Misinformation


Dec. 7, 2024

The Expert's New Clothes: When Bullshit Meets Binary

Look, I’ve been staring at this story for three hours now, nursing my fourth bourbon, and I still can’t decide if it’s hilarious or terrifying. Probably both. Here’s the deal: some hotshot Stanford professor who literally makes his living talking about lies and misinformation just got caught using AI to make up fake citations in a legal testimony.

Let that sink in while I pour another drink.

Dr. Jeff Hancock, whose TED talk about lying has apparently hypnotized 1.5 million viewers (more on that depressing statistic later), decided to let ChatGPT help him with his homework. And surprise, surprise - the AI decided to get creative with the truth. The damn thing just made up a bunch of research papers that don’t exist.