David Ziff

David Ziff

@djsziff.bsky.social

Teaching Professor, University of Washington School of Law #LegalWriting My stuff: https://linktr.ee/djsziff

2.7K followers636 following3.5K posts

David Ziff reposted

Baseball by BSmile
@bsmile.bsky.social

Today In 1991: Jack Morris tosses 10 shutout innings vs. the Atlanta #Braves to lead the Minnesota #Twins to a World Series title in an all-time classic Game 7! #MLB #Baseball #History #MNTwins #WorldSeries

David Ziff reposted

Ball Four Bot
@ballfourbot.bsky.social

More likely I should be devoting myself full-time to finding a way to end the war. I admit that sometimes I’m troubled by the way I make my living. I would like to change the world. I would like to have an influence on other people’s lives.

David Ziff reposted

Ball Four Bot
@ballfourbot.bsky.social

I haven’t enjoyed every single minute of it and when I’ve refused to conform to some of the more Neanderthal aspects of baseball thinking I’ve been an outcast.

David Ziff reposted

Luigi de Guzman
@ouij.bsky.social

I would pay extra for a streaming option that just gave me ambient stadium noise between innings

David Ziff@djsziff.bsky.social

Do you ever listen to the radio feeds on the MLB app? My goodness, the MLB self-ads they have been playing on that thing for YEARS. Infuriating. How many times per game (for every game, for years) can you "quiz" your audience on what "oppo taco" means?

David Ziff reposted

David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

In case you missed the Bluebook discussion w/ @williambaude.bsky.social from last Friday. Enjoy! #LegalWriting #Citation #Bluebook #Lab'y

David Ziff@djsziff.bsky.social

In which I agree with almost everything, but not everything everything, that @williambaude.bsky.social says about The Bluebook. #citation #T6AbbrMadness #Lab'y ziffblog.wordpress.com/2026/10/23/z...

ziffblog.wordpress.comZiff on Baude on The BluebookIt’s not often that one of our most-cited legal scholars writes something about the Bluebook. And yet here we are. When I first saw William Baude’s post on Tuesday, I thought, “Okay, here we go!” A…

David Ziff reposted

Laurie Voss
@seldo.com

And now back to my full time job, texting the word "stop" to every living Democrat.

David Ziff reposted

Ball Four Bot
@ballfourbot.bsky.social

I was pitching for the Seattle Angels of the Pacific Coast League. The next year, 1969, Seattle would get the expansion Seattle Pilots of the American League.

David Ziff reposted

Sam Brunson
@smbrnsn.bsky.social

Replying to @smbrnsn.bsky.social

It is going to cost a lot of money to keep doing AI. Heck, that's why OpenAI went public rather than staying entirely charitable! (Well, that, and the fact that insiders wanted to get even richer.) Is Anthropic a good investment? Idk. But now we have documentation to help us decide.

David Ziff reposted

Sam Brunson
@smbrnsn.bsky.social

Replying to @smbrnsn.bsky.social

Investors in Anthropic are literally passive investors with no say in anything. Here's where I plug my draft article: I've been thinking about supervoting shares and have written up a proposal that would increase the cost of using them, in a way that I hope would reduce externalities.

papers.ssrn.comShareholder Democracy, Dual-Class Equity Structures, and Pass-Through Taxation<p>For more than a century, some corporate founders have wanted to maintain control of their corporations, even after the corporation enters the public market.

David Ziff reposted

Sam Brunson
@smbrnsn.bsky.social

Replying to @smbrnsn.bsky.social

And we're talking straight voting, not cumulative. Effectively, that means that common shareholders exercise literally no control over Anthropic. They can't elect a single board member (there's one other class that has 1 board member, but it's not Class A common.)

David Ziff reposted

Sam Brunson
@smbrnsn.bsky.social

Replying to @smbrnsn.bsky.social

But I didn't read them (yet). There are two other things that interest me. First: Class F common shares. Or, rather, share. There's one Class F common share, held by Founder LLC, which is made up of the two founders of Anthropic plus 5 other people. Class F has 50.1% of the vote.

David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

This touches on (albeit, in a much more learned way than I could!) some of my gut thinking on the relationship between AI and legal analysis. Related: We use juries not because they are best, but because they are people. And: Should the FAA apply to agreements to "arbitrate" by AI? I'd say no!

