OpenAI founder Sam Altman says that soon, everything everywhere will start using Artificial Intelligence and Large Language Models for entire professions, causing them to “disappear.”
Meanwhile, people actually using these services, including attorneys in Alabama, are being sanctioned for the pervasive AI/LLM flaw of ‘hallucinating’ fake citations and fake references.
A federal judge in Birmingham, Alabama, Judge Anna Manasco, issued formal sanctions this week against three attorneys from the law firm Butler Snow after they submitted legal filings containing fabricated case citations generated by ChatGPT.
Manasco, appointed to the court by President Trump, described the citations as “completely made up” and removed the attorneys from the case.
The filings were part of a lawsuit brought by an inmate who alleged repeated stabbings at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility. Manasco referred the case to the Alabama State Bar and ordered the attorneys to share the sanctions order with all current and future clients, as well as all opposing counsel and courts where they are actively involved.
Even the attorneys overseeing the ones who made the mistake of using ChatGPT were also sanctioned. The supervisors claimed they ‘skimmed’ the filings and did not notice the fabricated legal authorities used to support their written arguments.
The lawsuit centers on claims by inmate Frankie Johnson, who alleges that prison officials failed to prevent multiple assaults despite prior warnings. Johnson is housed at Donaldson Correctional Facility, one of the state’s most overcrowded and violent prisons. The firm representing the Alabama Department of Corrections, Butler Snow, filed motions in the case that included five legal citations meant to support its arguments on scheduling and discovery disputes. Upon review, none of the referenced decisions existed.
News in the past month also suggests that, when measured, heavy AI/LLM reliance stunts the cognitive growth in its users, effectively making them dumber.
The judge investigated the filings further in this case and determined that the cases cited had never been published, logged, or recorded in any known legal database. They were simply made up out of thin air.
Hellbound and Down 