AI is creating fake legal cases and making its way into real courtrooms, with disastrous results

Shutterstock Michael Legg, UNSW Sydney and Vicki McNamara, UNSW Sydney

We’ve seen deepfake, explicit images of celebrities, created by artificial intelligence (AI). AI has also played a hand in creating music, driverless race cars and spreading misinformation, among other things.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that AI also has a strong impact on our legal systems.

It’s well known that courts must decide disputes based on the law, which is presented by lawyers to the court as part of a client’s case. It’s therefore highly concerning that fake law, invented by AI, is being used in legal disputes.

Not only does this pose issues of legality and ethics, it also threatens to undermine faith and trust in global legal systems.

How do fake laws come about?

There is little doubt that generative AI is a powerful tool with transformative potential for society, including many aspects of the legal system. But its use comes with responsibilities and risks.

Lawyers are trained to carefully apply professional knowledge and experience, and are generally not big risk-takers. However, some unwary lawyers (and self-represented litigants) have been caught out by artificial intelligence.

Generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, can provide incorrect information. Shutterstock

AI models are trained on massive data sets. When prompted by a user, they can create new content (both text and audiovisual).

Although content generated this way can look very convincing, it can also be inaccurate. This is the result of the AI model attempting to “fill in the gaps” when its training data is inadequate or flawed, and is commonly referred to as “hallucination”.

In some contexts, generative AI hallucination is not a problem. Indeed, it can be seen as an example of creativity.

But if AI hallucinated or created inaccurate content that is then used in legal processes, that’s a problem – particularly when combined with time pressures on lawyers and a lack of access to legal services for many.

This potent combination can result in carelessness and shortcuts in legal research and document preparation, potentially creating reputational issues for the legal profession and a lack of public trust in the administration of justice.

It’s happening already

The best known generative AI “fake case” is the 2023 US case Mata v Avianca, in which lawyers submitted a brief containing fake extracts and case citations to a New York court. The brief was researched using ChatGPT.

The lawyers, unaware that ChatGPT can hallucinate, failed to check that the cases actually existed. The consequences were disastrous. Once the error was uncovered, the court dismissed their client’s case, sanctioned the lawyers for acting in bad faith, fined them and their firm, and exposed their actions to public scrutiny.

Despite adverse publicity, other fake case examples continue to surface. Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, gave his own lawyer cases generated by Google Bard, another generative AI chatbot. He believed they were real (they were not) and that his lawyer would fact check them (he did not). His lawyer included the cases in a brief filed with the US Federal Court.

Fake cases have also surfaced in recent matters in Canada and the United Kingdom.

If this trend goes unchecked, how can we ensure that the careless use of generative AI does not undermine the public’s trust in the legal system? Consistent failures by lawyers to exercise due care when using these tools has the potential to mislead and congest the courts, harm clients’ interests, and generally undermine the rule of law.

What’s being done about it?

Around the world, legal regulators and courts have responded in various ways.

Several US state bars and courts have issued guidance, opinions or orders on generative AI use, ranging from responsible adoption to an outright ban.

Law societies in the UK and British Columbia, and the courts of New Zealand, have also developed guidelines.

In Australia, the NSW Bar Association has a generative AI guide for barristers. The Law Society of NSW and the Law Institute of Victoria have released articles on responsible use in line with solicitors’ conduct rules.

Many lawyers and judges, like the public, will have some understanding of generative AI and can recognise both its limits and benefits. But there are others who may not be as aware. Guidance undoubtedly helps.

But a mandatory approach is needed. Lawyers who use generative AI tools cannot treat it as a substitute for exercising their own judgement and diligence, and must check the accuracy and reliability of the information they receive.

In Australia, courts should adopt practice notes or rules that set out expectations when generative AI is used in litigation. Court rules can also guide self-represented litigants, and would communicate to the public that our courts are aware of the problem and are addressing it.

The legal profession could also adopt formal guidance to promote the responsible use of AI by lawyers. At the very least, technology competence should become a requirement of lawyers’ continuing legal education in Australia.

Setting clear requirements for the responsible and ethical use of generative AI by lawyers in Australia will encourage appropriate adoption and shore up public confidence in our lawyers, our courts, and the overall administration of justice in this country.

