Here’s the kitchen sink for February 21, 2025 of ten stories that I didn’t get to this week – with another brand-new meme from Gates Dogfish!
Why “the kitchen sink”? Find out here! 🙂
The Kitchen Sink is even better when you can include a brand-new eDiscovery meme courtesy of Gates Dogfish, the meme channel dedicated to eDiscovery people and created by Aaron Patton. For more great eDiscovery memes, follow Gates Dogfish on LinkedIn here! Some discussions about hyperlinked files just seem to go round and round! 🤣
Here is the kitchen sink for February 21, 2025 of ten-ish stories that I didn’t get to this week, with a comment from me about each:
The Hidden Cost of AI: Energy, Water, and the Sustainability Challenge: Even though I’ve touched on this topic a handful of times on this blog, we can’t talk enough about it, IMO. Rob Robinson provides some eye-opening stats that illustrate just how big the issues, like: “The International Energy Agency reports that AI, data centers, and cryptocurrency operations consumed approximately 460 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2022, accounting for nearly two percent of global electricity demand.” 😨
ChatGPT can now write erotica as OpenAI eases up on AI paternalism: OpenAI’s content policies have shifted, particularly around “sensitive” content like erotica and gore—allowing this type of content to be generated without warnings in “appropriate contexts.” Naturally, this article was published on Valentine’s Day. 😁
‘Please Stop Inviting AI Notetakers To Meetings’: In response to an article discussing the pitfalls of using AI notetakers in meetings, this article discusses the pros and cons of doing so. Personally, I don’t mind them, as they can be a good “belt and suspenders” approach to note taking in meetings – they catch things I miss in my own notes.
Publishers Launch Legal Battle Against AI Firm Cohere for Copyright Infringement: Another week, another AI company being sued for copyright infringement. Per Rob Robinson, this time it’s fourteen prominent publishers suing Cohere.
Massive Data Exposure at Mars Hydro Highlights IoT Security Risks: Who says IoT devices are safe? This breach involved 2.7 billion records linked to Mars Hydro, a China-based manufacturer of IoT-enabled grow lights, exposing things like Wi-Fi network names (SSID) and passwords and IP addresses and device ID numbers. Wow. 🤯
Show Cause Order: First time I’ve ever published just an order as one of the kitchen sink items and it’s from my home city of Houston. The Court wasn’t happy about the affidavit provided by the plaintiff’s expert (Richard Gadrow) in April 2024. Why? Because he died in June 2023, and it was demonstrated that plaintiff’s counsel knew about his death since at least December 2023. Who says dead men tell no tales? 😮 Dismissal of the case, Rule 11 sanctions, potential disbarment, even potential criminal charges being contemplated by the court.
OpenAI’s Former Chief Technology Officer Starts Her Own Company: Remember Mira Murati? She has helped found a new artificial intelligence start-up called Thinking Machines Lab, supposedly committed to open source AI. We’ll see.
Consulting an Attorney Did Not Trigger the Duty to Preserve: Interesting case discussed by Michael Berman on the EDRM blog. The title says what the Court ruled, but the details associated with the case are interesting, as is Michael’s analysis of when the duty to preserve is triggered.
My JELL-O Theory of Legal Tech: Is it that “there’s always room for legal tech”? 😉 No, but the comparison to an AI marketplace where people can see examples of tools built using the company’s platform to how JELL-O developed popularity for their product after initially being ignored (way back in 1904!) is interesting. Plus, you’ll learn a lot about JELL-O.
AI making up cases can get lawyers fired, scandalized law firm warns: Yet another “fake AI-generated cases in court filings” story. What makes this one different? The law firm in this one took accountability, dropping the attorney who did it from the case, striking a deal with Walmart’s attorneys to pay all fees and expenses associated with replying to the errant court filing, and expressing “great embarrassment”, while “deeply” apologizing to the court in a filing. Hopefully, the court takes that into consideration when ruling on sanctions.
Breaking New Ground: Evaluating the Top AI Reasoning Models of 2025: Another AI model comparison to go with the one I covered yesterday. This one – to have six models explain what legal reasoning is and how it is different from general reasoning – was conducted by Ralph Losey (or is it Loosey? 🤣) and discussed on the EDRM blog. No spoilers here which one won, check out the article!
Hope you enjoyed the kitchen sink for February 21, 2025! Back next week with another edition!
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So, what do you think? Which story is your favorite one? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.
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