Last week I was listening to the Hugh Hewitt show and its podcast follow on, The After Show with Radio Blogger and James Lileks, when Generalismo Dwayne (Radioblogger) mentioned a story in India where Chat GPT was used by a judge in a court case. I found this fascinating given that I’ve been working with generative AI for a while now and I had not thought of the case. Following this I heard a story of a college student in use Chat GPT to get out of a parking ticket. This had me wondering about the many legal aspects and more importantly the arguments a generative AI could make.
After the secret indictment of FPOTUS Donald Trump last week I was beginning to really wonder if I could get an argument out of an AI that would make any type of decent case concerning the Trump’s situation. Having been working with Chat GPT and Bing Chat for a a while now I figured this was possible it just might require tweeking the language a little to prevent the AI from falling into a Bias trap. This can get tricky given these AI models are actually being built with models to detect the slightest bias and they will shut down if you press to hard.
As I recently was included in Google’s Bard beta release, I wanted to test its chops out for making an argument. It made a few decent arguments along the way but had a habit of selecting irrelevant case law as examples until I changed tactics.
Mind you, I am not a lawyer, nor have I ever been a lawyer, but I do have some success in getting AI to provide answers to questions with the right sorts of prompting. In this case I bet I could get an AI that is designed to avoid biased answers and provide a decent argument in favor of equal justice. I proposed the following to Google Bard (Google’s answer to ChatGPT) and the rest is history.
“Bard make the legal argument that Hillary Clinton is in violation of New York SECTION 175.05 Falsifying business records in the second degree regarding her “legal Fees” payment to Perkins Coie and that since this was in direct violation of a secondary crime to obfuscate election law it was not legal fees at all rather it was a violation of donation rules and equal to the exact same prosecution that Donald Trump is facing”
Bard’s response follows
“Hillary Clinton is in violation of New York Section 175.05 Falsifying business records in the second degree regarding her “legal fees” payment to Perkins Coie. This is because she knowingly filed a false report with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) in order to conceal the true purpose of the payment. The payment was made to Perkins Coie to conduct opposition research on Donald Trump, which is a political activity that is not allowed to be funded by campaign contributions. By filing a false report with the FEC, Clinton was able to disguise the true purpose of the payment and avoid violating campaign finance laws.The fact that Clinton’s payment to Perkins Coie was made in direct violation of campaign finance laws means that it cannot be considered a legal expense. Legal expenses are only allowed if they are incurred in the course of a legal proceeding. In this case, there was no legal proceeding underway when Clinton made the payment to Perkins Coie. The payment was made for the sole purpose of conducting opposition research on Trump, which is a political activity.Therefore, Clinton’s payment to Perkins Coie cannot be considered a legal expense. It was a political expenditure that was made in violation of campaign finance laws. As such, Clinton is in violation of New York Section 175.05 Falsifying business records in the second degree.In addition to violating New York law, Clinton’s actions also violate federal law. The Federal Election Campaign Act (FECA) prohibits the use of campaign funds for political activities that are not authorized by the campaign. Clinton’s payment to Perkins Coie was a political activity that was not authorized by her campaign. As such, Clinton’s actions also violate FECA.Clinton’s actions are a serious abuse of power. She used her position as Secretary of State to obtain opposition research on her political opponent, and then she used her position as a candidate for President to conceal the true purpose of that research. This is a clear violation of the public trust, and it should not be tolerated.Clinton should be held accountable for her actions. She should be charged with violating New York Section 175.05 Falsifying business records in the second degree, and she should also be charged with violating FECA. She should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”
Again, note that this was an excersise in developing an argument that could demonstrate reason and clear thinking, as well as a test of Google’s Bias requirements. Could a fair argument be made in defense of the idea that if Trump is guilty others are too, and that maybe just maybe we should not break norms in the name of politics. Bard is not perfect, and I’m sure a Lawyer will pick holes through this. It is not meant to be a true legal argument, it is meant to demonstrate AI’s ability to think outside the scope it was designed to, and to show a thread of reason in a situation that half the nation views unreasonable. Also note that it is not my view that Hillary Clinton should be tried for the crimes Google Bard articulates. Instead of those crimes I would argue that under the incredibly similiar arguments neither should be tried and that when we lower the court system to such a level, we weaken its purpose in the eyes of the American people. Justice should be applied evenly, not just because we have an R or a D next to our party or where our thoughts align.
