Lobby Power

Judge Kevin Newsom of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit recently brilliantly detailed how his “[i]nitial efforts to pinpoint the ordinary meaning of the term “landscaping” left me feeling frustrated and stuck, and ultimately led me—initially half-jokingly, later more seriously—to wonder whether ChatGPT and other AI-powered large language models (“LLMs”) might provide a helping hand.”

He looked at the definition in several dictionaries, including Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary of English, Dictionary.com, but came to the conclusion that “[i]t was tough to discern a single controlling criterion.” He thereafter asked his law clerk to look up the ordinary meaning of landscaping on ChatGPT and got the following response: ““Landscaping” refers to the process of altering the visible features of an area of land, typically a yard, garden or outdoor space, for aesthetic or practical purposes. This can include activities such as planting trees, shrubs, flowers, or grass, as well as installing paths, fences, water features, and other elements to enhance the appearance and functionality of the outdoor space.”

What the judge then stated in his decision is that ChatGPT’s explanation “[s]eemed more sensible than I had thought it might—and definitely less nutty than I had feared.” The Judge posed the same query in Google’s Bard/Gemini and concluded: “But my own process of working through the plain-language issue was a valuable one, if only because it got me thinking about what was to me a previously unimaginable possibility: Might LLMs be useful in the interpretation of legal texts?”

This is pretty amazing as the Judge then detailed the entire exercise “to inform ordinary-meaning analyses of legal instruments.”

I will not detail here the entire opinion, but I can surely conclude that Generative AI platforms are here to stay, will become exceedingly useful and utilized by all of us. The bigger question for us is how we can control the input so that the narrative that the Generative AIs spit out is widely accepted and socially responsible. As my baker father used to say, if you want to bake a great loaf of bread, you need to wake up early, select your ingredients carefully and then mix them all properly so that what ends up on the shelf is a product you are proud to sell to your customers.

The opinion of the Judge is attached here.
https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202212581.pdf

media.ca11.uscourts.gov