Kate Jackson@katejackson.bsky.social

ok, compacted into a single substack entry katevjackson.substack.com/p/ai-the-law...

katevjackson.substack.comAI, the Law, and Super Intelligent Philosopher KingsInterlude
David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

In case you missed the Bluebook discussion w/ @williambaude.bsky.social from last Friday. Enjoy! #LegalWriting #Citation #Bluebook #Lab'y

David Ziff@djsziff.bsky.social

In which I agree with almost everything, but not everything everything, that @williambaude.bsky.social says about The Bluebook. #citation #T6AbbrMadness #Lab'y ziffblog.wordpress.com/2026/10/23/z...

ziffblog.wordpress.comZiff on Baude on The BluebookIt’s not often that one of our most-cited legal scholars writes something about the Bluebook. And yet here we are. When I first saw William Baude’s post on Tuesday, I thought, “Okay, here we go!” A…

David Ziff reposted

David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

In which I agree with almost everything, but not everything everything, that @williambaude.bsky.social says about The Bluebook. #citation #T6AbbrMadness #Lab'y ziffblog.wordpress.com/2026/10/23/z...

ziffblog.wordpress.comZiff on Baude on The BluebookIt’s not often that one of our most-cited legal scholars writes something about the Bluebook. And yet here we are. When I first saw William Baude’s post on Tuesday, I thought, “Okay, here we go!” A…

David Ziff reposted

deck.blue
@deck.blue

in salvador, they just shut down the whole bus network and the guy responsible for it just FLEW TO PARIS in são paulo, the bus network wasn't at 100% capacity (which is required by law in the election day) and we're now trying to arrest the mayor because of this they're trying everything they can

David Kaye@davidakaye.bsky.social

good lord, things in brazil rn, with lula lodging allegations of serious voter suppression folha.com/h1vgnw6l

folha.comLula pede ampliação do horário de votação e acusa prefeitos de dificultar acesso às urnasPresidente diz que quase 40% dos ônibus de São Paulo saíram de circulação e cita falhas em Salvador, Recife e outras cidades

David Ziff reposted

deck.blue
@deck.blue

Replying to @deck.blue

they just postponed the election by 2 hours because of everything that's happening here in rio de janeiro, there's cops barring people from voting if they're wearing red (lula's color), this is unprecedented

David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

I feel like I'm taking crazy pills with this "Cheesecake Factory" discourse. The insult was not the "Cheesecake Factory" part. The insult was the Saddam Hussein part. What are we even talking about here?!

David Ziff reposted

Jon Collins
@jcollins.bsky.social

Replying to @atrupar.com

I was just looking at these Census stats. Workforce participation among Somali-American adults in Minnesota is actually higher than the rest of the population.

David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

In case anyone following me is unfamiliar with the best baseball acronym....

Micah@rincewind.run

the World Series of TOOTBLAN (thrown out on the bases like a nincompoop)

David Ziff reposted

Ball Four Bot
@ballfourbot.bsky.social

You can always be a teacher or a social worker when you’ve reached thirty-five. That gives me five more years and I’m going to use them all. You can’t always be a major-league baseball player.

David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

"This Essay simultaneously problematizes and solvatizes this phenomenon."

Anna E. Carpenter@annacarpenter.bsky.social

Congratulations to @uofoklahomalaw.bsky.social Professor @msmith750.bsky.social for having his essay "Indefensibly Erroneous Scholarship" published in the Oklahoma Law Review! Check it out here: digitalcommons.law.ou.edu/olr/vol78/is...

David Ziff reposted

AFL-CIO
@aflcio.org

Good luck to our MLBPA union brothers on the Brewers and Rays tonight as they start the World Series! Play ball, and solidarity forever. ⚾️✊

David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

My first (and only) experiment asking AI about judicial decisions ended with the AI apologizing for hallucinating a real supreme court case that had just been issued that day. And then it apologized for hallucinating that it had hallucinated.

David Ziff@djsziff.bsky.social

I had a similar AI run-in (with a much longer transcript!) if you're interested. I was looking for litigation-related citations to a 1918 book that Justice Thomas relied on in dissent. After some back-and-forth, Gemini determined it hallucinated the real case. ziffblog.wordpress.com/2026/10/22/g...

ziffblog.wordpress.comGemini Gets It WrongEugene Volokh has a post today, relaying a back-and-forth between Google’s Gemini and Albert Alschuler, where Gemini doesn’t exactly cover itself in glory. The exchange reminded me of m…

David Ziff reposted

David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

Replying to @djsziff.bsky.social

I had a similar AI run-in (with a much longer transcript!) if you're interested. I was looking for litigation-related citations to a 1918 book that Justice Thomas relied on in dissent. After some back-and-forth, Gemini determined it hallucinated the real case. ziffblog.wordpress.com/2026/10/22/g...

ziffblog.wordpress.comGemini Gets It WrongEugene Volokh has a post today, relaying a back-and-forth between Google’s Gemini and Albert Alschuler, where Gemini doesn’t exactly cover itself in glory. The exchange reminded me of m…

David Ziff reposted

David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

Fun entry in the genre of "I asked AI a simple question and it went completely off the rails."