Michael Legg, Professor of Law, UNSW Sydney and Vicki McNamara, Senior Research Associate, Centre for the Future of the Legal Profession, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read More........→March 22, 2024

Scientists Have 3D-Scanned Thousands of Creatures Creating Incredibly Intricate Images Anyone Can Access for Free

3D scanned creatures by oVert – Released by Florida Museum of Natural History / SWNS

An incredible new project has scanned thousands of creatures to advance scientific research and provide colorful images to the world. Natural history museums have entered a new stage of scientific discovery and accessibility with the completion of openVertebrate (oVert), a five-year collaborative project among 18 institutions to create 3D reconstructions of vertebrate specimens and make them freely available online. Now, researchers have published a summary of the project in the journal BioScience reviewing the specimens they’ve scanned to date, offering a glimpse of how the data might be  used to ask newquestions and spur the development of innovative technology. “When people first collected these specimens, they had no idea what the future would hold for them,” said Edward Stanley, co-principal investigator of the oVert project and associate scientist at the Florida Museum of Natural History. Such museums got their start in the 16th century as cabinets of curiosity, in which a few wealthy individuals amassed rare and exotic specimens, which they kept mostly to themselves. Since then, museums have become a resource for the public to learn about biodiversity. But, the majority of museum collections remain behind closed doors—accessible only to scientists who must either travel to see them or ask that a small number of specimens be mailed on loan—and oVert wants to change that. “Now we have scientists, teachers, students and artists around the world using these data remotely,” said David Blackburn, lead principal investigator of the oVert project and curator of herpetology at the Florida Museum. Beginning in 2017, the oVert team members took CT scans of more than 13,000 specimens, with vertebrate species across the tree of life, including over half the genera of all amphibians, reptiles, fishes, and mammals.

A collage of scanned fish from oVert – Released by Florida Museum of Natural History / SWNS

CT scanners use high-energy X-rays to peer past an organism’s exterior and view the dense bone structure beneath. Some specimens were also stained with a contrast-enhancing solution for visualizing soft tissues, like skin, muscle, and other organs. The models give an intimate look at internal portions of a specimen that could previously only be observed through destructive dissection and tissue sampling. “You want to protect specimens, but you also want to have people use them,” Blackburn said. “oVert is a way of reducing the wear and tear on samples while also increasing access, and it’s the next logical step in the

Hedgehog CT scan from oVert – Florida Museum of Natural History / SWNS

mission of museum collections.” Skeletons too large to fit into a CT scanner, like a humpback whale, were painstakingly taken apart so that 3D models of each individual bone could be scanned and reassembled. “These are not things you put in boxes and loan,” Blackburn pointed out. A set of iconic Galapagos tortoises at the California Academy of Sciences were each photographed in a 360-degree rotation. Photographing their undersides was problematic, as their curved shells made it impossible to keep them upright. After a few trial-and-error runs, they settled on placing the specimens on top of inflatable swimming tubes. Scientists have already used data from the project to gain astonishing insights into the natural world. Watch the incredible video below, and learn more at the bottom…In 2023, Edward Stanley was conducting routine CT scans of spiny mice and was surprised to find their tails were covered with an internal coat of bony plates, called osteoderms. Before this discovery, armadillos were considered to be the only living mammals with these structures. “All kinds of things jump out at you when you’re when you’re scanning,” Stanley said. “I study osteoderms, and through kismet or fate, I happened to be the one scanning those particular specimens on that particular day and noticed something strange about their tails on the X-ray. “That happens all the time. We’ve found all sorts of strange, unexpected things.”oVert scans were used to determine what killed a rim rock crown snake, considered to be the rarest snake species in North America. Another study showed that a group of frogs called pumpkin toadlets had become so small that the fluid-filled canals in their ears that confer balance no longer functioned properly, causing them to crash-land when jumping. One study of 500 oVert specimens revealed that frogs have lost and regained teeth more than 20 times throughout their evolutionary history. Other researchers concluded that Spinosaurus, a massive dinosaur that was larger than Tyrannosaurus rex and thought to be aquatic, would have actually been a poor swimmer, and thus likely stayed on land. And the list goes on, full of insights and ideas that would have been impossible or impractical before the project’s outset. “Now that we’ve been working on this for so long, we have a broad scaffold that allows us to take a broader view of

