But the explanation and Ramirez’s promise to educate himself on the use of AI wasn’t enough, and the judge chided him for not doing his research before filing. “It is abundantly clear that Mr. Ramirez did not make the requisite reasonable inquiry into the law. Had he expended even minimal effort to do so, he would have discovered that the AI-generated cases do not exist. That the AI-generated excerpts appeared valid to Mr. Ramirez does not relieve him of his duty to conduct a reasonable inquiry,” Judge Dinsmore continued, before recommending that Ramirez be sanctioned for $15,000.
Falling victim to this a year or more after the first guy made headlines for the same is just stupidity.
I think the important point is that LLMs as we understand them do not have intent. They are fantastic at providing output that appears to meet the requirements set in the input text, and when they actually do meet those requirements instead of just seeming to they can provide genuinely helpful info and also it’s very easy to not immediately know the difference between output that looks correct and satisfies the purpose of an LLM vs actually being correct and satisfying the purpose of the user.