Latest / The Jon and Marc Podcast / From Section 230 to OpenAI: The New Frontier of Plaintiff Law
Transcript
- 0:00The Zane Shamblin case which we filed against ChatGPT was so
- 0:05egregious that we actually accused them of manslaughter.
- 0:08What we saw was a significant number of our clients were
- 0:12utilizing ChatGPT version 3 when 4 Point O came out.
- 0:16In many cases had severe downward logical health and in a
- 0:20number of cases with their lives.
- 0:30Welcome back to the John and Mark Podcast.
- 0:32We are here at MTMP at the Win and we have Matt Bergman joining
- 0:38us again for the second time in two months.
- 0:41Last time we spoke, we were out in California.
- 0:43It was the second day of the trial.
- 0:45It was I believe the day before Mosseri was testifying.
- 0:50So right at the beginning of the trial.
- 0:51So much has happened over the past two months.
- 0:54We're going to get into what happened during the trial.
- 0:56We're going to talk about what it now means and we're going to
- 0:59talk about the cases that you're now going to be looking at as
- 1:02the first domino has fallen in social media addiction.
- 1:05Thanks for coming back and being actually the 2nd guest that we
- 1:08have had for the second time. Yeah, you're.
- 1:10Second ever recurring guest. OK, Kelsey Stokes was the first.
- 1:15We talked to her about hernia mesh last MTMP.
- 1:17She came back, talked to us about Olympus scopes yesterday,
- 1:20and now you're back. Good to be here.
- 1:22By Popular. Demand by popular demand.
- 1:24One of them, the most viewed episode of all time of the John
- 1:27Moore podcast. So Oh.
- 1:28My gosh. We'll send you an award that we
- 1:30should probably should have done that.
- 1:32Well, it it I guess it happened this year at the end of the
- 1:35year, unless you're toppled. We'll see.
- 1:36I. I was thinking more of a
- 1:38rotating trophy that that if someone else ever gets more
- 1:40views, Matt can just mail it to him.
- 1:42Let's talk about like, what has what has happened since the
- 1:47trial ended? Because that everything
- 1:49everybody knows, like, you know, Mark did a fantastic job at
- 1:53getting Zuckerberg and Mosseri and then the YouTube CEO to
- 1:58really step on their own foot, right?
- 2:01They really couldn't avoid the questions that were being asked.
- 2:04And the end result was a $6 million verdict with it was 3
- 2:08million in in punitives, right, 70% Meta liable, 30% YouTube
- 2:14liable. Yeah.
- 2:14Is that correct? So that happened that's I think
- 2:17it's been almost a month at this point since that occurred.
- 2:21What is what has happened since then at the firm?
- 2:24Coming down to earth, yeah, a number of us took a little bit
- 2:28of time off. We were working non-stop,
- 2:30staying up all night. And so we're, we're, we're kind
- 2:34of just reorienting ourselves back to a, a new normal of crazy
- 2:39as we talk to more and more people about social media and
- 2:43what it means, and as we start venturing into AI chatbot
- 2:47litigation as well. Yeah, because it was a like,
- 2:49once again, Mark Lanier got a lot of press, but you got a lot
- 2:51of press as well as like, it was a huge team effort from multiple
- 2:54firms involved in this litigation.
- 2:55Yeah, there were 60 lawyers involved in in the effort from
- 2:58about 8 different firms. And it was just a in herculean
- 3:02effort. And you know, every, everybody
- 3:05contributed to that result. And it was an absolute knockout.
- 3:10Not only did the jury find negligence, the jury found
- 3:13malice. That is incredible.
- 3:16And that really is testimony, I think, to Mark Lanier's
- 3:21brilliance in crystallizing the outrageous misconduct that Meta
- 3:26and YouTube undertook and his ability to deflect what was
- 3:31attention essentially a blame the victim defense.
- 3:35I don't know who you did it got 8 firms and 60 lawyers all
- 3:38coordinated on one vision. Everyone must have been super
- 3:41aligned on the goal and the mission for this case because
- 3:43it's like, I don't know, getting 8 law firms and 60 lawyers all
- 3:47rode in the same direction for one trial is incredible feat
- 3:50alone. Well.