Fish CT scan from oVert – Florida Museum of Natural History / SWNS

evolutionary questions,” Stanley said. Artists and teachers are benefitting too Funded in part by the National Science Foundation, the value of the oVert project extends beyond science. Artists have used the 3D models to create realistic animal replicas, photographs of oVert specimens have been displayed as museum exhibits, and specimens have been incorporated into virtual reality headsets that give users the chance to interact with and manipulate them. A high school teacher in Cincinnati says it’s been a game-changer for her studies on evolution. “I teach juniors and seniors, and I absolutely love them, but they can be a tough audience,” said Jennifer Broo. “They know when things are fake, which makes them less engaged. Using the oVert models, my class has gotten so much better because I have had the opportunities to work with and expose my students to real data.”Visit Sketchfab to view a sample of 3D interactive models. At MorphoSource you can access the full openVertebrate repository.Scientists Have 3D-Scanned Thousands of Creatures Creating Incredibly Intricate Images Anyone Can Access for Free

Read More........→March 18, 2024

Atlanta Science Festival returns to inspire discovery for all ages

A middle-school student experiences an Emory chemistry lab during a recent community outreach event.

The Atlanta Science Festival returns March 9 to 23, inviting curious kids and adults to explore all things science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). Experts in these fields — including many members of the Emory community — will serve as educational guides for more than 150 interactive events. “The Atlanta Science Festival aims to bring the community together through their shared love of science,” says Meisa Salaita, co-founder and co-executive director of Science ATL, the engineers of the festival. “Through these events, we hope to inspire and empower the next generation to pursue their dreams.” Participants can take a crash course on the basics of AI, create an herbarium of medicinal plants, go into the field with researchers studying microplastic pollution in a stream, take a behind-the-scenes tour of the latest advances in healthcare technology and even get a taste of the physics of cheese making. Now in its 11th year, the Atlanta Science Festival was co-founded by Emory, Georgia Tech and the Metro Atlanta Chamber. “We have grown into a mainstay of Atlanta,” says Salaita, noting that many of the events fill up quickly. “The festival is something that people look forward to every spring.” Click here for highlights of this year's festival with an Emory connection. eScienceCommons: Atlanta Science Festival returns to inspire discov.

Read More........→March 13, 2024

A synthetic embryo, made without sperm, could lead to infertility

A synthetic embryo, made without sperm or egg, could lead to infertility treatments

Scientists have created mouse embryos in a dish, and it could one day help families hoping to get pregnant, according to a new study.

After 10 years of research, scientists created a synthetic mouse embryo that began forming organs without a sperm or egg, according to the study published Thursday in the journal Nature. All it took was stem cells.

Stem cells are unspecialized cells that can be manipulated into becoming mature cells with special functions.

"Our mouse embryo model not only develops a brain, but also a beating heart, all the components that go on to make up the body," said lead study author Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, professor of mammalian development and stem cell biology at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

"It's just unbelievable that we've got this far. This has been the dream of our community for years, and a major focus of our work for a decade, and finally we've done it."

The paper is an exciting advance and tackles a challenge scientists face studying mammal embryos in utero, said Marianne Bronner, a professor of biology at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (Caltech). Bronner was not involved in the study.

"These develop outside of the mother and therefore can be easily visualized through critical developmental stages that were previously difficult to access," Bronner added.

The researchers hope to move from mouse embryos to creating models of natural human pregnancies -- many of which fail in the early stages, Zernicka-Goetz said.

By watching the embryos in a lab instead of a uterus, scientists got a better view into the process to learn why some pregnancies might fail and how to prevent it, she added.

For now, researchers have only been able to track about eight days of development in the mouse synthetic embryos, but the process is improving, and they are already learning a lot, said study author Gianluca Amadei, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge.

"It reveals the fundamental requirements that have to be fulfilled to make the right structure of the embryo with its organs," Zernicka-Goetz said.

Where it stands, the research doesn't apply to humans and "there needs to be a high degree of improvement for this to be truly useful," said Benoit Bruneau, the director of the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease and a senior investigator at Gladstone Institutes. Bruneau was not involved in the study.

But researchers see important uses for the future. The process can be used immediately to test new drugs, Zernicka-Goetz said. But in the longer term, as scientists move from mouse synthetic embryos to a human embryo model, it also could help build synthetic organs for people who need transplants, Zernicka-Goetz added.

