MONKEY BUSINESS

Trump Judge Busted Using ChatGPT in Court Ruling

A federal judge pointed to the AI chatbot in a Thursday opinion.

A Trump-appointed judge needed help with a court ruling, so he turned to ChatGPT.

Judge Chad Readler from the Court of Appeals’ Sixth Circuit consulted an artificial intelligence chatbot and Urban Dictionary to decipher whether the phrase “monkey a--” was racially hostile.

The move stemmed from a case where plaintiffs Thomas Michael Smith and Monaleto Sneed alleged that their former supervisors at PAM Transport Inc. discriminated against them for being Black by referring to them by using terms like “monkey” and “monkey a--.”

District Judge Eli Richardson in Tennessee, also a Trump appointee, ruled in favor of the trucking company last year. But the three-panel Sixth Circuit reversed the ruling in a Thursday decision.

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In his separate concurring opinion, Readler wrote that the Tennessee court “admittedly had difficult issues to address in the delicate setting of race discrimination.”

“Among them, how do we assess intent, context, and other relevant considerations in a setting where the individual who purportedly engaged in race discrimination is a member of the plaintiff’s race?” he wrote.

“Does the term ‘monkey a--,’ a phrase understandably not included in traditional dictionaries, have the same racial connotation as the term ‘monkey,’” Readler went on, citing definitions from Urban Dictionary and ChatGPT.

The chatbot’s lengthy response to the question, “What does monkey a-- mean?” concludes, “Racial? Not inherently - but can be, depending on how and to whom it’s said.”

The Daily Beast has contacted Readler for comment. Trump announced his intent to nominate Readler to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2018 to a seat vacated by Deborah L. Cook. He was confirmed in 2019.

In the opinion penned by Obama appointee Jane Stranch, the Sixth Circuit said, “there is no meaningful difference between the terms ‘monkey’ and ‘monkey a--’ when used by a supervisor against an African American employee, as alleged here.”

Stranch acknowledges in a footnote that Readler cites ChatGPT in his concurrence.

“ChatGPT functions as a consolidator of information, synthesizing patterns from a vast body of text,” she said. “But it does not independently verify the accuracy of any material or its unknown sources.”

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