U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in a year-end report that artificial intelligence (AI) will impact the legal field.
“As 2023 draws to a close with breathless predictions about the future of Artificial Intelligence, some may wonder whether judges are about to become obsolete,” he wrote. “I am sure we are not—but equally confident that technological changes will continue to transform our work.”
“AI obviously has great potential to dramatically increase access to key information for lawyers and non-lawyers alike. But just as obviously it risks invading privacy interests and dehumanizing the law,” he added.
Roberts explained that AI requires “caution and humility,” describing incidents where lawyers submitted briefs with “citations to non-existent cases.”
“In criminal cases, the use of AI in assessing flight risk, recidivism, and other largely discretionary decisions that involve predictions has generated concerns about due process, reliability, and potential bias,” Justice Roberts continued.
Acknowledging that AI will “assist the judicial system,” Justice Roberts noted that courts must have the responsibility to “consider its proper uses in litigation.”
“I predict that human judges will be around for a while,” he wrote. “But with equal confidence I predict that judicial work—particularly at the trial level—will be significantly affected by AI. Those changes will involve not only how judges go about doing their job, but also how they understand the role that AI plays in the cases that come before them.”
Former Trump attorney Michael Cohen admitted that he submitted fake citations to the court created by Google’s AI, Bard.
The citations created a precedent for his motion to end his supervised release early. Cohen has been under court supervision since 2021, when he completed his three-year prison sentence for tax evasion and campaign finance violations.
In a December 28 email to Judge Jesse Furman, who questioned the validity of the citations, a representative for Cohen wrote, “To summarize: Mr. Cohen provided Mr. Schwartz with citations (and case summaries) he had found online and believed to be real. Mr. Schwartz added them to the motion but failed to check those citations or summaries. As a result, Mr. Schwartz mistakenly filed a motion with three citations that—unbeknownst to either Mr. Schwartz or Mr. Cohen at the time—referred to nonexistent cases.”
“Upon later appearing in the case and reviewing the previously-filed motion, I discovered the problem and, in Mr. Cohen’s reply letter supporting that motion, I alerted the Court to likely issues with Mr. Schwartz’s citations and provided (real) replacement citations supporting the very same proposition. ECF No. 95 at 3,” the email continued. “To be clear, Mr. Cohen did not know that the cases he identified were not real and, unlike his attorney, had no obligation to confirm as much. While there has been no implication to the contrary, it must be emphasized that Mr. Cohen did not engage in any misconduct.”
