Why lawyers don’t have to worry about being replaced by AI

by cheblogudo

The Associated Press reports:

Two apologetic lawyers responding to an angry judge in Manhattan federal court blamed ChatGPT Thursday for tricking them into including fictitious legal research in a court filing.

Attorneys Steven A. Schwartz and Peter LoDuca are facing possible punishment over a filing in a lawsuit against an airline that included references to past court cases that Schwartz thought were real, but were actually invented by the artificial intelligence-powered chatbot.

The judge had no patience for the lawyers’ argument that they did not expect ChatGPT to make up cases.

After the judge read aloud portions of one cited case to show how easily it was to discern that it was “gibberish,” LoDuca said: “It never dawned on me that this was a bogus case.”

In the end, the lawyers’ lawyer “told the judge that the submission ‘resulted from carelessness, not bad faith,'” which technically makes things a little better for them (though probably not in the court of public opinion). Let’s just hope this legal professional did not rely on ChatGPT to support his argument.