EGN NEWS DESK
A Stanford University “misinformation professional” has been accused of utilizing synthetic intelligence (AI) to craft testimony later utilized by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in a politically-charged case.
Jeff Hancock, a professor of communications and founding father of the vaunted faculty’s Social Media Lab, offered an professional declaration in a case involving a satirical conservative YouTuber named Christopher Kohls. The courtroom case is about Minnesota’s current ban on political deepfakes, which the plaintiffs argue is an assault on free speech.
Hancock’s testimony was submitted to the courtroom by Ellison, who’s arguing in favor of the legislation. Hancock is “well-known for his analysis on how individuals use deception with know-how, from sending texts and emails to detecting pretend on-line opinions,” in response to Stanford’s web site.
But the plaintiff’s attorneys have requested the Minnesota federal judge listening to the case to dismiss the testimony, charging that Hancock cited a pretend research.
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A Stanford professor is accused of utilizing an AI language mannequin to jot down an professional declaration. (Getty Images)
“[The] Declaration of Prof. Jeff Hancock cites a research that doesn’t exist,” attorneys argued in a current 36-page memo. “No article by the title exists.”
The “research” was referred to as “The Influence of Deepfake Videos on Political Attitudes and Behavior” and was purportedly printed within the Journal of Information Technology & Politics. The Nov. 16 submitting notes that the journal is genuine, however had by no means printed a research by that title.
“The publication exists, however the cited pages belong to unrelated articles,” the attorneys argued. “Likely, the research was a ‘hallucination’ generated by an AI massive language mannequin like ChatGPT.”
“Plaintiffs have no idea how this hallucination wound up in Hancock’s declaration, but it surely calls your complete doc into query, particularly when a lot of the commentary incorporates no methodology or analytic logic by any means.”
The doc additionally calls out Ellison, arguing that “the conclusions that Ellison most depends on don’t have any methodology behind them and consist completely of professional say-so.”
“Hancock may have cited an actual research just like the proposition in paragraph 21,” the memo states. “But the existence of a fictional quotation Hancock (or his assistants) didn’t even hassle to click on calls into query the standard and veracity of your complete declaration.”
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Microsoft Bing Chat and ChatGPT AI chat purposes are seen on a cellular gadget on this photograph illustration in Warsaw, Poland, on July 21, 2023. (Jaap Arriens/NurPhoto by way of Getty Images)
The memorandum additionally doubles down on the declare that the quotation is bogus, noting the a number of searches attorneys went by to attempt to find the research.
“The title of the alleged article, and even a snippet of it, doesn’t seem on anyplace on the web as listed by Google and Bing, probably the most commonly-used search engines like google and yahoo,” the doc states. “Searching Google Scholar, a specialised search engine for tutorial papers and patent publications, reveals no articles matching the outline of the quotation authored by ‘Hwang’ [the purported author] that features the time period ‘deepfake.’”
“Perhaps this was merely a copy-paste error? It’s not,” the submitting later flatly states. “The article doesn’t exist.”
The attorneys concluded that, if the declaration had been partially fabricated, it’s completely unreliable and needs to be dismissed from courtroom consideration.
“The declaration of Prof. Hancock needs to be excluded in its entirety as a result of not less than a few of it’s primarily based on fabricated materials seemingly generated by an AI mannequin, which calls into query its conclusory assertions,” the doc concluded. “The courtroom could inquire into the supply of the fabrication and extra motion could also be warranted.”
Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison arrives to talk on stage in the course of the third day of the Democratic National Convention on the United Center on August 21, 2024, in Chicago, Illinois. (Getty Images)
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Fox News Digital reached out to Ellison, Hancock and Stanford University for remark.
