In the US criminal justice system, Sentencing happens after the Trial. A mistrial requires rules to be violated during the Trial.
Also, there were at least 3 people in that room that both have a Juris Doctor and know the Arizona Court Rules, one of them is representing the defendant. Not a single one of them had any objections about allowing this statement to be made.
AI should absolutely never be allowed in court. Defense is probably stoked about this because it’s obviously a mistrial. Judge should be reprimanded for allowing that shit
You didn’t read the article.
This isn’t grounds for a mistrial, the trial was already over. This happened during the sentencing phase. The defense didn’t object to the statements.
From the article:
Jessica Gattuso, the victim’s right attorney that worked with Pelkey’s family, told 404 Media that Arizona’s laws made the AI testimony possible. “We have a victim’s bill of rights,” she said. “[Victims] have the discretion to pick what format they’d like to give the statement. So I didn’t see any issues with the AI and there was no objection. I don’t believe anyone thought there was an issue with it.”
This is just weird uninformed nonsense.
The reason that outbursts, like gasping or crying, can cause a mistrial is because they can unfairly influence a jury and so the rules of evidence do not allow them. This isn’t part of trial, the jury has already reached a verdict.
Victim impact statements are not evidence and are not governed by the rules of evidence.
It’s ludicrous that this was allowed and honestly is grounds to disbar the judge. If he allows AI nonsense like this, then his courtroom can not be relied upon for fair trials.
More nonsense.
If you were correct, and there were actual legal grounds to object to these statements then the defense attorney could have objected to them.
Here’s an actual attorney. From the article:
Jessica Gattuso, the victim’s right attorney that worked with Pelkey’s family, told 404 Media that Arizona’s laws made the AI testimony possible. “We have a victim’s bill of rights,” she said. “[Victims] have the discretion to pick what format they’d like to give the statement. So I didn’t see any issues with the AI and there was no objection. I don’t believe anyone thought there was an issue with it.”
I would have gotten away with it if it were not for you kids!
This research is good, valuable and desperately needed. The uproar online is predictable and could possibly help bring attention to the issue of LLM-enabled bots manipulating social media.
This research isn’t what you should get mad it. It’s pretty common knowledge online that Reddit is dominated by bots. Advertising bots, scam bots, political bots, etc.
Intelligence services of nation states and political actors seeking power are all running these kind of influence operations on social media, using bot posters to dominate the conversations about the topics that they want. This is pretty common knowledge in social media spaces. Go to any politically charged topic on international affairs and you will notice that something seems off, it’s hard to say exactly what it is… but if you’ve been active online for a long time you can recognize that something seems wrong.
We’ve seen how effective this manipulation is on changing the public view (see: Cambridge Analytica, or if you don’t know what that is watch ‘The Great Hack’ documentary) and so it is only natural to wonder how much more effective online manipulation is now that bad actors can use LLMs.
This study is by a group of scientists who are trying to figure that out. The only difference is that they’re publishing their findings in order to inform the public. Whereas Russia isn’t doing us the same favors.
Naturally, it is in the interest of everyone using LLMs to manipulate the online conversation that this kind of research is never done. Having this information public could lead to reforms, regulations and effective counter strategies. It is no surprise that you see a bunch of social media ‘users’ creating a huge uproar.
Most of you, who don’t work in tech spaces, may not understand just how easy and cheap it is to set something like this up. For a few million dollars and a small staff you could essentially dominate a large multi-million subscriber subreddit with whatever opinion you wanted to push. Bots generate variations of the opinion that you want to push, the bot accounts (guided by humans) downvote everyone else out of the conversation and, in addition, moderation power can be seized, stolen or bought to further control the conversation.
Or, wholly fabricated subreddits can be created. A few months prior to the US election there were several new subreddits which were created and catapulted to popularity despite just being a bunch of bots reposting news. Now those subreddits are high in the /all and /popular feeds, despite their moderators and a huge portion of the users being bots.
We desperately need this kind of study to keep from drowning in a sea of fake people who will tirelessly work to convince you of all manner of nonsense.
Oh, you’re one of those