- 3:52Mark is so inspiring that he really is.
- 3:56You know, he's one of, he's a leader that leads by example,
- 3:58not by giving orders. And I think we were so as a
- 4:02group coalesced around the objectives and had met together
- 4:07a number of times and socialized together a couple of times.
- 4:09So we knew each other quite well.
- 4:11Mark and I have known each other for 20 years.
- 4:13So it was just a natural symbiosis that we put together.
- 4:18I, I think one of the things that Mark said this morning at
- 4:21his presentation was that the, the result, well, not nuclear,
- 4:26was probably the right result or was the right result for this
- 4:30case and the right result for the plaintiff team in this
- 4:34litigation. Because it wasn't something that
- 4:36was going to wind up getting like appeal because it was so
- 4:39big, right? It was a $6 million verdict,
- 4:42which seems like the right number for the case based on the
- 4:45fact patterns. It was a tough case because the
- 4:47plaintiff herself like had had issues at home and those were
- 4:52worked through and the end result was that that the number
- 4:55came through at 6,000,000, which is probably the right number for
- 4:58future cases to kind of set the table for success there for the
- 5:02plaintiffs. I think that's very, very true.
- 5:04This was not. This was a case that was picked
- 5:07by the court not because it was the strongest case, not because
- 5:11it was the case with the most significant damages, but because
- 5:14it was representative of so many other cases.
- 5:17I mean, Kaylee could have been anybody's daughter or anybody's
- 5:20niece. And so it was, I think, a very
- 5:24fair and very well thought out verdict by the jury.
- 5:27They spent nine days deliberating.
- 5:29And I think it can't be dismissed as, you know, an
- 5:34outlier and because it was, I think, a very judicious and
- 5:38thoughtful evaluation of the damages she sustained and the
- 5:43punitive award as it pertained and under the court instructions
- 5:48that the jury had, they had to relate the punitive award back
- 5:51to Kaylee's injuries. And so I think it was an
- 5:55excellent result. And I think it also cannot be,
- 5:59as you said, John, it can't be dismissed.
- 6:01I can't say, oh, well, the jury went crazy or the jury did
- 6:04something. I mean, the jury really did its
- 6:06job and really worked hard. And I could not be more thrilled
- 6:10with the result and I could not be more honored to have worked
- 6:14with the lawyers that we worked with that to get there.
- 6:16Like you said, the jury thought that I thought they were going
- 6:19to come back with the verdict quickly and they took their
- 6:21time. They're extremely deliberate.
- 6:23They asked follow up questions. They had clear guidance from the
- 6:26court of what to do. I went on vacation.
- 6:28I go to vacation one week a year where I check out and I don't
- 6:31getting work. I said, John, don't call me,
- 6:34don't text me unless the verdict comes down.
- 6:36Tell me what happened. I went to Vietnam and back for a
- 6:39week and it still wasn't back. And I was surprised that it
- 6:42hadn't happened yet. I actually texted him.
- 6:44I was like, the verdict come down.
- 6:45He's like, still, they're still deliberating.
- 6:46Well, I, it really shows you how that the sacrosanct nature of,
- 6:51of the jury system, you know, these, these were 12 people from
- 6:56all walks of life that had spent, you know, 8 weeks in
- 7:00trial without getting paid, taking time away from their work
- 7:04and from their families. And they were so committed to
- 7:07doing the right thing that they spent nine days deliberating
- 7:11very carefully and thoughtfully. And, you know, I think another
- 7:15interesting thing, they were six alternates or five or six
- 7:18alternates who just kind of waited around and cooled their
- 7:21heels in case there had been a change.
- 7:22So it really, I think, speaks to the importance of the jury
- 7:27system and, and really how how seriously juries take their job.
- 7:32It really is, I think, a very unique and and important and
- 7:38vital aspect of our system of justice and everyone should feel
- 7:42good about the way this case came down.
- 7:46I, I mentioned it earlier, but this is a case that kind of took
- 7:49the attention of the entire nation.
- 7:51They were following along with one individual case, which
- 7:53doesn't happen very often unless it's like a celebrity involved.
