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Katherine Forrest Discusses the Use of ChatGPT in Judicial Decision Making With The National Law Journal
March 13, 2023
Litigation partner Katherine Forrest spoke with The National Law Journal about the limitations and ethical concerns of using generative AI tools, like ChatGPT, in judicial decision-making. In “ChatGPT Helped Write a Court Ruling in Columbia. Here’s What Judges Say About Its Use in Decision Making,” published on March 13, Katherine notes certain constraints of ChatGPT as a judiciary tool, including its inability to assess the credibility of witnesses and lawyers and the difficulty in knowing how it arrived at its answer—a concern given that following a thread of reasoning is vital to the court process. The tool may be useful, however, in small claims court matters where credibility isn’t at issue and the facts are more straight forward.
“The training set, as with all AI tools, is extraordinarily important,” Katherine says. “The ability of ChatGPT to assess the nuances and the changes in law at the right level to the right degree is as yet unknown.” Expanding on these shortcomings, Katherine further notes that “ChatGPT couldn’t lay out precisely why it did or didn’t find cases related to a certain matter persuasive, since those determinations rely on context and reasoning.”