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Judge Uses ChatGPT To Make Court Decision (vice.com)

(Friday February 03, 2023 @10:30PM (BeauHD) from the just-the-beginning dept.)


An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard:

> A judge in Colombia [1]used ChatGPT to make a court ruling , in what is apparently the first time a legal decision has been made with the help of an AI text generator -- or at least, the first time we know about it. Judge Juan Manuel Padilla Garcia, who presides over the First Circuit Court in the city of Cartagena, said he used the AI tool to pose legal questions about the case and included its responses in his decision, according to a [2]court document (PDF) dated January 30, 2023.

>

> "The arguments for this decision will be determined in line with the use of artificial intelligence (AI)," Garcia wrote in the decision, which was translated from Spanish. "Accordingly, we entered parts of the legal questions posed in these proceedings." "The purpose of including these AI-produced texts is in no way to replace the judge's decision," he added. "What we are really looking for is to optimize the time spent drafting judgments after corroborating the information provided by AI."

>

> The case involved a dispute with a health insurance company over whether an autistic child should receive coverage for medical treatment. According to the court document, the legal questions entered into the AI tool included "Is an autistic minor exonerated from paying fees for their therapies?" and "Has the jurisprudence of the constitutional court made favorable decisions in similar cases?" Garcia included the chatbot's full responses in the decision, apparently marking the first time a judge has admitted to doing so. The judge also included his own insights into applicable legal precedents, and said the AI was used to "extend the arguments of the adopted decision." After detailing the exchanges with the AI, the judge then adopts its responses and his own legal arguments as grounds for its decision.



[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/k7bdmv/judge-used-chatgpt-to-make-court-decision

[2] https://www.diariojudicial.com/public/documentos/000/106/904/000106904.pdf



Seems rather foolish (Score:2)

by alvinrod ( 889928 )

This just seems like a recipe for an appeal. Any time the court saved here is going to our for ten times over dealing with the appeals.

Re: Seems rather foolish (Score:2)

by NagrothAgain ( 4130865 )

Well it's Columbia, it's not like their court system is a paragon of virtue in the first place.

What if ChatGPT is wrong? (Score:2)

by fluffernutter ( 1411889 )

Doesn't ChatGPT just get its training off the internet? Isn't it a bit concerning that a judge would basically use the internet to make such a decision?

What if the Judge is Wrong? (Score:3)

by Roger W Moore ( 538166 )

> Doesn't ChatGPT just get its training off the internet?

Well, one way to look at it is that if the judge thinks that using ChatGPT for decisions is a good idea then why would you think that his training and judgement are any better than ChatGPT's?

Re: (Score:2)

by NFN_NLN ( 633283 )

"It isn't about the outcome of the court case, it's about the friends we made along the way." - That judge, probably

Re: (Score:3)

by Nkwe ( 604125 )

> Doesn't ChatGPT just get its training off the internet? Isn't it a bit concerning that a judge would basically use the internet to make such a decision?

The role of the court is to interpret the law and determine how the letter of the law applies to real situations that may not be clear in how the law is written. When the court makes a judgement, part of the decision is made by what the law is as written, part of it is made by precedent, and part of it is made by how the court feels the law applies to what society believes in general - how "normal" people would interpret the law.

Assuming that ChatGPT is trained off the Internet, and assuming that the inform

Re: (Score:2)

by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 )

> Doesn't ChatGPT just get its training off the internet? Isn't it a bit concerning that a judge would basically use the internet to make such a decision?

Conviction by Wikipedia -- great. /s

Although, to be fair, it looks like the judge is just using ChatGPT to help research and write up his decisions, not make them -- though the last part of (below) is a little disconcerting "information provided by AI."

> "The purpose of including these AI-produced texts is in no way to replace the judge's decision," he added. "What we are really looking for is to optimize the time spent drafting judgments after corroborating the information provided by AI."

why you shouldn't use ChatGPT (Score:5, Interesting)

by OrangeTide ( 124937 )

If you're not willing to write your own papers for science, engineering, or law. Then how the hell can you demand that anyone will bother to read it? We're turning paperwork into a meaningless ritual, when it is intended to communicate and record information.

The singularity is coming, and it's looking more and more like the plot to Idiocracy than I care to admit. This is not the right timeline anymore.

Re: (Score:3)

by AlanObject ( 3603453 )

> If you're not willing to write your own papers for science, engineering, or law. Then how the hell can you demand that anyone will bother to read it?

This is a very good and central question. The reason it is a question at all is because too many people have failed to realize that AI software generated text gives the illusion of original content, but never any actual original content.

ChatGPT is basically the ultimate in automated plagiarism. It has its use, but this use is not it.

Re: (Score:2)

by awwshit ( 6214476 )

I don't think ChatGPT responses generally include whole copies of sentences or phrases exactly. If you rearrange the words or substitute some is it still plagiarism?

Seems more like a really good plagiarism obfuscator. Certainly it only works within its training text and rules.

Re: why you shouldn't use ChatGPT (Score:2)

by fluffernutter ( 1411889 )

But it's there any reason to think anything chaygpt outputs could be considered original in the human sense?

Re: (Score:2)

by awwshit ( 6214476 )

I think so. Think about the definition of haiku.

haiku, unrhymed poetic form consisting of 17 syllables arranged in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively

I think ChatGPT knows enough vocabulary to fill those requirements. Here is what it came up with for 'haiku about slashdot'.

News and tech unite,

Slashdot, a community strong,

Sharing with all eyes.

Seems original enough to me, not great though.

Re: (Score:2)

by awwshit ( 6214476 )

Second try is better:

News and tech mix well

Slashdot, a website so great

Read and stay informed.

Re: (Score:2)

by Tony Isaac ( 1301187 )

> We're turning paperwork into a meaningless ritual

This has been true for many years already. Those terms of service that you agreed to in order to use that web site, EULAs, home purchase contracts, employment agreements, and countless other forms of paperwork have been required, and also ignored, for a long time. If ChatGPT is used to generate more of this kind of paperwork, it will certainly accelerate this trend, and make it even more meaningless than it already is.

The horror! (Score:1)

by fbobraga ( 1612783 )

The horror!

good (Score:2)

by Osgeld ( 1900440 )

fire the judge, he obviously has no use anymore and is a burden to the local taxpayers

Deeper problems (Score:2)

by sound+vision ( 884283 )

The text being machine-generated isn't, in and of itself, what bothers me. Rather, it's what that reveals about the judge's attitude and rigor.

If having to formally express his judgement, for the record, once per case is just too much work for him, he's not performing his job as a judge. Formulating, condensing, and expressing an argument (in the philosophical sense of the word) is how you come to a thorough understanding of it. To avoid that is to avoid refining your argument. It is to avoid true thought a

Kington's Law of Perforation:
If a straight line of holes is made in a piece of paper, such
as a sheet of stamps or a check, that line becomes the strongest
part of the paper.