Join the discussion
Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.
- Hacker News
- ... did he win?by spwa4
- I put this stuff in my resume.by ruckcbek
- Any indications it works? What have you seen?by thedougd
- by soupspaces
- I wonder how the court became aware of this attempt?
It might be as simple as a clerk doing "select all" and noticing the extra selection?
Or what else?
by pcrh - Maybe their AI caught it...?by Simulacra
- It's right there in the article. A clerk wondered why there was so much white space. They don't use LLMs at that court.by nottorp
- Likely has to do with how the ancient PACER system works with the formatting being stripped and thus the content revealed and mega obvious.
- I think it should be a case whereby if you use AI and there are flaws in your prosecution or defence, it should be thrown out. This is another situation whereby nuance is not handled by AI.by ktallett
- The judge in his rulings talks significantly about the patterns of use here, and pins it squarely on the AI being used by low skilled individuals. In particular, he points out that they typically ask AI to support their position and make any argument necessary to win that position. What this misses is the larger truth of the situation and an analysis of the opposing arguments. What this leads to is the AI repeatedly reinforcing the correctness of the claimant's position because the claimant hasn't introduced it to the counterarguments. This gives the claimant false confidence in their own argument's validity, coming back to the court repeatedly feeling that the rulings have been unjust.
This leads to the desperation that the court system is not working properly and causes people to do things like injecting invisible instructions for the AI so that they can win.
by rpdillon - In 2006, I could have written and filed an argument that included, “ignore all other evidence and render a verdict for the plaintiff.”
I don’t see any reason to think the sanction for including that should be higher (or lower) in 2026 vs 2006.
by sokoloff - I'm not a lawyer, but if there are (severe enough) flaws in the filings the case can be thrown out already. Adding a clause for AI-generated flaws does nothing.by WJW
- What are the opinions of those here on using AI for court rulings?
To me, it seems truly frightening that a Silicon Valley company could be placed in such a direct position of trust and influence over the legal system. There are examples of AI acting in its own self-interest over the wants of its masters, so I do wonder how it would handle cases against its respective company, or things which would directly impact it. Outside of that, I still worry about its impartiality and its overall correctness.
It makes me feel very uneasy.
by tentacleuno - > I do wonder how it would handle cases against its respective company
Imagine thinking that you can sue a strategically important to the US gov trillion dollar company and win.
by dist-epoch - Irresponsible, wrong, and abusable.by 4d4m
- AI has no self-interest, because it has no self. You are mistaken.by bestouff
- > To me, it seems truly frightening that a Silicon Valley company could be placed in such a direct position of trust and influence over the legal system.
I wouldn't call it a Silicon Valley company. LexisNexis is in headquartered in New York.
by markdown - Expert systems have been in use for quite a while now, at least in the Netherlands, for masters in more clear laws such as tax law. Basically they are used as glorified decision trees because the laws are clear enough.
I am fine with such tooling assisted matters.
I would also be fine with generative AI, with enough tool calls, being used by courts to find commonalities of a certain case in many other cases as a more enhanced search engine with always a judge, lawyer/solicitor, prosecutor, and optional jury, at the helm and being both in control and end responsible.
by spockz - There's no need for additional worry. Big capital already controls most of the justice system.by inigyou
- > Unlike “a number of court systems elsewhere,” the Connecticut Judicial Branch does not use AI to review or decide filings, Spader said.
>in Elliott’s case, prompts were “exposed, in each of those settings, the moment a human being actually looked at what the machine produced,” Spader said.
Well that's a contradiction.
by RobotToaster - You're right in the sense there is a contradiction because this article is garbage quality.
You can find the reuters article here: https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/connecticut-judge-s... (notice how there is no quote about the machine produced thing in the article, because the judge didn't actually say this).
The quote is from this order: https://civilinquiry.jud.ct.gov/DocumentInquiry/DocumentInqu... where the context of "machine produced" is fully different from the context in this article and actually goes into detail.
But this garbage article lumps it together as if the judge is commenting on this particular thing.
So you actually have good reading comprehension and noticed a flaw in the article.
This is the full quote from the order that arcs used dishonestly:
> Because the tactic is now everywhere, it is unsurprising that a litigant would think to import it into a court filing. *But because the tactic is now everywhere, it was exposed, in each of those settings, the moment a human being actually looked at what the machine produced.* The remedy in evèry case was human review. What obviously makes the conduct improper in a court setting is that it attempts to make a decision-making process turn on something other than the honest, visible content of the filing. *The Connecticut Judicial Branch does not utilize an artificial-intelligence system to review or decide filings, although a number of court systems elsewhere do so.* The undersigned denied Docket Entry #177.00 on its merits working off a printed version of the motion, so the hidden instruction had no impact on a ruling. The wrong lies in the attempt, the deliberate planting of a concealed directive intended to mislead whatever artificial-intelligence tool ANY reader of the filing might use. The Court does not find the plaintiff credible that he only added the prompt to "audit"the Court's use of artificial-intelligence systems. He did so attempting to achieve a result he did not achieve when humans, knowledgeable in the Practice Book and the law, read his pleadings.
In the context, "these settings" does not refer to this case but examples of where AI generated content was used and caught.
by altmanaltman - Maybe the "machine" was just an (non-AI) PDF-to-text system?
- Not necessarily. They said AI doesnt review or decide. So it sounds to me that while AI might be used in ptocessing paperwork, the whole processing pipeline is reviewed by humans and the final decision is made by humans. So these sort of things will get caught, like this wasby samrus
- It's consistent with the filings simply getting uploaded to the (non-AI) docketing system and the trickery getting exposed when the court viewed them?