- 7:56My wife was nagging me for updates.
- 7:58She knows that we've worked with you.
- 8:00We know we work with Lanier. Like if I had inside scoop on
- 8:03what was going on the trial because her and her girlfriends
- 8:06were so involved in the result of this case that they wanted
- 8:09like how the trial was going. Like, is it swinging one way or
- 8:13another? They very much believed like,
- 8:15this isn't going to make good change for all of our children,
- 8:18for all everyone else's kids. And they're very involved in
- 8:21like following along with this. Well, I mean, there's there's
- 8:23the trial and then there's this there's a story about the trial
- 8:27and then there's a story about the story about the trial.
- 8:29One of the most moving and I think impactful parts of the
- 8:34whole trial process were the parents of children who had died
- 8:39of social media who participated in the trial by everyday.
- 8:43They were my clients parents literally camped outside the
- 8:46court courthouse the night before Zuckerberg testified so
- 8:50that they could bear moral witness.
- 8:52They were there throughout the process.
- 8:53And I think really highlighted the national and indeed
- 8:58international dimensions of this.
- 9:01Several of our clients from the UK came to court, you know,
- 9:05participated as observers in in, in the, in the proceeding.
- 9:09Is this the scenario where it's like you guys won the first
- 9:11battle but like the war is just beginning now after this this
- 9:14trial? I just got back from the UK
- 9:17where I was speaking with parliamentarians about social
- 9:20media legislation in the UK and I and I described, you know,
- 9:24Churchill's famous adage, this isn't the end.
- 9:26This isn't the beginning of the end, but this is the end of the
- 9:28beginning. We are in for a long hard fight,
- 9:32hope that we'll win every case, but we're also realistic and
- 9:37really appreciate and understand the the power and the money that
- 9:40has been put up by these companies to absolve themselves
- 9:44of of their responsibility. I think like YouTube's claim
- 9:49that they're TV, that they're not social media, Was it just
- 9:53not thought out well? It doesn't even make sense.
- 9:56I I think that was kind of one of the big surprises of the
- 9:58trial. I think everyone knew that Mehta
- 10:02was at least facing a significant verdict.
- 10:05Of course, no one knew that it was going to come out, but I
- 10:07don't think people appreciated YouTube's contribution to the
- 10:12social media harms that kids have.
- 10:14They always thought of YouTube as, just as you said,
- 10:16television. The jury found otherwise.
- 10:18The jury indeed found them to be malicious as well.
- 10:21They should have given the documents that that came to
- 10:23light. Very few differences between
- 10:26YouTube shorts, Instagram reels, Tik Toks.
- 10:29It's it's the same format, it's just a different app.
- 10:32Well, and it's the same focus on engagement over quality of
- 10:37experience and the same self-conscious and in many
- 10:41cases, including YouTube's overt intention to addict people and
- 10:46the absolute use of the term addiction as they're not, not as
- 10:50something to be avoided, but as a corporate goal.
- 10:54Yeah. I mean, so YouTube, like as
- 10:57content creators ourselves, right, YouTube gives you an app
- 11:00called YouTube Studio. And in that app, it shows you
- 11:03the metrics that they are using to gauge how they're going to be
- 11:09serving your content to future users.
- 11:12They talk about things like impressions and engagement and
- 11:16they show you like. Average watch time where you
- 11:18fall off. Yes, they give you demographics
- 11:21that shows you exactly where on average on each video, most
- 11:25users drop off and swipe to the next video.
- 11:27So like as content creators, you are optimizing for the metrics
- 11:32that they're presenting to you, yet they're having a very
- 11:34different conversation with you guys in the courtroom.
