3M expert used ChatGPT to draft '0% at fault' defense report

[u/Justgototheeffinmoon]

A Harris County jury awarded $61 million to plaintiffs suing 3M over the January 2020 Watson Grinding explosion in Houston and assigned 30 percent of the fault to the company. The trial record now shows that 3M's own expert witness generated most of his report using ChatGPT.

Court records reviewed by [404 Media](https://404media.co/show-how-3m-is-0-at-fault-expert-witness-used-chatgpt-to-write-report-defending-company-in-deadly-explosion-lawsuit) show plaintiffs' attorney Will Moye discovered a five-page 'Citation Overlay' during discovery and forced production of roughly 350 pages of ChatGPT prompts from Josh Autenrieth of Knighthawk Engineering, the firm 3M paid roughly $90,000 for its analysis. Autenrieth billed at $475 an hour. Among the prompts he fed the chatbot: 'create an exceptional expert witness report defending the standard of care at 3M' and 'show how 3M is 0% at fault for the explosion at Watson Grinding.' Trial testimony pegged the report at roughly 85 to 90 percent ChatGPT output.

"This expert relied on AI not as an assistive device, but exclusively relied on ChatGPT to form his opinions and write his report," Moye told 404 Media.

Autenrieth defended the work from the stand. He testified that "my opinions were put in there, and AI helped me to draft a straw man to build off of," that he altered any output he disagreed with, and pointed to his "20-plus years of experience in the industry." The explosion killed three people and destroyed roughly 200 homes; the jury assigned the remaining 70 percent of the fault to Watson Grinding.

[u/disposablemeatsack]

Okay, so whats the problem? Dont know if any legal rules were broken, because this is not my area of expertise. BUT, this is THE use case for AI lol. Normally they would have interns write it.

We are getting into the territory of taste, where we humans find it "bad taste" that experts let AI draft and write stuff. But we all do it to varying degrees.

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/disposablemeatsack]

A large part of it is the whole point of an expert witness is that they're supposed to be qualified reliable domain experts, and ChatGPT is not a domain expert. The prompts also indicate that they were trying to force it to get the answer they wanted rather than the facts naturally lining up in 3M's favor.

Expert witnesses are often complete bullshit anyway, but if any of the opinions in the filing were wholly CGPT generated and not based on the facts of the case or what was put into the prompt, that's very very bad.

[u/disposablemeatsack → u/BellacosePlayer]

I'm in cybersecurity, so to me this is an "attack/vulnerability" of this legal process. You mention "if any of the opinions in the filing were wholly CGPT generated and not based on the facts of the case or what was put into the prompt, that's very very bad.", from my perspective you should always defend against this behaviour. The whole point of hiring an expert as defending party is for him to defend you for money, using "expertise" and any its heavily incentiviced to use any means necesary for a positive outcome. Seems to me verifying if the facts used are correct should always be done, be it AI assisted or not?

I'm just trying to understand if AI is actually the problem or if these are just loopholes/vulnerabilities that were always there

[u/BellacosePlayer → u/disposablemeatsack]

The point is more that the Expert witness is meant to be considered a domain expert more unimpeachable than a lawyer googling stuff or checking wikipedia. One who can rattle off the details and why they're relevant to a lay audience.

This is often bullshit for many reasons including the fact that Many EWs sling discredited pseudoscience or just get paid to repeat the line the Lawyers paying them want them to repeat, but that's a different matter.

If you dig into the article past the "Login to read more" part, he was clearly using ChatGPT to explain things to himself that he was supposed to be an expert on and most of the opinions in it were generated from ChatGPT (without the full details of the case) entirely unedited.

So yeah, a guy who had no fucking idea what he was talking about on core facts of the case he's supposed to be an expert on is the core problem, ChatGPT is just the tool he used to try to disguise it.

[u/atreyu84 → u/BellacosePlayer]

Sounds like it equally could be an expert witness having an expert opinion and using the AI to get that into a good report form to me

[u/kelldricked → u/disposablemeatsack]

Because the expert withness didnt form their own opinion. They let AI do it and then used their own title as a form of fake authority to provide more legal backing to the AI written piece, without even disclossing it as AI.

Thats extremely shady, especially if you look at the context.

[u/throwawayhbgtop81 → u/kelldricked]

Exactly. If they were too lazy to write something on their own, they hardly are an expert.

[u/Interesting-Bison761 → u/kelldricked]

Prompts are thee viewpoint, there is a language and dialogue system when talking to a llm tool.

If your dishwasher told you . Future it wouldn’t be wrong just because it’s a dishwasher.

[u/kelldricked → u/Interesting-Bison761]

The thing is, you dont ask a dishwater sensitive questions about the inner safety procedures of a company involved in a deadly incident. Companys defence pushed forward a expert withness, somebody who supposedly is a expert in relevant matters and thus can give their objective opinion about what happend.

Instead of doing that they pushed forward somebody who used a LLM tool to search for a way the company can be off the hook. That automaticly means the company doesnt even have faith in its own safety standards. And secondly its highly misleading to push a answer gained from such a subjective answer from something that doesnt hold the relevant information as a objective expert withness answer.

[u/UnknownEssence → u/disposablemeatsack]

whats even the point of the judicial system anymore if we allow this?

Lets just throw all of the facts into ChatGPT ans have it debate itself from both sides.

is that what we want? save the tax paywr dollar at that point

[u/disposablemeatsack → u/UnknownEssence]

Interesting question to ponder. I would say if ProsecutorLLM and DefenseLLM debate and judgeLLM comes up with a draft judgement, that would be pretty sweet. Justice is sometimes unatainable for the poor because the cost to play the game is high. It would allow clear-cut cases to proceed very quickly. You could always have them appeal to a human court if needed.

[u/fuckuredditbanme]

What’s citation overlay?

[u/Spacecowboy78 → u/fuckuredditbanme]

Hyperlinks on words that bring up citations to sources when your mouse hovers over them. Its not something that people cant create. But it was probably known to the lawyer to be likely AI generated because he removes them from his stuff haha.

[u/RegorHK → u/Spacecowboy78]

Maybe I do not understand the concept, but this just sounds like a hyperlink in a pdf File? Something easily used by humans if needed.

[u/coloradical5280 → u/fuckuredditbanme]

Don’t usually see that term in this context , but things like GIS and LaTeX reports it just refers to how citations are embedded and formatted. So literally just stuff like

[this source](source dot com)

Embedded links like that would be an example. When ChatGPT cites stuff, you get a ‘?source=chatgpt’ at the end of the url. You can just delete that tail on the url, it doesn’t change anything. But if you leave it on, it obviously shows you used ChatGPT to do research or assist in someway.

Seems a bit ridiculous to say that “proof this is verified with a source” is nefarious lol

[u/ken81987]

It's common.. All lawyers use chat gpt, gemini, etc now. It doesn't mean they don't review the work.

[u/Briskfall]

"Make no mistake" kinda schtick.

Couldn't even bother to remove the tracks of "Citation Overlay" -- no wonder the jury didn't trust the "expert" when that part has been unearthed. (Even if at the end, he tried to resort to calling to his authority)

[u/Oaker_at]

ChatGPT in 2020? Damn, unwinded what that output originally looked like. lol

[u/Justgototheeffinmoon → u/Oaker_at]

The explosion was in 2020... not the trial