This episode of the Cyberlaw Podcast features the second half of my interview with Paul Stephan, author of The World Crisis and International Law. But it begins the way many recent episodes have begun, with the latest AI news. And, since the story is squarely in scope for a cyberlaw podcast, we devote some time to the so-appalling-you-have-to-laugh-to-keep-from-crying story of the lawyer who relied on ChatGPT to write his brief. As Eugene Volokh noted in his post on the story, the AI returned exactly the case law the lawyer wanted – because it made up the cases, the citations, and even the quotes. The lawyer said he had no idea that AI would do such a thing.
I cast a skeptical eye on that excuse, since when challenged by the court to produce the cases he relied on, the lawyer turned not to Lexis-Nexis or Westlaw but to ChatGPT, which this time made up eight cases on point. And when the lawyer asked ChatGPT, "Are the other cases you provided fake," the model denied it. Well, all right then. Who among us has not asked Westlaw, "Are the cases you provided fake?" and accepted the answer without checking? Somehow, I can't help suspecting that the lawyer's claim to be an innocent victim of ChatGPT is going to get a closer look before this story ends. So if you're wondering whether AI poses existential risk, the answer for at least one law license is almost certainly "yes."
But the bigger stories of the week were the cries from Google and Microsoft leadership for government regulation of their new AI tools. Microsoft's President, Brad Smith has, as usual, written a thoughtful policy paper on what AI regulation might look like. Jeffery Atik and Richard Stiennon point out that, as usual, Brad Smith is advocating for a process that Microsoft could master pretty easily. Google's Sundar Pichai also joins the "regulate me" party, but a bit half-heartedly. I argue that the best measure of Silicon Valley's confidence in the accuracy of AI is easy to find: Just ask when Google and Apple will let their AI models identify photos of gorillas. Because if there's anything close to an extinction event for those companies it would be rolling out an AI that once again fails to differentiate between people and apes.