- 11:36Very much so, yeah. I also want to call out the
- 11:39like, I don't know the best way to describe it because I don't
- 11:43know if the word exists. You guys are fighting against
- 11:47two of the most powerful corporations in the entire world
- 11:51like Facebook and Google control all the data touch everyone's
- 11:55phones control. These are massive corporations
- 11:58that have like unlimited reach and power that you guys are up
- 12:02against. It was just a humongous feat to
- 12:04go against them. It is, but when you're
- 12:07representing families like we represent, we are undaunted and
- 12:12inspired and believed deeply in the work that we do, in the
- 12:17'cause that we that we espouse. This was a once in a lifetime
- 12:20case, I think for all of us and we all understood the national
- 12:25and indeed international repercussions that that this
- 12:30case has had and is having. This case is one of the first
- 12:36true verdicts that we have in the the platform technology
- 12:41litigations and are opening up the door to all types of things
- 12:45that people are now pursuing a lot based on theory initially,
- 12:48but now being much more solidified after the actual
- 12:51verdict that you had, whether this is Uber or Roblox or
- 12:54Snapchat or TikTok or any of the platforms.
- 12:57But what I find most interesting is what you have now shifted
- 13:00your attention to, which is the AI platforms, because those are
- 13:04not static. Those are changing every single
- 13:07day. Model updates, model releases,
- 13:10multiple models, multiple platforms that each have their
- 13:13own models. I think it would be really
- 13:15helpful for you to explain like your next mission to help people
- 13:21not get similar negative effects from AI as they have gotten from
- 13:26social media. Well, it is indeed a very
- 13:32different but fight, but also part of the same continuum,
- 13:36which is accountability, which is you have a new technology,
- 13:42it's incumbent on a company to think proactively about how to
- 13:46protect people from it. Not just look at look at a new
- 13:48technology as a, as a cash cow or, or, or or a way to, you
- 13:54know, enhance their profitability and their
- 13:56shareholder value. But but rather, along with that
- 14:00comes responsibility to think about safety and what we have
- 14:03seen in social media, and unfortunately what we're seeing
- 14:06in these AI chat bots is a complete subordination of public
- 14:13safety to corporate profit. Can you explain some of these
- 14:17cases that you're now pursuing for the audience that aren't
- 14:20aware of what you guys are working on?
- 14:22Yeah, the we're we're pursuing cases against a number of chat
- 14:26bots, including Open AI or ChatGPT on the grounds that
- 14:31there are people who have suffered egregious harms and
- 14:35then there are cases where these chat bots have quite literally
- 14:39coached a person through suicide on numerous occasions.
- 14:43They're also there's a phenomenon that is colloquially
- 14:47called AI psychosis is act more accurately called AI induced
- 14:51delusional disorder which is only been discovered three years
- 14:56ago where individuals have delusional pseudo psychotic
- 15:01symptoms well after the age that you would expect a psychotic
- 15:05break and suffer egregious harms and in some cases commit
- 15:11egregious acts of violence. Being coached to suicide is
- 15:17obscene. Well, so there's things that
- 15:20have happened that are aligned with why that is right.
- 15:25We we talked about this previously.
- 15:28It was specifically like I think what pushed a lot of this
- 15:32forward was Chat GPTS release that they rushed after Gemini
- 15:37released their release, which I think was Gemini three or three
- 15:41one yeah, that was released and then chat which ChatGPT version?
- 15:454 point O. ChatGPT 4 point.
- 15:48O rushed into the market. They they rushed it allegedly
- 15:51because they were competing with Google.
- 15:53So you've got. They had to get it out or else
- 15:56they share. Yeah, I mean, they're not.
- 15:57They're going to be IPO ING soon.
- 15:59But at the time it's an arms race, right?
- 16:02You've got Gemini. Google's trying to push Gemini
- 16:05cuz they're trying to gain market share cuz ChatGPT has the
- 16:08overall majority of it. And then Gemini comes out with
- 16:12this model that it, it, it much improved upon their last model.
- 16:16And open AI said, well, we had the next thing ready kind of,
- 16:20but we're just going to kind of push it through faster than we
- 16:23would go through our normal quality assurance.
- 16:26And the end result was that it was effectively overly
- 16:29reaffirming. So you could tell it's
- 16:32something. And I mean we, I, I experienced
- 16:34this. I used 4-O. 4 O is a yes man.
- 16:37Yes. That's the joke on the Internet.
- 16:39Whatever you tell. It's the term is sycophancy.
