On the merits, it wasn\u2019t close. But nobody is going to remember this decision<\/a> for the merits. They\u2019re going to remember it for this:<\/p>\n in addition to the errors discussed above, nine more citations that the Agency provides are entirely fictitious, eleven do not support the propositions for which they are cited, and ten have partially incorrect citations and do not support the propositions for which they are cited. Overall, twenty-two of the exceptions brief\u2019s twenty-nine footnotes \u2014 and thirty-five of the forty-two legal or record citations \u2014 are fictitious, erroneous, or irrelevant. Based on the nature and scope of these errors, it appears that the Agency may have used a generative artificial-intelligence (AI) tool in drafting its brief.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This is obviously a false accusation\u2026 the agency used a generative super-intelligence<\/a><\/em> tool. Rookie mistake by the FLRA! Case closed!<\/p>\n By way of comparison, the infamous Mata v. Avianca<\/em> filing<\/a> that launched a thousand CLEs had six fake cases. HHS cleared that with ten flatly fictitious citations by FedWeek\u2019s count<\/a>, then threw in another two dozen that don\u2019t say what HHS claims or are cited incorrectly. <\/p>\n So the brief is roughly 83 percent garbage by citation count. A genuine citation is an anomaly<\/em>. <\/p>\n The opinion offers polite language, noting that it \u201cappears\u201d the agency \u201cmay have\u201d used AI. Or the agency\u2019s lawyers may be incredibly dumb. Actually, now that I look at it, maybe the panel was right to hedge here.<\/p>\n While nothing prohibits parties from using AI tools when preparing filings for submission to the Authority, we caution those who do so to be aware that AI continues to present significant risks of error. Therefore, parties should take steps to verify the accuracy of any AI-generated material and ensure that their filings satisfy all regulatory requirements.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n When you review the actual caselaw, it\u2019s clear why a tool would reach for fantasy land to satisfy the prompt. The department\u2019s theory was that a presidential memo trumped a five-year collective bargaining agreement. HHS\u2019s top labor relations official testified, per GovExec<\/em><\/a>, that \u201cthe president is our chief.\u201d Which may be true, but not really responsive to the contractual agreements binding the agency. Even Trump\u2019s arbitrary return-to-office memo told agencies to implement it \u201cconsistent with applicable law,\u201d a begrudging nod to the existence of contractual barriers to his whims.<\/p>\n \u201cI guarantee you they\u2019re out on the ballfields,\u201d Trump said of remote workers. \u201cI guarantee you they\u2019re out playing golf. And you can\u2019t run a country or a company that way.\u201d At which point, Trump left the White House for a week of golfing at Mar-a-Lago.<\/p>\n This is also not a one-off for RFK Jr\u2019s flunkies. Last year\u2019s MAHA report cited studies that don\u2019t exist<\/a>, with \u201coaicite\u201d tags lurking in the URLs. The White House waved these off as \u201cformatting issues\u201d at the time. Last month, Judge Christopher Cooper enjoined HHS\u2019s teen pregnancy grant overhaul<\/a> after finding the solicitation leaned on studies that \u201cappear either not to exist or not to support the propositions\u201d \u2014 \u201ca hallmark of AI-generated citations.\u201d<\/p>\n AI hallucinations appear to be HHS\u2019s house style.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear if Robert F. Kennedy Jr involved himself in this legal battle personally, but it\u2019s fitting that these AI misadventures keep happening to his department. The anti-vaccine movement is, in many ways, the analog precursor to the rise of AI hallucinations. The \u201cdo your own research\u201d mantra was always about rejecting quality citations to rummage around for fake or misrepresented numbers to back up the movement\u2019s priors. Every time a study would confirm \u2014 again \u2014 that there\u2019s zero scientific data for MMR vaccines causing a gut disease that leads to autism, a little voice would sound off in their heads to say, \u201cno, you\u2019re right to push back, that data must be wrong.\u201d <\/p>\n Until now, that voice was a brain worm<\/a>. Now it\u2019s a large language model.<\/p>\n The administration\u2019s return-to-office crusade was sold as a necessity to guarantee accountability in government work. Looking at 35 bad citations out of 42, and you have to ask: where were the government lawyers working from?<\/p>\n The post Over 80 Percent Of Citations \u2018Fictitious, Erroneous, or Irrelevant\u2019 In Trump Admin Brief<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n MAHA might just stand for \u201cMake America Hallucinate Again.\u201d<\/p>\n The Department of Health and Human Services attempted to force its employees back to their desks by unilaterally rescinding existing flexible work agreements. The National Treasury Employees Union opposed the move on behalf of their members and, this week, the Federal Labor Relations Authority rejected every one of HHS\u2019s exceptions<\/a> to an earlier arbitration award ordering the department to unwind its return-to-office mandate. <\/p>\n On the merits, it wasn\u2019t close. But nobody is going to remember this decision<\/a> for the merits. They\u2019re going to remember it for this:<\/p>\n in addition to the errors discussed above, nine more citations that the Agency provides are entirely fictitious, eleven do not support the propositions for which they are cited, and ten have partially incorrect citations and do not support the propositions for which they are cited. Overall, twenty-two of the exceptions brief\u2019s twenty-nine footnotes \u2014 and thirty-five of the forty-two legal or record citations \u2014 are fictitious, erroneous, or irrelevant. Based on the nature and scope of these errors, it appears that the Agency may have used a generative artificial-intelligence (AI) tool in drafting its brief.