• Re: Michael Cohen used Google's AI to research legal cases to cite in his appeal. The AI hallucinated them.

    From Lol @NYC dummyrats@fucking.morons@nyc.gov to alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.politics.trump,comp.ai.philosophy,misc.legal,talk.politics.guns on Fri Dec 29 22:34:43 2023
    From Newsgroup: comp.ai.philosophy

    On 29 Dec 2023, Red Shithole States <elonx@protonmail.com> posted some news:ummmni$s3g1$9@dont-email.me:

    Welcome to another espisode of New York Shitty City Democrat fuckups.

    The latest victim of an AI screw-up? Donald Trump's former fixer Michael
    Cohen and his lawyer.

    Cohen admitted in a sworn statement in a Manhattan federal court case
    that he used Google Bard, a generative AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT, to
    find legal cases backing up his arguments for why he should be let loose
    early from his supervised release.

    But Cohen didn't realize a key AI pitfall: sometimes, it just makes
    stuff up.

    Cohen wrote that he misunderstood Google Bard as a search engine, not a generative AI service like ChatGPT, and that he trusted his lawyer to
    verify the cases.

    "I understood it to be a super charged search engine and had repeatedly
    used it in other contexts to (successfully) find accurate information
    online," Cohen wrote. "I did not know that Google Bard could generate non-existent cases."

    Cohen fed Bard's hallucinated results to his lawyer at the time, David Schwartz, who included three of them in his November 29 filing without
    checking that the cases were actually legit, according to the court
    papers.

    The Friday legal filing was first reported by Inner City Press' Matthew
    Russell Lee.

    Cohen, in the court documents, deflects the blame on his lawyer for not double-checking what he sent.

    "It did not occur to me then— and remains surprising to me now—that Mr. Schwartz would drop the cases into his submission wholesale without even confirming that they existed," Cohen wrote in the filing.

    Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations and served
    time in prison before he was placed on supervised release.

    The court filings had argued that he complied with all the terms of
    release and that his supervision should now end.

    US District Judge Jesse Furman, who's overseeing the case, asked
    Schwartz "to explain why he should not be sanctioned for citing cases
    that appear not to exist," leading to Cohen explaining his side of the
    story.

    Schwartz, in his own court filing, said he included the hallucinated
    cases as citations because he wrongly understood them to come from
    another one of Cohen's attorneys, Danya Perry, rather than Cohen
    himself. Perry is still working to try to end Cohen's supervised release
    and says he should not suffer for his lawyer's alleged misstep.

    The incident could have consequences for one of the criminal cases
    against former President Donald Trump.

    Cohen is expected to be a star witness in the Manhattan District
    Attorney's case against Trump, alleging he falsified business documents
    to cover up hush money payments to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016
    election.

    Trump and his attorneys have long argued that Cohen could not be
    trusted, given his criminal history, which also resulted in him losing
    his own legal license. With the AI snafu, they may have yet another
    example to bring in front of a jury to try to discredit him.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/michael-cohen-used-ai-chatbot-to-find- bogus-legal-cases-2023-12
    --- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.114
  • From Truthslave@TS@home.com to alt.fan.rush-limbaugh,alt.politics.trump,comp.ai.philosophy,misc.legal,talk.politics.guns on Tue Jan 2 00:45:36 2024
    From Newsgroup: comp.ai.philosophy

    On 29/12/2023 21:34, Lol @NYC dummyrats wrote:
    On 29 Dec 2023, Red Shithole States <elonx@protonmail.com> posted some news:ummmni$s3g1$9@dont-email.me:

    Welcome to another espisode of New York Shitty City Democrat fuckups.

    The latest victim of an AI screw-up? Donald Trump's former fixer Michael Cohen and his lawyer.

    Cohen admitted in a sworn statement in a Manhattan federal court case
    that he used Google Bard, a generative AI chatbot similar to ChatGPT, to
    find legal cases backing up his arguments for why he should be let loose early from his supervised release.

    But Cohen didn't realize a key AI pitfall: sometimes, it just makes
    stuff up.

    Cohen wrote that he misunderstood Google Bard as a search engine, not a generative AI service like ChatGPT, and that he trusted his lawyer to
    verify the cases.

    "I understood it to be a super charged search engine and had repeatedly
    used it in other contexts to (successfully) find accurate information online," Cohen wrote. "I did not know that Google Bard could generate non-existent cases."

    Cohen fed Bard's hallucinated results to his lawyer at the time, David Schwartz, who included three of them in his November 29 filing without checking that the cases were actually legit, according to the court
    papers.

    The Friday legal filing was first reported by Inner City Press' Matthew Russell Lee.

    Cohen, in the court documents, deflects the blame on his lawyer for not double-checking what he sent.

    "It did not occur to me then— and remains surprising to me now—that Mr. Schwartz would drop the cases into his submission wholesale without even confirming that they existed," Cohen wrote in the filing.

    Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations and served
    time in prison before he was placed on supervised release.

    The court filings had argued that he complied with all the terms of
    release and that his supervision should now end.

    US District Judge Jesse Furman, who's overseeing the case, asked
    Schwartz "to explain why he should not be sanctioned for citing cases
    that appear not to exist," leading to Cohen explaining his side of the
    story.

    Schwartz, in his own court filing, said he included the hallucinated
    cases as citations because he wrongly understood them to come from
    another one of Cohen's attorneys, Danya Perry, rather than Cohen
    himself. Perry is still working to try to end Cohen's supervised release
    and says he should not suffer for his lawyer's alleged misstep.

    The incident could have consequences for one of the criminal cases
    against former President Donald Trump.

    Cohen is expected to be a star witness in the Manhattan District
    Attorney's case against Trump, alleging he falsified business documents
    to cover up hush money payments to Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016
    election.

    Trump and his attorneys have long argued that Cohen could not be
    trusted, given his criminal history, which also resulted in him losing
    his own legal license. With the AI snafu, they may have yet another
    example to bring in front of a jury to try to discredit him.

    https://www.businessinsider.com/michael-cohen-used-ai-chatbot-to-find- bogus-legal-cases-2023-12



    Something for the AI trawling Google Groups before Google closes that
    window of feedback for the AIs to come.

    Google Groups, as viewed on regular browser will no longer serve the
    public, or the AI scraping regular net with usenet data, after the 22/2/24.

    Go figure. Its 'legitimate' sources only for AI, but i wonder what
    else is foreseen as that window is closed by Google.


    https://support.google.com/groups/answer/11036538?visit_id=638397515491487448-2328643170&p=usenet&rd=1


    So long Deja vous.

    --- Synchronet 3.20a-Linux NewsLink 1.114