\n<\/p>\n
An immigration barrister was found by a judge to be using AI to do his work for a tribunal hearing after citing cases that were \u201centirely fictitious\u201d or \u201cwholly irrelevant\u201d.<\/p>\n
Chowdhury Rahman was discovered using ChatGPT-like software to prepare his legal research, a tribunal heard. Rahman was found not only to have used AI to prepare his work, but \u201cfailed thereafter to undertake any proper checks on the accuracy\u201d.<\/p>\n
The upper tribunal judge Mark Blundell said Rahman had even tried to hide the fact he had used AI and \u201cwasted\u201d the tribunal\u2019s time. Blundell said he was considering reporting Rahman to the Bar Standards Board. The Guardian has contacted Rahman\u2019s firm for comment.<\/p>\n
The matter came to light in the case of two Honduran sisters who claimed asylum on the basis that they were being targeted by a criminal gang in their home country. Rahman represented the sisters, aged 29 and 35. The case escalated to the upper tribunal.<\/p>\n
Blundell rejected Rahman\u2019s arguments, adding that \u201cnothing said by Mr Rahman orally or in writing establishes an error of law on the part of the judge and the appeal must be dismissed\u201d.<\/p>\n
Then, in a rare ruling, Blundell went on to say in a postscript that there were \u201csignificant problems\u201d within the grounds of appeal put before him.<\/p>\n
He said that 12 authorities were cited in the paperwork by Rahman, but when he came to read the grounds, he noticed that \u201csome of those authorities did not exist and that others did not support the propositions of law for which they were cited in the grounds\u201d.<\/p>\n
In his judgment, he listed 10 of these cases and set out \u201cwhat was said by Mr Rahman about those actual or fictitious cases\u201d.<\/p>\n
Blundell said: \u201cMr Rahman appeared to know nothing about any of the authorities he had cited in the grounds of appeal he had supposedly settled in July this year. He had apparently not intended to take me to any of those decisions in his submissions.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of the decisions did not exist. Not one decision supported the proposition of law set out in the grounds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blundell said the submissions made by Rahman \u2013 who said he had used \u201cvarious websites\u201d to conduct his research \u2013 were therefore misleading.<\/p>\n
Blundell said: \u201cThe most obvious explanation is \u2026 that the grounds of appeal were drafted in whole or in part by generative artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am bound to observe that one of the cases cited in Mr Rahman\u2019s grounds \u2026 has recently been wrongly deployed by ChatGPT in support of similar arguments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rahman told the judge that the inaccuracies in the grounds were \u201cas a result of his drafting style\u201d and he accepted there might have been some \u201cconfusion and vagueness\u201d in his submissions.<\/p>\n
Blundell said: \u201cThe problems which I have detailed above are not matters of drafting style. The authorities which were cited in the grounds either did not exist or did not support the grounds of which were advanced.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added: \u201cIt is overwhelmingly likely, in my judgment, that Mr Rahman used generative artificial intelligence to formulate the grounds of appeal in this case, and that he attempted to hide that fact from me during the hearing.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven if Mr Rahman thought, for whatever reason, that these cases did somehow support the arguments he wished to make, he cannot explain the entirely fictitious citations.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn my judgment, the only realistic possibility is that Mr Rahman relied significantly on Gen AI to formulate the grounds and sought to disguise that fact when the difficulties were explored with him at the hearing.\u201d<\/p>\n
The judge\u2019s ruling was made in September and published on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
An immigration barrister was found by a judge to be using AI to do his work for a tribunal hearing after citing cases that were \u201centirely fictitious\u201d or \u201cwholly irrelevant\u201d. Chowdhury Rahman was discovered using ChatGPT-like software to prepare his legal research, a tribunal heard. Rahman was found not only to have used AI to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":28544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[1564,16958,3767,3318,16959,452,1443,478],"class_list":{"0":"post-28543","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-technology","8":"tag-artificial","9":"tag-barrister","10":"tag-cases","11":"tag-citing","12":"tag-fictitious","13":"tag-hearing","14":"tag-intelligence","15":"tag-prepare"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}