Congratulations, you have just invented another way to irritate judges…

https://www.ft.com/content/fc30bc2b-d89b-4222-ad26-3a700b047c27

New York judge rebukes law firm for using ChatGPT to justify its fees

Cuddy Law Firm invoked predictive AI tool ‘to provide context’ for hourly rate of up to $600

A New York judge has scolded a law firm for citing ChatGPT to support its application for “excessive” attorneys’ fees of up to $600 an hour.

The Cuddy Law Firm had invoked the predictive artificial intelligence tool in a declaration to the court over a case it won against the city’s education department. It said it had done so “to provide context to what a parent — having ChatGPT-4 open and available to them — might take away in researching whether to hire an attorney and who to accept or reject”.

When asked what would be a “reasonable hourly rate” to expect for an associate attorney with up to three years experience in a hearing over disabilities education, the large language model said it could “range anywhere from $200 to $500 an hour”, an attorney at the firm wrote.

He also pointed out that ChatGPT concluded that “lawyers who specialise in a certain type of law (such as special education law, in this case) may command higher rates” and that an attorney with “25 years of experience” might command an hourly rate of up to $1,200 “or even more”.

Judge Paul Engelmayer, who ultimately cut the fees to be awarded to Cuddy’s lawyers by more than half, called the firm’s reliance on the AI program “utterly and unusually unpersuasive”, adding that “barring a paradigm shift in the reliability of this tool, the [firm] is well advised to excise references to ChatGPT from future fee applications”.

Just curious, but where are these balloons launched from? I would think a Chinese ship in international waters west of California is more likely than the Chinese mainland. How come they don’t get detected until they are over Utah?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68388453

US jets intercept high-altitude balloon over Utah

US military aircraft have intercepted a high-altitude balloon flying over the western part of the country and determined it was non-threatening.

… The aircraft was spotted on Friday over Colorado and Utah, drifting east.