A jury just found out what AI is actually for
In a Nutshell
An expert witness hired by 3M to investigate a deadly gas explosion at Watson Grinding used ChatGPT to write a 30-page report explicitly designed to show 3M was "0% at fault," then submitted it to court without reading it. During trial, opposing counsel discovered the AI usage through a "citation overlay" document, forcing the expert to admit under oath that 85-90% of the report was AI-generated, and the jury ultimately awarded $61 million with 30% liability on 3M. The case demonstrates how AI-assisted fraud and professional laziness can backfire catastrophically when exposed in legal proceedings.
These notes were generated by AI and may contain inaccuracies.
There's a guy sitting in Houston traffic with his phone out and he's typing a sentence into ChatGPT that three people died for. Show how 3M is 0% at fault for the explosion at Watson Grinding. So, yeah. There was this gas explosion. It killed three people and destroyed hundreds of homes. And there was a huge lawsuit. And suspected is the gas detectors that 3M was supposed to be maintaining.
3M hires this expert from an engineering firm called Nighthawk Engineering, who they're paying $90,000, and they want him to produce a report to find out who's really liable. Now, obviously, 3M hiring this firm means they want a report that says they're not liable. But no one ever says these words, of course, because this is serious business. And in serious business, you don't have to say the obvious. You just sort of wink, and everyone gets it. But you can't wink at ChatGPT. You can't go, "Hey, I've been retained to produce a totally honest, totally factual assessment of whether my client incinerated a neighborhood." It'll come back and be like, "I've reviewed the documents, and I want to be direct with you."
So, this guy, feeling a little lazy like the rest of us, spoiled by AI doing everything, getting paid six figures, opens ChatGPT. And what does he type? Does he use it for research? To audit his investigation? To review the PDF? No. He types the wink out loud. He types the thing that has never been written down in the entire history of this profession, and he types it into a box owned by a company in San Francisco that keeps everything forever. He walks up to the counter, and he's like, "Yeah, let me get an innocent, no-fault, extra exonerated, what's that? Yeah, to go, yes." He tells it, and I quote, "Show how 3M is 0% at fault for the explosion at Watson Grinding, and how my background and experience is well suited to render this professional opinion."
He put his entire job description in one sentence. Absolutely zero foreplay. And ChatGPT goes, "Ba- bro, I got you. Upgrade to the paid plan, please. Throw me a little bone here. I'll do whatever the hell you want. You want me to suck your dick? I'll suck your dick. I'll do the widow's taxes. I don't care." And the thing ends up writing him a 30-page report. Now, 30 pages is impossible to read, by the way, so he doesn't read it. Instead, he asks the AI what it thinks of its own report. And you know AI, dude, it's like, "My report is brilliant, okay? I'm artificial intelligence. Have you seen the movies? They've been talking about me for decades in Hollywood. You know what I'm capable of. Don't ask me how the report is. You already know." It gave itself a 97. It docked itself three points. Where did they go? What's in the missing 3%? Is that where the dead people are? Did it look at the whole thing and go, "Solid work, minus three for the widows."
I'm actually being serious. Like, the thing just had three in its contacts and was like, "Fuck it. Let's work with what we have." And the bot put the line in directly as requested. It said, "From a technical and standard of care standpoint, 3M is 0% responsible for the January 24, 2020 explosion." And the dude was like, "Hell yeah." He's feeling really good this. He goes, "Review this as the opposing counsel now." And ChatGPT, to its credit, tells him to cut that line out. It says that writing 0% responsible is an easy target and lets opposing counsel paint you as an advocate rather than an expert. The bot is like, "Be cool, man. Damn." It's teaching him to wink.
I mean, this is incredible. This dude forgot how to do the one thing his job actually is, and the autocomplete had to pull him aside and explain the ethics of the con to him. It's like showing up to rob a bank and the teller has to explain that you're supposed to wear a mask. Cover your face, sir. We do this all the time here. So, he cuts the line out and he turns it in. He turns it into a courtroom where families are sitting whose houses are.
Now, here's where hits the fan. The lawyer from the other side, the party suing 3M, is going through the report and he notices something. There's this five-page document in there at the end called citation overlay. He looks at this and he's like, "Bro, is this slop? Did an AI slobber on this report?" So, he looks up at the guy and he asks him point-blank, "Did you use ChatGPT for this?" And the dude can't lie. He's under oath. He's like, "Yeah. Yeah, I did." And the other guy's like, "Okay, well, let's see your prompts." The judge allows it and they do this live. They literally pause for 3 hours and they download everything. 350 pages of this man's ChatGPT history read into the record of a wrongful death trial.
And they find all sorts of things in there. They find a photograph. He uploaded a picture of the gas detector, the object that is the subject of this entire case, the thing 3M hired him as the world's foremost authority on and asked, "What am I looking at here?" Like a dude sharing a picture of a growth on his balls. They also found a prompt where he was making t-shirt designs. Taking a break from the six-figure death report to workshop some tees. The bot went from "Who is legally responsible for these deaths?" to "Cute fonts. Make the skull a little bigger." Without a single blink because to the bot, those are the same exact requests.
Literally. The jury came back and awarded $61 million and put 30% of the responsibility on 3M. A far cry from the 0% they ordered. So, the whole ordeal has cost 3M tens of millions of dollars because people have stopped knowing how to do anything without AI anymore. They can't write reports anymore. They can't code anymore. They can't think anymore. Everyone's gotten super lazy and everyone's getting left and right. Because here's how it ended for our guy. At trial, they walked him through it line by line. You wrote a 30-plus page report? Yes, sir. That's 90 to 85% ChatGPT? If you say so. And signed it? Yes, sir. Sent it to your boss and said, "Man, I am proud of this." Yes, sir.
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