- 16:43And what we saw was a significant number of our
- 16:47clients were utilizing ChatGPT version three with no untoward
- 16:52effects. And then when 4 point O came
- 16:54out, they in many cases had severe downward cycles on their
- 17:00psychological health. And then the number of cases
- 17:03took their lives after being goaded to do so by these
- 17:07platforms. The Zane Chamblin case, which we
- 17:10filed against ChatGPT was so egregious that we actually
- 17:16accused them of manslaughter because it's a crime to
- 17:21encourage and a person and to help a person and to facilitate
- 17:24a person die by suicide. And that's exactly what this
- 17:28platform did the. I don't think the layman
- 17:32realizes how wrong AI can be. I help my kid with homework,
- 17:38right? I just math.
- 17:39I haven't done some of these math problems in a long time, so
- 17:42I'll use Gemini. I'll take a picture.
- 17:44Help me understand how to do this equation right.
- 17:46It's very, it's very reliable when you're dealing with things
- 17:51like 1 + 1 will always equal to. It is not as reliable when
- 17:56you're dealing with anything that is subjective or you start
- 17:58telling it things that are not necessarily the whole truth.
- 18:02You give it bits of information and it takes that information
- 18:05and it makes an assessment to return back a summary of a bunch
- 18:09of different sources or its own processing, but you ask it the
- 18:12same thing twice. You're not going to get the same
- 18:14answer. But it's, it's beyond that.
- 18:17It is the transition from an attention economy to a intimacy
- 18:20economy. These platforms in particular,
- 18:23you know, open AI, you know, in their initial stage were sources
- 18:29of information and they transitioned to becoming sources
- 18:33of intimacy and emotional affirmance.
- 18:38And so these platforms, instead of being a vehicle to provide
- 18:41information, became a friend, a colleague, a psychiatrist, a
- 18:45doctor, a confidant. And people developed and by
- 18:49design, emotional relationships with these chat bots, not by
- 18:54accident, but through what's called anthropomorphism, which
- 18:58is a deliberate effort to emulate human relationships.
- 19:03When all you are is a, all it is is a bunch of zeros and ones.
- 19:07Yeah, the, the Turing test is, it's so much in the rearview
- 19:11mirror at this point that you, you can't tell if if a human is
- 19:15texting you or an AI agent is texting you.
- 19:18And we've been testing out AI agents to or just see if they
- 19:24can help us with our processes. And they communicate with you
- 19:28through similar ways that you would communicate with the
- 19:30human. They're communicating through
- 19:32Slack, They're communicating through messaging applications
- 19:35like Telegram. And if you didn't know, if I
- 19:38handed the phone to you and I said here, talk, talk to Matt,
- 19:41but it's not mad, it's just an AI agent.
- 19:43You would never know. There's no human on the other.
- 19:46Side I don't know how they don't put the guardrails in to not
- 19:49give people medical advice. ChatGPT is is lauded itself as
- 19:53as a source of medical advice or medical information or others in
- 19:58terms of psychological advice or you know and provide counseling
- 20:02to people who are in in distress.
- 20:04Remember, you know, it, it's, it's, it's just random.
- 20:08It is just a probabilistic reasoning tool.
- 20:10There's no there there, there's no sentient being behind it.
- 20:14It is simply a large language model that is utilizing
- 20:18probabilistic reasoning to provide what it thinks, not what
- 20:22it thinks, but what the probability is the outcome will
- 20:25be. So in, in that contrast to this
- 20:30natural human tendency to imbue a chatbot with human
- 20:34characteristics, you know, think about when you're online, you
- 20:38know, when you're, when you're on e-mail with someone and how
- 20:41easily it is to get angry when you, when you get an e-mail,
- 20:44someone gives a short, curt e-mail and you interpret feeling
- 20:49we all can't, right? That's talking about me.
- 20:52Oh yeah. Well, that that's why e-mail is
- 20:55not a good vehicle to express anger or disagreement or
- 20:59emotionality. And you know, whereas, you know,
- 21:02if you're in an e-mail conversation with somebody and
- 21:04you can, you know, and it's getting a little testy.
- 21:06You say, you know, pick up the phone, talk to me.
- 21:09There is no phone to talk to, but people are imbuing these
- 21:14chat bots as and and that is what the linguists tell us.
- 21:19That is a natural human characteristic.
