell you how great everything is, and know how to extract and interpret the parts where they say something of substance, and actually do the work of determining whether the thing is bullshitting you.

cube00 1mo ago

> The tribunal acknowledged AI was improving access to justice for applicants with genuine, meritorious claims "who might otherwise have been deterred". It's good the tribunal acknowledges we can't all necessarily afford the costs you may incur in those initial discussions with a lawyer. While there are pro-bono lawyers they have to make sure they're taking the cases with the best prospects for success so they don't go out of business themselves. > "Most community members are aware of this kind of property of AI now where it has a kind of sycophantic tendency … and may in fact encourage people to believe that there are legs in a claim they're making when that may not in fact be the case." It'll be interesting to see how the AI providers are going to balance the need for models to be engaging enough to keep the tokens flowing but not so engaging they give bad advice to encourage continued conversations.

blfr 1mo ago
[dead]
deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]
hakesson 1mo ago
I have a friend who was drugged (date-rape style drug) and convinced to empty his account in an ATM. Woke up in a hospital without any memory of it. Some EU law forces banks to reimburse you when you didn't get the money of your free will - the LLM informed him about it and helped him to fill in all the forms etc and go through the full procedure, which included appealing the bank's negation to the "banco de España". He got his money. I think there are many cases where the LLM can help people that would never have the money to pay lawyers.
shakna 1mo ago
LegalAid (and other state-based services), actually do not need to make sure they're taking the cases with the best prospects for success. Because they're a state service. The problem is more one of proximity to a city where they're based, rather than one of cash, or one of being an Australian citizen - the service is only for citizens.

solresol 1mo ago

The second case mentioned in the article is interesting because no other case about employee choice had gone to merits before. Thus it might be the first example of AI winning a case that sets some kind of precedent. At the very least it shows that AI can put together coherent legal arguments even when there are no close precedents or case law it can refer to. This was something a lot of lawyers didn't believe would be possible for AI to do.

shakna 1mo ago
> He said he used ChatGPT to "grill" him to prepare for cross-examination at the tribunal hearing, but admitted, "things did not go the way I was expecting." I would put the success more on the person, than the AI, for that particular case.

dgellow 1mo ago

> Research commissioned by the workplace umpire shows its cases have recently grown by 40 per cent, in part due to litigants using AI. A recent thought I had about the AI rollout: it’s such a massively unbalanced bet. We are experiencing right now the negative aspects of AI, we are paying for that. For a chance that maybe some hypothetical, sci-fi-like technology exists in the future. So we know we will always suffer the losing end of the bet, and we have no idea if we will win, or even how that would look like to win. In this example we see how the commission is under stress, something we see across the board, and the benefits so far have been that software and emails are written faster, and maybe something more will come at some point in the future (that we also know will have its own set of externalities). It’s insane that such a small group can decide to play that gamble for the rest of society, worldwide

watwut 1mo ago
THEY are rolling it out in a way that WE experience negative aspects of it. And all that for their hope THEY get to become all powerful rulers over us. It is unbalanced, but you are hiding the unbalance behind "we". Some are rolling it out in a way to cause maximal damage to others now. The "others" are experiencing negative aspects.
- dgellow 1mo ago
  Sure, I consider that implied in any AI discussion, we all know people at the top are (mostly) insulated from negative consequences
  - watwut 1mo ago
    Yeah but I think it is worth not hiding in the language. Because otherwise it ends up as the situation where the ones doing it are not blamed and everyone else is. You see that in politics a lot - the "politicians" in general or the institutions are blamed for acts sone ovewhelmingly mostly one party. In the long term, it enables bad actors. And back in AI diacussion, those bad actors are really trying to frame themselves as saviors ... from danger they are creating by own hype.

simonw 1mo ago

I found this formal decision PDF for the Khan case: https://fwcgovau.sharepoint.com/teams/group252c29c/_layouts/15/download.aspx?UniqueId=343f78c1-0289-44ca-9554-80f961be58d0&Translate=false&tempauth=v1.eyJzaXRlaWQiOiI1MWI3MjZmYi0xNjE3LTRkOTktYWEyNS02NTFiZmEwMGQwOGUiLCJhcHBfZGlzcGxheW5hbWUiOiJwdWJkZXYiLCJuYW1laWQiOiI0NDY2OTQ5ZC1jZmUwLTQ0OWQtODhmMS05YjUyZDg0MmJlOTJAN2YwMzlmNWItNGUxMi00NzkwLWFmOTgtYzlmMjFhOWYyNjAzIiwiYXVkIjoiMDAwMDAwMDMtMDAwMC0wZmYxLWNlMDAtMDAwMDAwMDAwMDAwL2Z3Y2dvdmF1LnNoYXJlcG9pbnQuY29tQDdmMDM5ZjViLTRlMTItNDc5MC1hZjk4LWM5ZjIxYTlmMjYwMyIsImV4cCI6IjE3ODgxMDIyODYifQ.CkAKDGVudHJhX2NsYWltcxIwQ0tIbDBOUUdFQUFhRmxCb00wRkZUbTQ1WTFWbGJsVXhiM0V6WWtWSVFVRXFBQT09CjIKCmFjdG9yYXBwaWQSJDAwMDAwMDAzLTAwMDAtMDAwMC1jMDAwLTAwMDAwMDAwMDAwMAoKCgRzbmlkEgI2NBILCI7suem1qsM_EAUaDTIwLjE5MC4xNDIuNDAqLDl2MytML3NHQXlrbmNSYWVvQndZd3VyRVRXS2NROE9NN3dUMWZpdDNoVW89MIoBOAFCEKI2Uph5QACAepg0B5eL8pJKEGhhc2hlZHByb29mdG9rZW56ATG6ASpzZWxlY3RlZHNpdGVzIGFsbHNpdGVzLnJlYWQgYWxsc2l0ZXMud3JpdGXIAQE.nb0OED20jE8eqdIRfc5DlbG9IWFVUFYgtuzp9gvP2Xo&ApiVersion=2.0 https://fwcgovau.sharepoint.com/teams/group252c29c/_layouts/... Key section: > Two days after Mr Khan filed his claim, Fair Work Commission staff sent Mr Khan an email advising that the Commission may not have the power to deal with his case because he had not worked for the minimum employment period. [...] > In the morning of Friday 31 July 2026 I took the time to write to Mr Khan and explain to him in plain English why his case was unlikely to succeed. Mr Khan was encouraged to discontinue his application, and advised that there could be costs consequences if he did not discontinue his claim. [...] > Khan sent a reply email that same morning. Mr Khan’s AI generated email once again addressed the wrong end date and repeated the same irrelevant AI-generated arguments. Mr Khan’s email did not engage, at all, with the matters raised in the earlier email from the Commission

adamtaylor_13 1mo ago
I think I'm beginning to see why Mr. Khan was let go. That's a mind-numbing lack of care put forth there.
- roosterIllusi0n 1mo ago
  But keep in mind, they are citing the dumbest case that doesn't matter as justification to disrupt other people's cases. It's absurd.