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This is obviously a false accusation\u2026 the agency used a generative super-intelligence<\/a><\/em> tool. Rookie mistake by the FLRA! Case closed!<\/p>\n By way of comparison, the infamous Mata v. Avianca<\/em> filing<\/a> that launched a thousand CLEs had six fake cases. HHS cleared that with ten flatly fictitious citations by FedWeek\u2019s count<\/a>, then threw in another two dozen that don\u2019t say what HHS claims or are cited incorrectly. <\/p>\n So the brief is roughly 83 percent garbage by citation count. A genuine citation is an anomaly<\/em>. <\/p>\n The opinion offers polite language, noting that it \u201cappears\u201d the agency \u201cmay have\u201d used AI. Or the agency\u2019s lawyers may be incredibly dumb. Actually, now that I look at it, maybe the panel was right to hedge here.<\/p>\n While nothing prohibits parties from using AI tools when preparing filings for submission to the Authority, we caution those who do so to be aware that AI continues to present significant risks of error. Therefore, parties should take steps to verify the accuracy of any AI-generated material and ensure that their filings satisfy all regulatory requirements.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n When you review the actual caselaw, it\u2019s clear why a tool would reach for fantasy land to satisfy the prompt. The department\u2019s theory was that a presidential memo trumped a five-year collective bargaining agreement. HHS\u2019s top labor relations official testified, per GovExec<\/em><\/a>, that \u201cthe president is our chief.\u201d Which may be true, but not really responsive to the contractual agreements binding the agency. Even Trump\u2019s arbitrary return-to-office memo told agencies to implement it \u201cconsistent with applicable law,\u201d a begrudging nod to the existence of contractual barriers to his whims.<\/p>\n \u201cI guarantee you they\u2019re out on the ballfields,\u201d Trump said of remote workers. \u201cI guarantee you they\u2019re out playing golf. And you can\u2019t run a country or a company that way.\u201d At which point, Trump left the White House for a week of golfing at Mar-a-Lago.<\/p>\n This is also not a one-off for RFK Jr\u2019s flunkies. Last year\u2019s MAHA report cited studies that don\u2019t exist<\/a>, with \u201coaicite\u201d tags lurking in the URLs. The White House waved these off as \u201cformatting issues\u201d at the time. Last month, Judge Christopher Cooper enjoined HHS\u2019s teen pregnancy grant overhaul<\/a> after finding the solicitation leaned on studies that \u201cappear either not to exist or not to support the propositions\u201d \u2014 \u201ca hallmark of AI-generated citations.\u201d<\/p>\n AI hallucinations appear to be HHS\u2019s house style.<\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear if Robert F. Kennedy Jr involved himself in this legal battle personally, but it\u2019s fitting that these AI misadventures keep happening to his department. The anti-vaccine movement is, in many ways, the analog precursor to the rise of AI hallucinations. The \u201cdo your own research\u201d mantra was always about rejecting quality citations to rummage around for fake or misrepresented numbers to back up the movement\u2019s priors. Every time a study would confirm \u2014 again \u2014 that there\u2019s zero scientific data for MMR vaccines causing a gut disease that leads to autism, a little voice would sound off in their heads to say, \u201cno, you\u2019re right to push back, that data must be wrong.\u201d <\/p>\n Until now, that voice was a brain worm<\/a>. Now it\u2019s a large language model.<\/p>\n The administration\u2019s return-to-office crusade was sold as a necessity to guarantee accountability in government work. Looking at 35 bad citations out of 42, and you have to ask: where were the government lawyers working from?<\/p>\n The post Over 80 Percent Of Citations \u2018Fictitious, Erroneous, or Irrelevant\u2019 In Trump Admin Brief<\/a> appeared first on Above the Law<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" MAHA might just stand for \u201cMake America Hallucinate Again.\u201d The Department of Health and Human Services attempted to force its employees back to their desks by unilaterally rescinding existing flexible work agreements. The National Treasury Employees Union opposed the move on behalf of their members and, this week, the Federal Labor Relations Authority rejected every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":165878,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-166068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-above_the_law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=166068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/165878"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=166068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=166068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=166068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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Joe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n
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\nJoe Patrice<\/a>\u00a0is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer<\/a>. Feel free to\u00a0email<\/a> any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0or Bluesky<\/a> if you\u2019re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n