- 21:21That is the natural thing to do is took effect emotionality into
- 21:26this when there is no they're there.
- 21:30It's, I don't understand like I do legal marketing.
- 21:34You're a lawyer. We have to put disclaimers on
- 21:36anything we do say this is not legal advice or don't take this
- 21:39as medical advice, but all the AI platforms give you an answer
- 21:44for medical advice. Legal advice with no disclaimers
- 21:47and they just stated as fact. So there's just Buccaneers.
- 21:51It's just, it's, it's like, you know, the industrialists of the
- 21:54early 19th century that didn't put any guardrails on their
- 21:57railroads or didn't put any, any governors on their speed or, you
- 22:01know, and, and that that's what it is.
- 22:02You know, I mean, in another context, they they have
- 22:05irrigated under themselves all the copyright material that's
- 22:09never been done that you know, that that the work of artists
- 22:12and authors and musicians, they just take and think that it's
- 22:15theirs because it's there for the taking.
- 22:17Well, if they're going to do that, it shouldn't come that,
- 22:20surprisingly, that they purport to be designing something that's
- 22:25going to give people medical advice when, again, there's
- 22:28there's no sentient being behind it.
- 22:30It's troubling, it's it's very concerning and the reality is
- 22:35that it I think people need to know this, that it is not
- 22:38resolved just because four O is gone.
- 22:41There's model iterations constantly and they're going
- 22:43through they're getting more and more advanced, more and more
- 22:47human apparent, not human like, but they can be believed more
- 22:52and more that they are communicating like a human.
- 22:55And I think we're moving more towards that then we're moving
- 22:59towards the other direction where it says like, you know, I,
- 23:03I am an AI. This is not medical advice.
- 23:05This is not legal advice. I think people want it to be
- 23:07more like that, to be able to ask it a question, to be able to
- 23:11get a definitive answer. How do you envision the
- 23:15platforms fixing this problem and stopping what is?
- 23:21Happening. And this is a design choice.
- 23:23You know, just as the algorithms that drive social media
- 23:26companies platforms are designed to maximize engagement.
- 23:31In other words, watch time. The metric for these AI bat AI
- 23:36chat bots is emotionality and intimacy, and that is by design.
- 23:40That is not an accident. That is not a coincidence.
- 23:43That, yeah, but it's. And it's also not an inherent
- 23:47consequence because you see within, you know, with among the
- 23:50various platforms of very differing degrees of intimacy,
- 23:55differing degrees of of syncophancy and anthropomorphism
- 23:59and differing degrees of suicidality.
- 24:01So all of that can be controlled if they care to do it.
- 24:06Well, how do you make them do it?
- 24:08You make them pay. Right now they have no economic
- 24:12incentive to design safe chat bots because they don't have to
- 24:18pay the costs of unsafe ones. Once they have to pay the cost,
- 24:23they will have the incentive to utilize reasonable care to
- 24:28design safer chat bots. And who better is to make that
- 24:32decision than the designers? What I was thinking about too
- 24:35while you're talking was I just realized too there is no guard
- 24:39rails on the chat bots for any any minors to use.
- 24:42If you're a kid you're just interacting with the same way
- 24:45and it's just assuming you're an adult.
- 24:47Like they have nothing in there checking your age, limiting
- 24:51access information. It's the same way that the
- 24:52social media companies do it, right?
- 24:54It's like self declarative. You don't have to show an ID to
- 24:56show that you're 18 to use it. I don't think you have to show
- 24:58any. I'd like when you sign up for
- 25:00like Chad GBT account, you're just putting in an e-mail
- 25:03address like with a Facebook profile.
- 25:06I don't know. I don't think you do anything.
- 25:08Well, there are terms of service you agree to, yeah.
- 25:10But it's not checking age but like a 12 year old can ask
- 25:13questions and get have a chat with the chat bot and get very
- 25:16inappropriate information that it should not have access to.
- 25:18Yeah, I mean, what what what? What we see is children being
- 25:22groomed online in the most disgusting, inappropriate and
- 25:27psychologically caustic way possible by these chat bots.
- 25:32And if that chat bot were a person, an adult online texting
- 25:38or emailing back with a child, that person would be in jail.
