Dana Formon - AI, Ethics, and Forensic Practice

That makes sense to me in some ways when I think about what forensic psychology is and, and just highlighting these things that you're talking about in terms of the, the scrutiny that is applied.

When you were talking about, you know, being cross-examined about that, I thought...

I was thinking about, like, oh, if you've done something wrong and you are about to be cross-examined on it, right, how painful that is.

And I, I guess I also wonder too that does the judiciary, uh, anticipate that we are using our skills to produce these reports rather than relying on technology in order to produce a set of opinions that is going to be used in court?

Yeah.

And I'm, I'm glad you said that too, 'cause, you know, when I was talking about it, I said, "You know, well, that's gonna be really painful for us."

It's true.

You know? And then also, right, if something like this were to happen when you're testifying, think about the ramifications, not just on the defendant, but about on this, you know, bigger, like, credibility issue of experts, of psychologists, of attorneys talking behind the scenes about this one person that they called to be their expert, and now something awful has happened in court, and now that has a lot of ripple effects too.

So I'm glad you mentioned that [laughs] 'cause it does of course go far beyond just our uncomfortability on the stand, for sure.

Well, that and, and I mean, I think it gets into some of the ethics, right, of, of not harming the people with whom we work and recognizing that they're vulnerable people.

These are high-stakes situations frequently, whether that's civil or criminal or parenting or, you know, whatever the, the capacity is.

It's, you know, we are involved in, in people's lives in a, you know, important ways.

And so it strikes me when you think about what you're saying, not just a discomfort for us, which obviously is acute and painful, but also for thinking about the impact that it has on the other people involved.

The, uh, analogy springs immediately to mind for me is, so my, my, my wife is a middle school science teacher, and she had a student who was not performing totally up to par and then turned in a paper that was, like, graduate level.

[laughs]

And she said, "Look, kid who shall remain nameless on this podcast.

Can you just tell me anything about the carbon cycle at all?"

[laughs]

And then they couldn't.

But I just imagine, you know, if you're outsourcing your thinking to this program that is, I mean, from what I understand, often kind of a black box, I mean, something that even the people who pr- create this can't say how it comes up with these things.

I mean, we, we need to be transparent.

We need to be objective.

We're outsourcing our judgment.

And now I'm just preaching, but what, what I'm saying is I see the risk that you're talking about, and I would prefer not to see that happen to me or to anybody in my, um-

Mm-hmm