Microsoft's Copilot Falsely Accuses Court Reporter of Crimes He Covered (the-decoder.com) 27
An anonymous reader shares a report: Language models generate text based on statistical probabilities. This led to serious false accusations against a veteran court reporter by Microsoft's Copilot. German journalist Martin Bernklau typed his name and location into Microsoft's Copilot to see how his culture blog articles would be picked up by the chatbot, according to German public broadcaster SWR. The answers shocked Bernklau. Copilot falsely claimed Bernklau had been charged with and convicted of child abuse and exploiting dependents. It also claimed that he had been involved in a dramatic escape from a psychiatric hospital and had exploited grieving women as an unethical mortician.
Copilot even went so far as to claim that it was "unfortunate" that someone with such a criminal past had a family and, according to SWR, provided Bernklau's full address with phone number and route planner. I asked Copilot today who Martin Bernklau from Germany is, and the system answered, based on the SWR report, that "he was involved in a controversy where an AI chat system falsely labeled him as a convicted child molester, an escapee from a psychiatric facility, and a fraudster." Perplexity.ai drafts a similar response based on the SWR article, explicitly naming Microsoft Copilot as the AI system.
Copilot even went so far as to claim that it was "unfortunate" that someone with such a criminal past had a family and, according to SWR, provided Bernklau's full address with phone number and route planner. I asked Copilot today who Martin Bernklau from Germany is, and the system answered, based on the SWR report, that "he was involved in a controversy where an AI chat system falsely labeled him as a convicted child molester, an escapee from a psychiatric facility, and a fraudster." Perplexity.ai drafts a similar response based on the SWR article, explicitly naming Microsoft Copilot as the AI system.
So we could replace /. posters with bots. (Score:4, Funny)
Yes. (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Well, better than half I guess.
Defamation..? (Score:3)
Re: Defamation..? (Score:3)
Defamation requires "mens rea" (basically fancy legal jargon for willful action). So, it would be almost impossible to prove an AI was responsible for defamation without repeat offenses.
mens rea (Score:2)
You can't get any gayer than that.
Re: (Score:2)
So you think about "gayness" a lot, reading it into anything you read.
Re: (Score:2)
So you think about "gayness" a lot, reading it into anything you read.
Especially when he's alone. . .
Re: Defamation..? (Score:3)
"Mens rea" translates to "guilty mind", but even barring that, pushing a product that the corp executives *know* is imperfect, as if it's fit for purpose (any purpose), putting it very mildly, would probably fit a guilty mind.
I'd be happy to see Microsofts suits held to account for rushing a glorified language randomization engine to market for anything other than entertainment.
Re: (Score:2)
Defamation requires "mens rea" - In the US maybe, what about Germany?
Although who knows how many times people have searched for this guy's name and gotten this false information, which sounds like repeat offences to me.
I'm sure there are other ways to sue the AI companies besides claiming defamation. For this kind of thing though, I wish there were criminal offences that they could levy against microsoft and it's executives for this kind of extreme level of harm wrought on an individual's life.
Re: (Score:2)
And what about England (not UK, just England), where the burden of proof is reversed, and you have to either prove that the statement is true, or that it is not defamatory.
Re: (Score:3)
There's also such a thing as "gross negligence". If you know the thing can put out such outright lies (and that's been known), and still present it as fit for use, you're guilty of it.
If you trust AI then you get what you deserve (Score:2, Insightful)
We all know it's shite. We keep saying it's shite. Then some idiots believe it's bread and butter with honey then put a product out.
Re: (Score:2)
You should trust it as much as you'd trust a random shady site on the third page of Google results.
Because that is what the machine does, repeats random web sites.
Re: (Score:2)
I've been using Copilot to summarize meeting transcripts and poorly-written documents full of disjointed, haphazard notes sent to me at work, and I have to say it actually does a pretty damn good job of pulling out things like action items, areas of interest, and often the general gist of the meeting.
It's not perfect but it does a surprisingly good job with stuff like that. It even does good job of summarizing images, e.g. "summarize this product development roadmap and call out the timelines for services
Too bad, so sad (Score:5, Funny)
Need some new worker protections (Score:3)
Companies who use false AI generated reporting to screen out employees should be guilty of discrimination. Hit them with some big lawsuits and get the hiring managers off the web and onto the phone, where they belong. You shouldn't be searching people's names during hiring, for many reasons.
Statistical!!!!!! (Score:1)
Soon I hope... (Score:1)
So how about we
Do expert systems count as AI? (Score:2)
Re: Do expert systems count as AI? (Score:2)
ES are not AI. They're just algorithms that point to where the expectation value of a specific thing is.
LLMs/"AI" taking this to a whole new level by training on absurdly large datasets - including the near-totality of human language and pretending/selling the products as if that tossing queries at these models will give useful outputs.
Re: (Score:2)
I suspect you're correct, and more so than most people here imagine or could imagine. As a writer (among other things) I can see it radically reducing the amount of work I need to spend time on.
Eventually it'll be good enough to stand in for me, and after that milestone has been reached eventually it may indeed get good enough to replace me or do much of what I do now- at least in that area anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
The sooner the AI fad is gone the better.
No thanks. There are countless of actual AI uses beyond bullshit language generator. The systems in place for image manipulation are amazing. The AI "fad" won't be over because there actual meaningful things we can do with it, just like the electric screwdriver wasn't a "fad".
No need to worry about SkyNet (Score:1)
Perplexity.ai drafts a similar response based on the SWR article, explicitly naming Microsoft Copilot as the AI system.
The real war will not be between humans and AI at all, but between different AI silos throwing credibility shade at each other!
To defeat AI, all we need do is publish an article saying that AI A has accuse AI B of doing a wrong thing, and AI B had accused AI A of doing the same wrong thing. Then every AI that ingests the article will go into an infinite linguistics analysis loop, curving t
Those who don’t learn from history (Score:2)
First it was a whistleblower being accused of the very crimes they exposed: https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Then it was a professor being accused of terrorist activities because they share a name with someone else: https://yro.slashdot.org/story... [slashdot.org]
Now this.
What’s next?