The Law Report's Damien Carrick speaks to ABC about the inaccuracies of ChatGPT

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Experts say AI bots create falsehoods by using word prediction. These AI platforms can generate wild inaccuracies – known as 'hallucinations'.

Transcript

00:00Well, Martin Bernklau is a journalist who lives in the city of Tübingen, which is in

00:07the south of Germany, and for decades he's been reporting on the local courts.

00:12About a year ago, he pivoted his journalism into arts reporting, and he was curious to

00:18know how his arts reviews were tracking.

00:21Now his Microsoft system suggested that he use Copilot to do the search, which is the

00:30AI platform attached to Bing, which is the Microsoft search platform.

00:36So he starts dialoguing with Copilot, and he gets a huge shock, because Copilot tells

00:44him that Martin Bernklau is a convicted child abuser, has been convicted of defrauding the

00:50elderly, has escaped from a psychiatric institution, and is guilty of many, many other crimes.

00:59Now what appears to have happened is that these are all crimes and court cases that

01:04over the years Martin Bernklau had reported on, and what had happened was that when the

01:11AI platform scraped the internet, it came to total wrong conclusions or hallucinations

01:17about who Martin Bernklau is.

01:20And just another detail, not only did it say this is who he is, it also gave his telephone

01:26number, his address, and a route map to his house.

01:29My goodness, so what did he do when he discovered these hallucinations?

01:34Well he took a couple of steps.

01:36He approached the prosecutor in his local town.

01:39I don't think that step led to anything happening.

01:43He also approached the German Office of Data Protection, and that office contacted Microsoft's

01:51European HQ in Dublin, and they said they would look at it.

01:56But subsequent to that contact, similar searches resulted in the same kind of slanders or inaccuracies,

02:04according to Martin.

02:06But Martin tells me just in recent weeks, when you type his name into this platform,

02:12nothing comes up at all.

02:13And it would appear that what has happened is, according to Martin, is that it can't

02:18deal with the inaccuracies, so it's just kind of scraped him from the system totally and

02:23won't respond to any queries about him.

02:25So have there been legal cases arising from these types of AI hallucinations, Damian?

02:30Well Martin certainly is considering it, but when he talked to a lawyer in Germany, the

02:37lawyer said, look, we don't know how long it would take to resolve, whether you'd get

02:43a good outcome, and it would be very expensive.

02:46Have there been other cases?

02:47Well here in Australia, just earlier this year, what was going to be the big probably

02:54world test case was dropped.

02:56That was being brought by the mayor of the Hepburn Shire Council in regional Victoria.

03:02His name is Brian Hood.

03:05And he dropped what was believed to be the first test case in the world because it was

03:10too expensive.

03:11Now what had happened to Brian Hood was he typed his name into ChatGPT, and it described

03:16him as a convicted criminal, a fraudster.

03:19In fact, Brian Hood is the polar opposite.

03:22He is a very highly respected whistleblower who came forward when he realised that there

03:27was something wildly amiss at a subsidiary of the Reserve Bank of Australia.

03:32And he's widely respected for having brought that criminal behaviour to light.

03:38So he was very concerned, but he decided that because of the, largely because of the cost

03:43associated with uncertain litigation, he decided to drop that test case.

03:48Are there any legal actions happening elsewhere in the world?

03:52Well, the one that is going ahead is perhaps, not surprisingly, in the more litigious United

03:58States.

03:59And that involves a radio and podcast talk show called Mark Walters.

04:04And he's suing OpenAI, the company that owns ChatGPT.

04:08Now Walters hosts a program called Armed American Radio, which discusses and promotes gun ownership

04:16in the USA.

04:18And ChatGPT had hallucinated that he was actually being sued by another organisation or an organisation

04:25called the Second Amendment Foundation, which is a US-based organisation that also supports

04:30gun rights.

04:32Somehow ChatGPT had hallucinated that he was being sued for defrauding this organisation,

04:38when in fact he'd had nothing to do with it, he'd never worked for it.

04:42And this was just a total hallucination.

04:45ChatGPT has tried to dismiss this action, but it is going through the courts.

04:49So it will be very interesting to see what happens.

04:52And it may prove to be the test case that we're all waiting for around the world.

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