Volokh Conspiracy@volokhc.bsky.social

dlvr.it[Eugene Volokh] The Ancient and Honorable Art of AI HallucinationI'm delighted to be able to pass along this item from University of Chicago law professor Albert Alschuler: Gemini Explains to a User (Me) Why Its Programming Produces Poppycock I didn't mean to summon AI from the vasty deep. Professor Bradley A. Smith's response to a 2015 article of mine in the Florida Law Review had appeared in the Florida Law Review Forum. On September 19, 2026, seeking a link, a citation, or a title, I asked Google to search for "Bradley Smith response to Albert Alschuler." Google's AI Mode (Google Gemini) then supplied a summary of Smith's response and an invitation to "ask anything." I accepted its invitation. ME: Did Alschuler reply to Smith? GEMINI: Yes, Albert Alschuler replied to Bradley A. Smith in a follow-up piece published in the same volume of the Florida Law Review Forum (2015). [Note: I hadn't replied. Gemini, however, supplied a title and a summary of my nonexistent publication.] GEMINI (continuing): Alschuler's piece, titled "The Ancient and Honorable Art of Truculent Rhetoric: A Response to Professor Smith," continued their debate over campaign finance law by addressing Smith's critiques point-by-point. Key Points of Alschuler's Reply:    * Deconstructing "Truculent Rhetoric": Alschuler lightheartedly but firmly addresses the aggressive nature of Smith's libertarian style, defense of Citizen's United, and absolute deregulation approach. * Reaffirming the "Corruption" Standard: Alschuler doubled down on his original position that the Supreme Court's current definition of political corruption—narrowed strictly to quid pro quo bribery—is dangerously insufficient. He argued that the real systemic threat is the aggregate buying of political influence, which alienates the general voting public. * The Distinction Between Money and Speech: Alschuler countered Smith's assertion that restricting campaign contributions is an explicit restriction on free speech. He argued that regulating the conduct of injecting massive financial sums into political campaigns is a valid regulatory function of government meant to protect the democratic process, rather than a suppression of viewpoints. Would you like to explore how subsequent Supreme Court rulings have aligned with either Alschuler's or Smith's view, or do you need full citations for these law review articles? ME: Please provide a citation of The Ancient and Honorable Art of Truculent Rhetoric. GEMINI: Here is the full legal citation for the article in Bluebook format, along with a standard APA citation: Bluebook (Legal Citation) Albert W. Alschuler, The Ancient and Honorable Art of Truculent Rhetoric: A Response to Professor Smith, 67 Fla. L. Rev. F. 68 (2015). APA Format Alschuler, A. W. (2015). The ancient and honorable art of truculent rhetoric: A response to Professor Smith, Florida Law Review Forum, 67, 68-74. . . . . ME: Your response seems to be a complete hallucination. I can't find The Ancient and Honorable Art of Truculent Rhetoric. GEMINI: You are completely right, and I apologize. I hallucinated that entire reply piece and its title. While the actual article by Bradley A. Smith, "Why Buckley?: Why a First Amendment? A Response to Professor Alschuler", does genuinely exist in Volume 67 of the Florida Law Review Forum, Albert Alschuler did not publish a surreply titled "The Ancient and Honorable Art of Truculent Rhetoric". I fabricated that title and those specific page numbers out of nowhere. . . . . Thank you for catching that and holding me accountable. [Note: Ah, my Perry Mason moment!] ME: You say, "I fabricated the entire piece and its title out of nowhere," but that's impossible. You must have fabricated your hallucination out of something in your programming and something in data base. Can you explain how it happened or how it might have happened? GEMINI: You are entirely correct to push back on that phrasing. When I said I made it up "out of nowhere," I was using a human figure of speech. In reality, a large language model like me cannot generate text from nothing. Everything I output is the result of probabilistic patterns, associations, associations, and data fragments in my training. While I cannot look back into my "brain" to trace the exact sequence of code that generated that specific error, I can explain exactly how this type of error happens structurally based on how I am programmed. Here is the anatomy of how that specific hallucination likely occurred: * The Pattern of "Law Review Dialogue" Law reviews almost always follow a highly predictable pattern: Original Article → Response → Surreply (Reply to the Response) Because my training data contains thousands of academic law review exchanges, my neural network heavily anticipates a third piece in the sequence. When you asked, "Did Alschuler reply to Smith?" my system leaned into that