New Jersey’s lieutenant governor, Dale Caldwell, has stepped down following an investigation that found he had sexually harassed a staff member and repeatedly breached ethics guidelines. The departure occurred on September 25th.
In the wake of his resignation, Caldwell has been engaging with the media in an effort to exonerate himself. During a recent interview on NJ PBS, he adopted a notable strategy by pointing to output from artificial intelligence tools as evidence supporting his claim that he was being unfairly targeted.
Caldwell told host Rob Nelson that he submitted the investigation report to several AI platforms. “I put it through AI,” he stated, noting that the systems responded to queries about potential findings with varying degrees of skepticism toward the allegations. He claimed the AI tools referenced his innocence multiple times during the exchange.
The incident highlights an increasing, albeit unusual, trend where public figures attempt to leverage algorithmic outputs as a form of defense against serious misconduct accusations.
This sets a scary precedent. Can lawyers start using LLMs to defend clients now? Where does this end?
Resigning then blaming AI sounds like a desperate last stand. Ethics violations are pretty clear-cut compared to algorithmic hallucinations.
I wonder if the AI was just mirroring the tone of the documents or if he fed it biased prompts to get desired answers.
Wait, he actually put an official harassment report into ChatGPT expecting it to clear his name? That’s baffling.
AI doesn’t know right from wrong. Using it as a legal defense is just absurd and concerning.