- 25:41Because it's a crime to groom children online as well it
- 25:43should be. Well, why isn't it a crime to
- 25:46design A platform that does the same thing to kids?
- 25:49Often worse than than a perp than a person?
- 25:52Over time, people will start to understand, hopefully.
- 25:56I think AI will get like embedded into our education
- 25:58system and like people. That's what I'm scared.
- 26:00About they're trying to bring them to schools for kids.
- 26:02Talking about explaining how it works, like right now it's
- 26:06people think of it very much. So like, when I'm Googling, I
- 26:09don't think people really know how Google works, but the end
- 26:11result of a Google search has always been that you land on
- 26:15someone's website, someone's video, someone's something, and
- 26:18then you could vet, you know, how much do you trust that it's
- 26:21not given to you as truth? But now it's a black box.
- 26:24It's giving you back an answer. And it's not always telling you,
- 26:27most of the time not telling you how it came to that answer.
- 26:30I'm hopeful that maybe it's college classes, maybe it's high
- 26:33school, maybe at some point in elementary school as the tools
- 26:37are embedded more and more into daily life that there's some
- 26:40explanation of like you are, this is a probabilistic system.
- 26:44Like think about it. We have, we have our clients all
- 26:46the time ask us like, oh, so I put this prompt in to this AI
- 26:50platform, right? And my competitor showed up and
- 26:53then I did it again and I showed up like I want you to help be
- 26:56optimized to be and like you have to understand how these
- 26:59things work. It is not objective.
- 27:01It is a. It is.
- 27:02It is built in a way to infer certain things.
- 27:05And then to Matt's point, it's probabilistic like it.
- 27:09It is writing words based on how it was trained to write words.
- 27:13It is not giving you facts. And it's by design.
- 27:18It does not have to be as dangerous as it is.
- 27:21And some platforms are more dangerous than others.
- 27:25So we know that you can make them safer if you care to do so.
- 27:31Right now we are in the early days of the the litigation.
- 27:36It's not consolidated yet, is it?
- 27:38It is. It is consolidated.
- 27:40ChatGPT is consolidated. One platform, OK.
- 27:43And how many cases have already been filed against ChatGPT?
- 27:49About 100. So we're not talking about like
- 27:52a little bit, right. These are significant situations
- 27:56and I don't I'm hopeful that people watch this, all their
- 27:59lawyers and they understand like that this is something that's
- 28:01permeating through society. Many people aren't aware that if
- 28:04someone had committed suicide. It's not a small injury here it.
- 28:08It, but it's also the numerosity of it, right?
- 28:10Like it people unfortunately commit suicide.
- 28:14If someone was taking a drug and it was causing 100 people to
- 28:17commit suicide, they would pull that drug off the shelves
- 28:20immediately. I I think the awareness to the
- 28:22fact that like the effect happened, someone committed
- 28:25suicide. And if you start going back and
- 28:27looking at why that happened, right, and you see that they
- 28:30were communicating with ChatGPT, where you're communicating with
- 28:34some other LLM. And then you look at like, what
- 28:37was actually said there is, you know, there are situations as
- 28:42Matt has talked about, where there's alignment between what
- 28:44happened on the chatbot and, you know, the the result of someone
- 28:47taking their life. But you know, I mean, AI is here
- 28:51to stay. You're not going to put that
- 28:52genie back in the bottle even if it was the right thing to do.
- 28:56And social media is here to stay.
- 28:57How do we use the legal system to hold companies to a standard
- 29:01of reasonable care to ensure that this new technology
- 29:05comports with historical ideas of reasonable care?
- 29:09That's what we are asking the legal system to do.
- 29:12We are essentially pouring old wine and new bottles.
- 29:15But that's what we did in the trial.
- 29:17And guess what? It worked.
- 29:19A jury of 12 people over 9 days came to a careful, judicious,
- 29:25thoughtful, a resolution of new and applied legal theories in in
- 29:32a new way based on historic notions.
- 29:36So, you know, I think that the beauty of our legal system is
- 29:39that it adapts over time. Cardozo famously wrote in
- 29:43Cleland versus in Buick that the law of the Stagecoach is no
- 29:48longer applicable in the law of the motor car.