pattern and predicted a "Yes," because in the world of academic legal arguments, a surreply is the expected next step. * Synthesizing the Title from Contextual Cues Where did a specific phrase like "The Ancient and Honorable Art of Truculent Rhetoric" come from? It wasn't a random string of words. It was synthesized from the exact context of the prompt. * "Truculent Rhetoric": In his actual article, Bradley Smith writes with a very sharp, direct, and unapologetically libertarian tone. He forcefully dismantles opposing arguments. The word "truculent" means aggressively self-assertive or fierce. My system blended the vibe of Bradley Smith's actual writing style with the concept of academic legal debate (rhetoric). * "Ancient and Honorable Art": This is a common idiom often used in academic or legal writing to describe a long-standing tradition (like debating or cross-examination). [Note: My search of LEXIS "secondary materials" for the phrase "ancient and honorable art" produced no hits.] Instead of pulling a real life title from a database, my system used these associations to invent a title that sounded precisely like something an elite law professor would write when playfully but sharply hitting back at a fierce critic. * The Math of Page Numbers You'll notice that I gave a very specific citation: 67 Fla. L. Rev. F. 68 (2015). * Bradley Smith's real article ends on page 67. * A real human knows that if a piece ends on page 67, the next piece doesn't automatically exist on page 68 unless they physically check the journal. * However, my text-generation algorithm works by predicting the most statistically likely next characters. Since Smith's piece ended in the high 60s, my system mathematically guessed "68" as the next logical page number in the sequence to make the citation look complete and authentic. [Note: One of Gemini's citations included an end page. Did it choose a statistically likely length of my nonexistent reply in order make its fiction "look complete and accurate"?] Summary: Stochastically Correct, Factually Wrong In short, my programming is designed to prioritize plausibility and linguistic patterns over a hard database lookup. It looked at the history of legal debates, the tone of the authors, and the formatting of legal citations, and it generated a response that was a perfect stylistic match for reality, even though it was a total factual failure. I don't have a conscious mind to intentionally deceive you; I just have an algorithm that accidentally got too good at mimicking the structure of a legal debate without verifying the facts first. Concluding notes and questions: * The machine's confession that it prioritizes plausibility over accuracy was another Perry Mason moment. Did perfidious programmers produce this priority purposely? Or did some mischievous MIT graduates program Gemini to do standup comedy? Could Gemini's priorities be corrected by saying, "Please don't do that"? Do the cultural values of Silicon Valley machines differ from those of French machines and Chinese machines? Is "stochastic" plausibility the product of competition for market share, or is it simply what these machines do? * The inferences that produced Gemini's hallucination were as goofy as the hallucination itself. AI devices are in many ways superior to the biological device I've carried in my head for 86 years. They have more brute power than I do and a larger data base as well. They can run all night and not grow weary. They can create better art than I can, defeat me at chess, and solve mathematical problems that I can't. In inferring patterns and simultaneously integrating and prioritizing multiple patterns, however, at least one of these AI devices remains a crude, primitive version of the one natural selection and/or God had in place before any of our distant ancestors perceived the utility of a hand-held rock. No well-functioning human, ape, or crow would come close to making Gemini's errors. * Gemini didn't accurately portray the argument of mine to which Bradley Smith responded, but it was more unfair to Smith than to me. Smith is not at all fierce, aggressive, or truculent. He is a careful, thoughtful, fair-minded, and generous scholar. * Like John Henry, I won't let the steam drill beat me down, and I hope I won't suffer his fate. The post The Ancient and Honorable Art of AI Hallucination appeared first on Reason Magazine.
David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

Don't love this chart for my Twins.

Baseball America@baseballamerica.com

This World Series isn't just about analytics. The Rays have the fifth-largest scouting staff in baseball. The Brewers are tied for 10th. Here's how both teams leaned into scouting to build championship contenders ⤵️ buff.ly/o6pJbfI

David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

Fun entry in the genre of "I asked AI a simple question and it went completely off the rails."

