🇬🇧 💻 **Lawyers face sanctions for citing fake cases with AI, warns UK judge**
“_A senior judge lambasted lawyers in two cases who apparently used AI tools when preparing written arguments, which referred to fake case law, and called on regulators and industry leaders to ensure lawyers know their ethical obligations._”
#AI #ArtificialIntelligence #Technology #Tech #Legal #Ethics #UK #UnitedKingdom @ai
@bibliolater @ai I cannot for the life of me imagine why lawyers still do this. There was that Mata v. Avianca case back in 2023 where a lawyer got flamed by the court for doing it, and ok, I have a little sympathy for him because he probably sincerely thought that ChatGPT was a fancy natural-language search interface. Under those circumstances it was an understandable error, though it's NEVER ok to cite things without checking that the citation supports the proposition you're citing it for even if you're copying out of a treatise or another case, so the guy deserved what he got. However, one of the things he got was a vast amount of mainstream media exposure, and at this point this has come up so often that there's really no excuse for not knowing how bad an idea it is. There's a guy in France who's trying to keep track of all the times it's happened; his database is up to 139 entries, and I'm sure there are a lot of cases he doesn't know about.
Anyone who uses #AI for citations or references quickly realises it is not fit for that purpose. The amount of time one saves is not worth having to explain why one has used the technology's 'hallucinations' to cite none existent work. I do not know if it is a matter of indolence or burning the candle at both ends; however, it looks like the phenomenon is here to stay, as is witnessed by the database.
@bibliolater @ai Laziness and overcrowded caseloads undoubtedly account for some of it, but I think some of the blame has to go to the AI industry and its incessant barrage of "AI will revolutionize your practice" ads. I get probably about five of them a week, and I'm a retired sole practitioner, which can hardly be their target demographic.