"I see this work as being the first example of work of this kind," said study author David Glover, research professor of biology and biological engineering at Caltech.

How they did it

In utero, an embryo needs three types of stem cells to form: One becomes the body tissue, another the sac where the embryo develops, and the third the placenta connecting parent and fetus, according to the study.

In Zernicka-Goetz's lab, researchers isolated the three types of stem cells from embryos and cultured them in a container angled to bring the cells together and encourage crosstalk between them.

Day by day, they were able to see the group of cells form into a more and more complex structure, she said.

There are ethical and legal considerations to address before moving to human synthetic embryos, Zernicka-Goetz said. And with the difference in complexity between mouse and human embryos, it could be decades before researchers are able to do a similar process for human models, Bronner said.

But in the meantime, the information learned from the mouse models could help "correct failing tissues and organs," Zernicka-Goetz said.

The mystery of human life

The early weeks after fertilization are made up of these three different stem cells communicating with one another chemically and mechanically so the embryo can grow properly, the study said.

"So many pregnancies fail around this time, before most women (realize) they are pregnant," said Zernicka-Goetz, who is also professor of biology and biological engineering at Caltech. "This period is the foundation for everything else that follows in pregnancy. If it goes wrong, the pregnancy will fail."

But by this stage, an embryo created through in vitro fertilization is already implanted in the parent, so scientists have limited visibility into the processes it is going through, Zernicka-Goetz said.

They were able to develop foundations of a brain -- a first for models such as these and a "holy grail for the field," Glover said.

"This period of human life is so mysterious, so to be able to see how it happens in a dish -- to have access to these individual stem cells, to understand why so many pregnancies fail and how we might be able to prevent that from happening -- is quite special," Zernicka-Goetz said in a press release. "We looked at the dialogue that has to happen between the different types of stem cell at that time -- we've shown how it occurs and how it can go wrong."- 

A synthetic embryo, made without sperm, could lead to infertility

Read More........→October 09, 2022

The Story Behind the Apple Logo

When we think about well-known logos, we wonder how they came to be. What was the original idea and inspiration? Why have they evolved over the years? Usually, logos have a history. Today, we ‍are going to talk about the history of the Apple logo which is one of the most famous logos in the world.

Apple was born in 1976, in Steve Jobs’ garage in Los Altos, California, along with Steve Wozniak and Ronald Wayne. One year later, in 1977, Apple became a company. At first, they wanted to sell computers, then moved on to mobile products, and finally streaming platforms.

The Apple logo had an eventful beginning. Initially, its name and branding resembled that of Apple Records, the record company owned by the Beatles at the time. The Beatles decided to sue, and Apple had to pay damages to Apple Records.

In order to create a new, more simple and representative logo, Steve Jobs hired a graphic designer, Rob Janoff, giving birth to the Apple logo as we know it today: the bitten apple. But what was unique about this new apple logo? It was composed of the colors of the rainbow. Steve Jobs wanted a logo that stood out and made you want to buy the product. But why did he decide to use an apple with a bite taken out of it?

Janoff answered this very question in an interview in 2009. The bite is there for scale, so a small Apple logo always looks like an apple, not a cherry. And why an apple? Steve Jobs, who worked in an orchard when he was a boy, decided to name his computers after his favorite kind of apple, the McIntosh.

This logo remained the same until 1998, when Steve Jobs decided to create a new brand image for his products. He opted for a monochrome logo this time. The company was established enough that Steve Jobs wanted to try and portray it as a luxury brand, which was ultimately successful. The logo was first blue and translucent with a three-dimensional look, then plain black between 1998 and 2000.

Subsequently, the logo was shaped a little thinner and slightly more elaborate in 2001, with the introduction of the "aqua" version that was more translucent and silvery.

In 2007, Apple made a minor redesign of the logo. The transparency disappeared, and only the silver color was kept. This version also utilized the effect of depth.

After various trials, Steve Jobs finally decided to return to the black two-dimensional version of the logo of the 2000s. There are also white and grey versions. This logo is versatile because it can be used on devices, the website, as well as storefronts.DailyBangladesh/RAH,  Source: https://www.daily-bangladesh.com

Read More........→October 03, 2022