Supreme Court of Guam Justice F. Philip Carbullido poses for Variety at the Pacific Islands Club, the venue of the Pacific Judicial Council’s 2023 Technology Conference on Wednesday.
LEGAL briefs with made-up ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence citations have been submitted to the courts, Justice F. Philip Carbullido of the Supreme Court of Guam said in an interview during the Pacific Judicial Council’s 2023 Technology Conference at the Pacific Islands Club on Wednesday.
“We have heard stories about lawyers using briefs written by ChatGPT and Artificial Intelligence, and this is something that can be useful to lawyers and judicial officials, but it can also be very risky in reference to making sure the information is accurate,” he said. “You need to really know how to…properly frame the question…to make sure that AI is not making things up,” he added.
“Because that’s what we have seen in some of these briefs that have been submitted…. [They] sound and read excellent but in actuality they are just made up by AI. The attorney may use Chat GPT or AI [to] help do the research…but without checking…the citations…some of them are made up, [and] they just submit that to the court,” Carbullido said.
This year’s Pacific Judicial Council’s conference theme is “Welcome to the New Age.”
The three-day conference, which started on Nov. 29 and ends on Dec. 1, aims to explore the intersection of law and technology in the current digital era.
“What we are learning here is that technology can be a critically important tool to be used in the work that we do, but there are risks that come with it, too, so you want to make sure you have knowledge of what those risks are and what those limitations are…and that’s’ what a lot of this conference is about,” the justice said.
Carbullido said, “The conference topics change, but as far as the caliber of the presentations are concerned, we try to get the best speakers across the nation to come out and present on the topic. We are just fortunate that we have an organization that has existed for over 20 years, and that we are able to bring this type of learning, and information to our PJC jurisdiction.”
Pacific Judicial Council consists of the justices and judges of Guam, the CNMI, American Samoa, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia (Chuuk, Kosrae, Pohnpei and Yap).
