Andrea Matwyshyn

California issues historic fine over lawyer’s ChatGPT fabrications The court of appeals issued an historic fine after 21 of 23 quotes in the lawyer's opening brief were fake. Courts want more AI regulations.

California's Judicial Council "two weeks ago issued guidelines requiring judges and court staff to either ban generative #AI or adopt a generative AI use policy by Dec. 15": calmatters.org/economy/tech... #ethics #law #courts #tech

The 'dark patterns' at the center of FTC's lawsuit against Amazon This week, the trial starts in a consequential FTC lawsuit against Amazon. The suit alleges that Amazon for years "tricked" people into buying Prime memberships that were purposefully hard to cancel.

FTC vs Amazon opens this week over dark patterns - design tricks that make you accidentally subscribe and struggle to cancel. "The question is when design crosses the line where a reasonable consumer doesn't have a fair shot of understanding what's going on" says @andreamm.bsky.social bit.ly/4mvJV2f

the cast of Hackers (1995) posing in a series of adjacent phone booths

Today is the 30th anniversary of Hackers

A line chart showing that 38% of webpages from 2013 were no longer accessible one decade later.

LINK ROT: 38% webpages that existed in 2013 were no longer available 10 years later.

Even among pages that existed in 2021, 22% no longer accessible just two years later. This is often because individual page was deleted or removed on otherwise functional website.

Many implications for knowledge 🧪

Sounds like maybe someone watched Battlestar Galactica one too many times...

Indirectly maybe. Specifics of particular training/use are highly relevant. We're in unsettled, fact intensive territory. Note: Some caselaw may evolve not only in copyright but also contract law and maybe even computer intrusion, depending on how data was gathered, prior legal exchanges, use etc.

WEB'S END IN THE BEGINNING, THERE WERE WEBSITES. YOU VISITED THEM AND IT WAS FUN. Computer screen: Jill's Homepage LINKS AND STUMBLEUPON HELPED YOU FIND NEW ONES. Computer screen: Cheese Art GOOGLE ACTUALLY WORKED AND SENT YOU TO SITES BUILT WITH CARE BY REAL PEOPLE. Computer screen: Lovable Expert THEN CAME SOCIAL MEDIA, AND ITS ALGORITHMS DETERMINED WHAT YOU CLICKED. Computer screen: Facebook THEN AGGREGATOR SITES TOOK OFF. Computer screen: CRAP FROM AROUND THE WEB THEN SOCIAL MEDIA COMPANIES TRIED TO KEEP US FROM EVER LEAVING… AND WE DIDN'T. Woman on phone: SCROLL SCROLL SCROLL THEN AI BEGAN GENERATING SUMMARIES SO YOU DIDN'T NEED TO CLICK THROUGH TO A SITE ANYMORE. Computer screen: MONOPOSEARCH Summary SOON... THE AI CHATBOT BECOMES THE ONLY SOURCE OF INFORMATION AND REAL PUBLICATIONS DISAPPEAR. Woman speaking to phone: CHATBOT, WHAT IS A WEBSITE? UNTIL ONE DAY, PEOPLE WALK AWAY AND BUILD SOMETHING NEW. Woman has left devices on the ground and is walking into sunset © 2025 Jen Sorensen

This week's comic, inspired by a study showing that AI summaries on top of search results are dramatically cutting traffic to websites.

YouTube video by Dj.CLASSIKLRN THAMIXX Chicago Bears Shufflin' Crew - The Super Bowl Shuffle 1985

Here's the original for comparison purposes: www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooT_...

YouTube video by CompaqVet PaqRap - Compaq VPs, 1990

Have you ever said to yourself "Gee, I wonder what it would have sounded like if an early management team at Compaq had performed a version of the 1985 Chicago Bears Superbowl Shuffle?" If so... www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB6M...

There are solid use cases for AI. But they’re not the flashy gen AI apps that get investors excited.

Incredible new privacy risk: Redditor recounts doing a job interview over Zoom with an AI notetaker on the call (Fathom). After the applicant left the call, the interviewers stayed on to discuss/bash her. She then got their post-call remarks in the AI summary. www.reddit.com/r/interviews...

1. The pro hac vice status of Counsel shall be revoked and Counsel will be removed from this case; 2. Plaintiff’s Opening Brief shall be stricken; 3. Counsel will be ordered to promptly serve a copy of this Order on Plaintiff, who will in turn be afforded time to engage new counsel or proceed as a selfrepresented litigant; 4. Counsel will be ordered to write a letter to the three Judges to whom she attributed fictitious cases, Hon. Douglas L. Rayes, Hon. Michael T. Liburdi, and Hon. John Z. Boyle, notifying them of her use of fake cases with their respective names attached; 5. Counsel will be ordered to transmit a copy of this Order to every Judge who presides over any case in which Counsel is attorney of record; and 6. The Clerk of Court’s Office will be directed to serve a copy of this Order on the Washington State Bar Association, of which Counsel is a member.7 If Counsel is a member of any other state’s bar, she shall serve a copy of this Order on that state’s bar office.

Yet another hallucinated citations case. Sanctions this time include:

* lawyer kicked off the case
* lawyer must notify all judges in the lawyer's other cases nationwide
* lawyer must write to judges who were falsely cited
* lawyer reported to state bar

www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/...

