An expert witness in a deadly Houston explosion lawsuit was found to have used ChatGPT to draft his defense of 3M, the company he was hired to represent. The expert's prompts to the AI, revealed during the trial, show him asking ChatGPT to argue for 3M's zero percent fault and to create an expert witness report defending the company's standard of care. While the AI initially produced a draft stating 3M was 0% responsible, it later cautioned the expert against sounding like an advocate and assigning legal fault, noting that zero percent is a jury conclusion, not an engineering one. Despite this, the expert's use of the AI to pre-determine his conclusion was highlighted by plaintiffs' counsel. AI
IMPACT Highlights potential ethical and legal pitfalls of using AI tools to pre-determine conclusions in expert testimony.
RANK_REASON Article details the misuse of an AI tool (ChatGPT) in a legal context, specifically by an expert witness, rather than a core AI release or research.
- 3M
- ChatGPT
- Forbes
- Harris County
- Houston
- Josh Autenrieth
- Knighthawk Engineering
- U.S. Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board
- Watson Grinding and Manufacturing
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