The lawyers on both sides of a federal court case in Mississippi were caught using artificial intelligence, a situation where, effectively, generative AI tools were used to argue against each other.
The judge wrote in a blistering sanctions order, that the lawyers wasted the court’s time, and that “in an era of rampant unverified AI usage within the legal field, this case presents a prime example of the risk associated with serving as a rubber-stamp.”
“This case presents the Court with an unusual scenario—attorneys for both litigants engaged in similar sanctionable conduct,” Sharion Aycock, senior United States District Judge for the Northern District of Mississippi wrote in a sanctions order. “This court is yet again ‘burdened with addressing AI hallucinations court filings.’”
It’s not just that the lawyers used AI. It’s that they submitted arguments with hallucinated cases to back them up wasting everyone’s time in verifying the cited cases. If you need someone to explain to you how much you absolutely don’t want hallucinated cases argued as law then you’re not in a Luddite competition, you’re in an idiot competition and losing
There’s also the case that you don’t want to take one step down the path of having AI handle both sides of a case, or eventually we’ll just get rid of the lawyers and judges, and have AI hash it out, and then tell us what to do with the defendant.