Following up on my previous posts:
New York Times, Here’s What Happens When A Lawyer Uses ChatGPT (May 30, 2023)
- New York Times, The ChatGPT Lawyer Explains Himself In Court (June 12, 2023)
New York Times, ChatGPT Lawyers Are Ordered to Consider Seeking Forgiveness:
A Manhattan judge on Thursday imposed a $5,000 fine on two lawyers who gave him a legal brief full of made-up cases and citations, all generated by the artificial intelligence program ChatGPT.
The judge, P. Kevin Castel of Federal District Court, criticized the lawyers harshly and ordered them to send a copy of his opinion to each of the real-life judges whose names appeared in the fictitious filing.
But Judge Castel wrote that he would not require the lawyers, Steven A. Schwartz and Peter LoDuca, whom he referred to as respondents, to apologize to those judges, “because a compelled apology is not a sincere apology.”
“Any decision to apologize is left to respondents,” the judge added.
The discovery that ChatGPT had helped create the brief in an otherwise unremarkable lawsuit reverberated throughout the legal profession. The revelation also riveted the tech community, which has been debating the dangers of overreliance on artificial intelligence — even as a existential threat to humanity. …
In his ruling, the judge did not refer the lawyers for potential disciplinary action, but the disciplinary authorities could start their own investigation. Such inquiries can lead to a private reprimand or to public sanctions like suspension or disbarment.
Stephen Gillers, a legal ethics professor at New York University School of Law, said he believed the worldwide publicity about the case helped Mr. Schwartz and Mr. LoDuca avoid a worse fate.
“The lawyers will now and forever be known as ‘the lawyers who got fooled by ChatGPT,’ which Castel says is also a sanction,” Professor Gillers said. “The case is the first, but not likely the last, warning to the bar not to get seduced by the siren call of generative A.I.”
