More stories of AI enshittification

[thewayne]

First up, town leaders screwing over the will of good people.

In 1999, a farmer in Taylor, Texas deeded the town almost 88 acres of land for $10 for the express purpose of turning the acreage into a park.

It has now been sold to a data center developer called Blueprint for $10 million to build a 135,000 square foot facility.

There was zero public input. And the town council says that it is a done deal and cannot be stopped.

https://gizmodo.com/a-farmer-donated-land-for-a-public-park-and-the-city-sold-it-to-a-data-center-developer-for-10-million-2000769211


Next, attorneys using chatbots badly.

A case in the Northern District of Mississippi, an attorney - Tom Withers - is suing the City of Aberdeen for unpaid legal fees. Now, the conventional wisdom is that a person representing themselves in court has a fool for a client, and Tom seemingly is no fool, had two lawyers representing him. The city had two attorneys representing them.

BOTH SIDES filed briefs mostly or completely generated by AI. With hallucinated citations, i.e. citing court cases that do not exist, i.e. BOOOOGUS. Neither side checked their own citations, nor did they check the other side's citations.

The judge was not amused.

ALL FOUR attorneys were fined. But the biggie was that two of them were BARRED FROM APPEARING BEFORE THE COURT FOR TWO YEARS! That's one from each side. THAT is going to be sting as it will greatly reduce their ability to provide representation, and since a city is always involved in law suites, it's really going to hurt his job.

The proceedings were paused, the case was cancelled, and all four attorneys were dismissed from the case.

Maybe Tom should have represented himself. He probably couldn't have done worse.

https://gizmodo.com/judge-cancels-whole-case-after-lawyers-admit-they-didnt-read-ai-generated-filings-2000769668

Comments

[elayna]

There’s been at least one that got stopped when the city stopped the power and water. (Though now I’m not sure if that was a data center or a detention camp, both suck.) I hope that city strategizes some more.

I’ve seen several articles now of AI hallucinating on legal briefs, I don’t know why anyone trusts it.

[thewayne]

There's a guy who is keeping a web site of lawyer briefs with hallucinations, and IIRC he's over 900 items.

[disneydream06]

Gotta wonder how much of a kick back that city council got from that deal. :o

YAY for that judge in the second one. :)
Hugs, Jon

[thewayne]

There was a town council that voted to let a data center in, and there was an election like a couple of weeks later. Every councilor who was up for election was removed from office.

[disneydream06]

That is great news.
I hope other city councils are paying attention. :o

[silveradept]

One suspects that if you can dredge up the legal documents regarding the sale, if there was a stated purpose in it, you could probably bring an action to ensure that the deeded land is used for the intended purpose.

As for the supposed lawyers and their LLMs showing contempt for the court and its processes, I should like to think that making up a citation, or filing a brief with a made-up citation in it, should be grounds for permanent disbarment, not merely temporary. That's a major breach of ethics, and it renders you entirely untrustworthy as a lawyer.

[thewayne]

The problem with disbarment is that isn't something the judge can do, only the state bar association can invoke that level of punishment.  The judge can only fine, and suspend their ability to appear in that court.  But I agree, repeat offenders should run a risk of disbarment.