🤖😵

Stephanie Shirley, IT pioneer and philanthropist, 1933-2025 As founder of one of Britain’s pathfinding technology companies, she paved the way for women in the field

"Employed at the Post Office Research Station in London, which had the world’s first programmable computer... Tiring of the obstacles women faced, she set up her software company with an initial investment of £6." on.ft.com/3UsOi2J Stephanie Shirley, IT pioneer and philanthropist, 1933-2025

Endoscopist deskilling risk after exposure to artificial intelligence in colonoscopy: a multicentre, observational study Continuous exposure to AI might reduce the ADR of standard non-AI assisted colonoscopy, suggesting a negative effect on endoscopist behaviour.

"We found that routine exposure to AI in colonoscopy might reduce the [adenoma detection rate] of standard, non-AI assisted colonoscopy...suggest[ing that] AI exposure might have a negative impact on patient-relevant endpoints in medicine in general." www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Didn’t want to believe this was true. It’s true.

Now do DEFCON 33.

Vacancy — Postdoctoral Research Position in Human(e) AI The Research Priority Area in Human(e) AI at the University of Amsterdam currently has a vacant legal Postdoctoral Researcher position.  

📢 Vacancy alert: @ivir-uva.bsky.social is looking for a postdoc in the Human(e) AI Research Priority Area. Take a look at the details: https://bit.ly/3ItbqLu. Make sure you apply before 20 August! cc @natalihelberger.bsky.social #Vacancies #Jobs

Jury Says Tesla Was Partly to Blame for Fatal Crash

"A Florida jury on Friday found that flaws in Tesla’s self-driving software were partly to blame for a crash that killed a 22-year-old woman..The jury verdict...would require Tesla to pay as much as $243 million" www.nytimes.com/2025/08/01/b...

"Discussions about technology for its own sake, without considering its societal consequences, are impossible." CCC, April 6, 2025 www.ccc.de/en/club/unve...

6. After the Latham & Watkins team identified the source as potential additional support for Ms. Chen’s testimony, I asked Claude.ai to provide a properly formatted legal citation for that source using the link to the correct article. Unfortunately, although providing the correct publication title, publication year, and link to the provided source, the returned citation included an inaccurate title and incorrect authors. Our manual citation check did not catch that error. Our citation check also missed additional wording errors introduced in the citations during the formatting process using Claude.ai. These wording errors are: (1) that the correct title of the source in footnote 2 of Ms. Chen’s declaration is Computing Necessary Sample Size, not, as listed in footnote 2, Sample Size Estimation, and (2) the author/preparer of the third source cited in footnote 3 is “Windward Environmental LLC”, not “Lower Windward Environmental LLC.” Again, we apologize for these citation errors.

Oh, sweet merciful fire, two notes:

(1) Even Latham & Watkins, ya'll.

(2) The lawyer defending an AI company for using stolen IP to train their AI/LLM used the company's AI/LLM to cite check her brief, which hallucinated results.

fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldoc...

FBI issues warning about AI voice impersonations of US officials The FBI warned on Thursday that a malicious messaging campaign has been targeting government officials and their acquaintances by sending voice messages generated with artificial intelligence (AI) …

"FBI warned on Thursday that a malicious messaging campaign has been targeting government officials and their acquaintances by sending voice messages generated with artificial intelligence" thehill.com/regulation/n...

As Klarna flips from AI-first to hiring people again, a new landmark survey reveals most AI projects fail to deliver Just 1 in 4 AI investments bring in the ROI they promise—but CEOs just can’t resist the technology.

"After years of depicting Klarna as an AI-first company, the fintech’s CEO reversed himself, telling Bloomberg the company was once again recruiting humans after the AI approach led to 'lower quality.'" fortune.com/2025/05/09/k...

Government email alert system GovDelivery used to send scam messages | TechCrunch The state of Indiana attributed the scam emails to a compromised contractor's account.

"An email notification system used by U.S. federal and state government departments to alert residents to important information, has been used to send scam emails...Indiana said a contractor’s account was hacked and used to send the scam messages." techcrunch.com/2025/05/13/g...

Movie you’ve watched more than six times using gifs.

(“Hard mode” no Star Wars, Star Trek, or LOTR)

Exclusive: Anthropic warns fully AI employees are a year away Managing those AI identities will require companies to completely reassess their cybersecurity strategies.

I do wish it was better understood by now—especially by folks in the media—that these "warnings" from large AI corporations in fact function as "advertisements"

www.axios.com/2025/04/22/a...

Analysis | AI tools mostly fumble basic financial tasks, study finds The Washington Post’s essential guide to tech policy news.

"A test of 22 general-purpose AI models from OpenAI, Anthropic, x.AI, Meta, Google and other leading players in artificial intelligence found that all scored less than 50 percent accuracy, on average, for simple tasks required of entry-level financial analysts" www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...

An astronomy professor colleague of mine once relayed trying to explain to his students why it was important that they actually write their class reports themselves. “The point is not to teach ME about neutron stars,” he said.

Legal research is hard, kids.

Russians Capture Ukrainian Drones Which Infect Their Systems With Malware A recent video posted to social media suggests that Ukrainian drones are now carrying various malware that is targeting Russian systems.

Something very Battlestar Galactica about this headline.

How People Are Really Using Gen AI in 2025 Last year, HBR published a piece on how people are using gen AI. Much has happened over the past 12 months. We now have Custom GPTs—AI tailored for narrower sets of requirements. New kids are on the b...

In 2025 top 3 uses of GenAI are: therapy/companionship, organising life, and finding purpose. I think something has gone pretty badly wrong here.

hbr.org/2025/04/how-...