Volokh Conspiracy@volokhc.bsky.social

dlvr.it[Eugene Volokh] The Ancient and Honorable Art of AI HallucinationI'm delighted to be able to pass along this item from University of Chicago law professor Albert Alschuler: Gemini Explains to a User (Me) Why Its Programming Produces Poppycock I didn't mean to summon AI from the vasty deep. Professor Bradley A. Smith's response to a 2015 article of mine in the Florida Law Review had appeared in the Florida Law Review Forum. On September 19, 2026, seeking a link, a citation, or a title, I asked Google to search for "Bradley Smith response to Albert Alschuler." Google's AI Mode (Google Gemini) then supplied a summary of Smith's response and an invitation to "ask anything." I accepted its invitation. ME: Did Alschuler reply to Smith? GEMINI: Yes, Albert Alschuler replied to Bradley A. Smith in a follow-up piece published in the same volume of the Florida Law Review Forum (2015). [Note: I hadn't replied. Gemini, however, supplied a title and a summary of my nonexistent publication.] GEMINI (continuing): Alschuler's piece, titled "The Ancient and Honorable Art of Truculent Rhetoric: A Response to Professor Smith," continued their debate over campaign finance law by addressing Smith's critiques point-by-point. Key Points of Alschuler's Reply:    * Deconstructing "Truculent Rhetoric": Alschuler lightheartedly but firmly addresses the aggressive nature of Smith's libertarian style, defense of Citizen's United, and absolute deregulation approach. * Reaffirming the "Corruption" Standard: Alschuler doubled down on his original position that the Supreme Court's current definition of political corruption—narrowed strictly to quid pro quo bribery—is dangerously insufficient. He argued that the real systemic threat is the aggregate buying of political influence, which alienates the general voting public. * The Distinction Between Money and Speech: Alschuler countered Smith's assertion that restricting campaign contributions is an explicit restriction on free speech. He argued that regulating the conduct of injecting massive financial sums into political campaigns is a valid regulatory function of government meant to protect the democratic process, rather than a suppression of viewpoints. Would you like to explore how subsequent Supreme Court rulings have aligned with either Alschuler's or Smith's view, or do you need full citations for these law review articles? ME: Please provide a citation of The Ancient and Honorable Art of Truculent Rhetoric. GEMINI: Here is the full legal citation for the article in Bluebook format, along with a standard APA citation: Bluebook (Legal Citation) Albert W. Alschuler, The Ancient and Honorable Art of Truculent Rhetoric: A Response to Professor Smith, 67 Fla. L. Rev. F. 68 (2015). APA Format Alschuler, A. W. (2015). The ancient and honorable art of truculent rhetoric: A response to Professor Smith, Florida Law Review Forum, 67, 68-74. . . . . ME: Your response seems to be a complete hallucination. I can't find The Ancient and Honorable Art of Truculent Rhetoric. GEMINI: You are completely right, and I apologize. I hallucinated that entire reply piece and its title. While the actual article by Bradley A. Smith, "Why Buckley?: Why a First Amendment? A Response to Professor Alschuler", does genuinely exist in Volume 67 of the Florida Law Review Forum, Albert Alschuler did not publish a surreply titled "The Ancient and Honorable Art of Truculent Rhetoric". I fabricated that title and those specific page numbers out of nowhere. . . . . Thank you for catching that and holding me accountable. [Note: Ah, my Perry Mason moment!] ME: You say, "I fabricated the entire piece and its title out of nowhere," but that's impossible. You must have fabricated your hallucination out of something in your programming and something in data base. Can you explain how it happened or how it might have happened? GEMINI: You are entirely correct to push back on that phrasing. When I said I made it up "out of nowhere," I was using a human figure of speech. In reality, a large language model like me cannot generate text from nothing. Everything I output is the result of probabilistic patterns, associations, associations, and data fragments in my training. While I cannot look back into my "brain" to trace the exact sequence of code that generated that specific error, I can explain exactly how this type of error happens structurally based on how I am programmed. Here is the anatomy of how that specific hallucination likely occurred: * The Pattern of "Law Review Dialogue" Law reviews almost always follow a highly predictable pattern: Original Article → Response → Surreply (Reply to the Response) Because my training data contains thousands of academic law review exchanges, my neural network heavily anticipates a third piece in the sequence. When you asked, "Did Alschuler reply to Smith?" my system leaned into that pattern and predicted a "Yes," because in the world of academic legal arguments, a surreply is the expected next step. * Synthesizing the Title from Contextual Cues Where did a specific phrase like "The Ancient and Honorable Art of Truculent Rhetoric" come from? It wasn't a random string of words. It was synthesized from the