Should Have Noticed the Rhyming Names: Elitist School’s ‘Misinformation Expert’ Tricked Into Submitting Lies to Fed. Court
The article discusses a controversy involving Jeff Hancock, a Stanford University professor who claims to be an expert on misinformation. Hancock submitted an expert declaration in support of Minnesota’s law targeting election-related deepfakes,but it was revealed that he relied on AI-generated citations that contained inaccurate references,including one to a nonexistent study. The situation sparked criticism as Hancock, who was supposed to be educated about misinformation, inadvertently provided false information generated by an AI, raising questions about the reliability of self-proclaimed experts in this field.The article underscores the irony of Hancock’s position, especially as his students had just begun learning about proper citation methods. Critics have highlighted the broader implications of such mishaps, calling into question the trustworthiness of so-called misinformation experts in an era increasingly reliant on AI-generated content.
The humorless scolds who pose as “misinformation experts” would have found themselves at home in any of history’s totalitarian regimes.
Thus, one must treat them as one treats all petty tyrants: mock them, especially when they author their own humiliation.
According to the U.K. Daily Mail, Stanford University “misinformation expert” Jeff Hancock made a fool of himself and broke the law in the process when he swore under oath to the accuracy of his own AI-generated citations, which ought to have sounded alarm bells in advance, for they included one hilarious reference to a “nonexistent study” by co-authors “Huang, Zhang, and Wang.”
Hancock drafted an “expert declaration” in defense of a 2023 Minnesota law that “criminalizes election-related deepfakes.” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison brought in Hancock for that purpose.
While drafting his “expert declaration,” however, Hancock relied on AI, which generated multiple “hallucinations,” i.e. false citations.
In other words, a self-professed “expert” in AI-generated “misinformation” swore to the accuracy of his own AI-generated misinformation.
According to The Stanford Daily, Hancock, a Communications professor at the prestigious university, filed the declaration on Nov. 1.
Hilariously, students in Hancock’s current COMM 1 class told the Daily that they had begun learning about citations on Tuesday.
One student, who remained anonymous for obvious reasons (i.e. self-important academic tyrants tend to have vindictive streaks), found this “ironic.”
Meanwhile, Tuesday on the social media platform X, California civil liberties attorney Laura Powell posted a page from a document Hancock filed with the court on Nov. 27, wherein the professor admitted that OpenAI’s GPT-4o generated the “hallucinations” in question.
“From the ‘you couldn’t make this stuff up’ file,” Powell tweeted in part.
“‘Misinformation experts’ continue to prove themselves to be some of the least trustworthy people on the planet,” she later added.
From the “you couldn’t make this stuff up” file:
A “misinformation expert” at Stanford, @jeffhancock, billed the state of Minnesota $600/hour to prepare an expert declaration on the dangers of AI-generated content. He swore under penalty of perjury that everything stated in the… pic.twitter.com/UIWfMfRMm1
— Laura Powell (@LauraPowellEsq) December 3, 2024
Content creator Christopher Kohls, who goes by “Mr. Reagan” on X, helped challenge the Minnesota law, per the Daily Mail.
Thus, to illustrate the kind of content Ellison, Hancock and their fellow tyrants wish to ban, one of Kohls’s own productions might serve as a representative example.
In July, Kohls used AI to generate a riotously funny parody of Vice President Kamala Harris.
“I may not know the first thing about running the country,” the AI-generated, Harris-sounding voice said, “but remember, that’s a good thing if you’re a deep state puppet.”
Kamala Harris Campaign Ad PARODY pic.twitter.com/5lBxvyTZ3o
— Mr Reagan 🇺🇸 (@MrReaganUSA) July 26, 2024
Of course, a comprehensive history detailing the proliferation of petty tyrants with meaningless credentials would require volumes.
Thus, in lieu of that, one can only laugh when humorless “experts” beclown themselves.
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