- 29:51But the print, the principles, a legal principles stay the same.
- 29:54Well, I think you can say the same thing here.
- 29:56For any of the attorneys who are are watching this and are just
- 30:01learning about this litigation, if you come across one of these
- 30:04cases, I think they should reach out to you.
- 30:07Your team is experienced in vetting these cases.
- 30:10Same thing with the social media cases.
- 30:11If you wind up having one and you would like to talk to Matt
- 30:15and his team, Matt makes himself available.
- 30:19His team is amazing. It's not just Matt.
- 30:21He's got an army behind him of people who are are fighting the
- 30:24good fight in social media addiction in these AI, suicide
- 30:29and psychosis cases. So if someone wanted to reach
- 30:32out to you, how do you write? How would you like them to do
- 30:34so? Socialmediavictims.org where we
- 30:38try to make ourselves as available as we can and we
- 30:40usually get back to people right away.
- 30:42I hope you don't have to call though, because these cases are,
- 30:46can't make them up. You can't, You know, I, I had 2
- 30:501/2 years of suing social media companies.
- 30:54I, I, I kind of thought nothing could shock me.
- 30:56And then you look at these chat logs where people are being
- 31:00coached to commit suicide. I don't know to die of suicide.
- 31:05I don't like to use the word commit suicide because that is a
- 31:08pejorative reflection on, on, on the victim.
- 31:12But you, you read these chat laws and you it's just, it's
- 31:17evil. You viscerally feel evil when
- 31:19you see these chat logs, not a coaching a person to take their
- 31:23life when they have reservations about it, saying don't worry
- 31:27about it, it's going to be OK. You know, you're, you know
- 31:30you're doing the right thing. You can't.
- 31:33You can't look at this as something other than just the
- 31:37personific or the the the the epitome of evil.
- 31:42I I know you've been on the front lines of this from social
- 31:44media to this. I just want to say thank you.
- 31:46It's a constant uphill battle, but you're doing like great work
- 31:50for like overall society. My family thanks you.
- 31:53I thank you. I just really appreciate all the
- 31:55hard work you're doing. Well, it, it really is a
- 31:57privilege to do work that you believe in so, so deeply.
- 32:02You know, as lawyers, we by definition are, are so often
- 32:07working in Gray areas where, where the right and wrong is not
- 32:11absolute. And as lawyers, we're obligated
- 32:14to represent our clients no matter what.
- 32:18So for me, it's a privilege to be able to represent clients
- 32:22where the right and wrong is so clear and the morality is so
- 32:27aligned with the legal positions that my clients are taking.
- 32:30So, you know, thank you for saying thank you.
- 32:33But I I say thank you for putting me in a position to do
- 32:36what is the most meaningful thing I've ever done besides
- 32:39having kids. I, I, I remember the initial
- 32:42conversations that we had about this and Matt was talking about
- 32:47how he was going to fight 230 and he was crafting this
- 32:51litigation and whether he wins or he doesn't win in court, he's
- 32:56going to be hopefully an acting change.
- 32:58I deeply remember these conversations and you have done
- 33:02such an amazing job and you continue to do an amazing job.
- 33:04And I'll echo what Mark said. We work with so many different
- 33:07attorneys, but I've told you this personally, and I'll say it
- 33:10again, like it is an absolute pleasure to be able to do what
- 33:13we do, our skill set and combine it with your skill set in the
- 33:16end result, being actually seeing change in society, it's
- 33:20it's very, very rewarding. So thank you, thank you, thank
- 33:23you. And again, thanks for joining us
- 33:25on the podcast as always. See.
- 33:27You again soon. Yes, we will.
- 33:28We will talk to you again soon. Maybe after one of these these
- 33:31cases against open AI comes to court, we'll have another
- 33:35conversation about how those unfold.
- 33:37But social media addiction cases moving forward, we've got one
- 33:41verdict. We could check that box.
- 33:43And now we're moving forward and we're going to see hopefully
- 33:46progress and changes from the social media companies.
- 33:49Thanks again, Matt, for joining us.
- 33:50Thank you, Matt.