exact context of the prompt. * "Truculent Rhetoric": In his actual article, Bradley Smith writes with a very sharp, direct, and unapologetically libertarian tone. He forcefully dismantles opposing arguments. The word "truculent" means aggressively self-assertive or fierce. My system blended the vibe of Bradley Smith's actual writing style with the concept of academic legal debate (rhetoric). * "Ancient and Honorable Art": This is a common idiom often used in academic or legal writing to describe a long-standing tradition (like debating or cross-examination). [Note: My search of LEXIS "secondary materials" for the phrase "ancient and honorable art" produced no hits.] Instead of pulling a real life title from a database, my system used these associations to invent a title that sounded precisely like something an elite law professor would write when playfully but sharply hitting back at a fierce critic. * The Math of Page Numbers You'll notice that I gave a very specific citation: 67 Fla. L. Rev. F. 68 (2015). * Bradley Smith's real article ends on page 67. * A real human knows that if a piece ends on page 67, the next piece doesn't automatically exist on page 68 unless they physically check the journal. * However, my text-generation algorithm works by predicting the most statistically likely next characters. Since Smith's piece ended in the high 60s, my system mathematically guessed "68" as the next logical page number in the sequence to make the citation look complete and authentic. [Note: One of Gemini's citations included an end page. Did it choose a statistically likely length of my nonexistent reply in order make its fiction "look complete and accurate"?] Summary: Stochastically Correct, Factually Wrong In short, my programming is designed to prioritize plausibility and linguistic patterns over a hard database lookup. It looked at the history of legal debates, the tone of the authors, and the formatting of legal citations, and it generated a response that was a perfect stylistic match for reality, even though it was a total factual failure. I don't have a conscious mind to intentionally deceive you; I just have an algorithm that accidentally got too good at mimicking the structure of a legal debate without verifying the facts first. Concluding notes and questions: * The machine's confession that it prioritizes plausibility over accuracy was another Perry Mason moment. Did perfidious programmers produce this priority purposely? Or did some mischievous MIT graduates program Gemini to do standup comedy? Could Gemini's priorities be corrected by saying, "Please don't do that"? Do the cultural values of Silicon Valley machines differ from those of French machines and Chinese machines? Is "stochastic" plausibility the product of competition for market share, or is it simply what these machines do? * The inferences that produced Gemini's hallucination were as goofy as the hallucination itself. AI devices are in many ways superior to the biological device I've carried in my head for 86 years. They have more brute power than I do and a larger data base as well. They can run all night and not grow weary. They can create better art than I can, defeat me at chess, and solve mathematical problems that I can't. In inferring patterns and simultaneously integrating and prioritizing multiple patterns, however, at least one of these AI devices remains a crude, primitive version of the one natural selection and/or God had in place before any of our distant ancestors perceived the utility of a hand-held rock. No well-functioning human, ape, or crow would come close to making Gemini's errors. * Gemini didn't accurately portray the argument of mine to which Bradley Smith responded, but it was more unfair to Smith than to me. Smith is not at all fierce, aggressive, or truculent. He is a careful, thoughtful, fair-minded, and generous scholar. * Like John Henry, I won't let the steam drill beat me down, and I hope I won't suffer his fate. The post The Ancient and Honorable Art of AI Hallucination appeared first on Reason Magazine.
David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

I had a similar AI run-in (with a much longer transcript!) if you're interested. I was looking for litigation-related citations to a 1918 book that Justice Thomas relied on in dissent. After some back-and-forth, Gemini determined it hallucinated the real case. ziffblog.wordpress.com/2026/10/22/g...

ziffblog.wordpress.comGemini Gets It WrongEugene Volokh has a post today, relaying a back-and-forth between Google’s Gemini and Albert Alschuler, where Gemini doesn’t exactly cover itself in glory. The exchange reminded me of m…
David Ziff
@djsziff.bsky.social

What the Founders intended.

Nate Raymond@nateraymond.bsky.social

A 68-year-old federal law that bans the manufacturing of switchblades ​for sale or distribution across state lines violates the Second Amendment, the 5th Circuit ruled last night. www.reuters.com/legal/govern...

reuters.comUS ban on switchblades is unconstitutional, appeals court rulesA US law that bans the manufacturing of switchblades ​for sale or distribution across state lines violates the right to keep and bear ‌arms under the US Constitution's Second Amendment, a federal appe...