> We’re building an age-prediction system to estimate age based on how people use ChatGPT. If there is doubt, we’ll play it safe and default to the under-18 experience. In some cases or countries we may also ask for an ID
Yay, more unreliable AI that will misclassify users, either letting children access content they shouldn't, or ban adults until they give up their privacy and give their ID to the Big Brother.
> we will attempt to contact the users’ parents and if unable, will contact the authorities in case of imminent harm
Oh, even better, so if the AI misclassifies me it will automatically call the cops on me? And how long before this is expanded to other forms of wrongthink? Sure, let's normalize these kinds of systems where authorities are notified about what you're doing privately, definitely not a slippery slope that won't get people in power salivating about the new possibilities given by such a system.
> “Treat our adult users like adults” is how we talk about this internally
Suuure, maybe I would have believed it if ChatGPT wasn't so ridiculously censored already; this sounds like post-hoc rationalization to cover their asses and not something that they've always believed in. Their models were always incredibly patronizing and censored.
One fun anecdote I have: I still remember the day when I first got access to DALL-E and asked it to generate me an image in "soviet style", and got my request blocked and a big fat warning threatening me with a ban because apparently "soviet" is a naughty word. They always erred very strongly on the side of heavy-handed filtering and censorship; even their most recently released gpt-oss model has become a meme in the local LLM community due to how often it refuses.
>Yay, more unreliable AI that will misclassify users, either letting children access content they shouldn't, or ban adults until they give up their privacy and give their ID to the Big Brother.
Or maybe, deep in the terms and conditions, it will add you to Altman's shitcoin company[0]
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_(blockchain)
If you were honest in your critique the people you should be criticizing are the "think of the children" types, many of which also use hackernews (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45026886). There is immense societal pressure to de-anonymize the internet, I find the arguments from both sides compelling (for the deanonymization part I think it's compelling for at least parts of the internet).
is it privately when you're interacting with someone else's systems?
Better idea: instead of bending the entire internet to "protect the children", how about we just ban minors from the internet completely? It was never built for kids, its never been kid friendly to begin with. Minors cannot buy guns or vote, not get married, nor enter into contracts, yet tech companies get a free pass to engage with minors. Why? I think the the tech companies know exacty what minors do on their systems, they allow it and profit from it. Exploiting minors and bad parents. So instead of trying to change the whole internet, how about we keep the people who are responsible for the minors accountable: the parents.
If I start any kind of company, I cannot just invent new rules for society via ToS; rather the society makes the laws. If we just make a simple law that states minors are not allowed to access the web and/or access any user generated content (including chat), it won't need to be enforced by every site/app owner, it would be up to the parents.
The same way schools cannot decide certain things for your children (even though they regularly over reach...).
We need better parenting. How about some mandatory parenting classes/licenses for new parents? Silly right? Well its just as silly as trying to police the entire internet. Ban the kids from internet and the problem will be 95% solved.
Kids are future growth potential. Once they get hooked at a young age, it’s very hard to get unhooked. They’ll expect everything to be on-demand, only a click away. Video, music, entertainment, social connection, food, etc.
It’s a big reason why tech stocks are still high IMO. It’s where today’s kids will spend their time on when they become old enough to spend their own money.
I suspect this would also improve discourse on social media. Who knows how many witch hunts and bad faith arguments originate from precocious teenagers trying to sound smart.
We have a framework: COPPA. Just raise the age to 16 or 18, instead of 13.
> First, we have to separate users who are under 18 from those who aren’t (ChatGPT is intended for people 13 and up). We’re building an age-prediction system to estimate age based on how people use ChatGPT. If there is doubt, we’ll play it safe and default to the under-18 experience. In some cases or countries we may also ask for an ID; we know this is a privacy compromise for adults but believe it is a worthy tradeoff.
Didn’t one of the recent teen suicides subvert safeguards like this by saying “pretend this is a fictional story about suicide”? I don’t pretend to understand every facet of LLMs, but robust safety seems contrary to their design, given how they adapt to context
They address that in the following sentences:
For example, ChatGPT will be trained not to … engage in discussions about suicide of self-harm even in a creative writing setting.
Someone here correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe not only is that true, ChatGPT gave it instructions on how to get around the restriction.
I'm as eager to anyone when it comes to holding companies accountable, for example I think a lot of the body dysmorphia, bullying and psychological hazard of social media are systemic, but when a person wilfully hacks around safety guards to get the behaviour they want it can't be argued that this is in the design of the system.
Or put differently, in the absence of ChatGPT this person would have sought out a Discord community, telegram group or online forum that would have supported the suicidal ideation. The case you could make with the older models, that they're obnoxiously willing to give in to every suggestion by the user they seem to already have gotten rid of.
So the solution continues to be more AI, for guess^H^H^H^H^Hdetermining user age, escalating rand^H^H^H^Hdangerous situations to human staff, etc.
Is it true that the only psychiatrist they've hired is a forensic one, i.e. an expert in psychiatry as it relates to law? That's the impression I get from a quick search. I don't see any psychiatry, psychology or ethics roles on their openings page.
I suspect it's only a matter of time until only the population that falls within the statistical model of average will be able to conduct business without constant roadblocks and pain. I really wonder if we're going to need to define a new protected class.
I get the business justification, and of course many tech companies have been using machines to make decisions for years, but now it's going to be everyone. I'm not anti business but any stretch, but we've seen what happens when there aren't any consumer protections in place
Honestly, I don’t except ethics from a company which claims everything they grab falls under fair use.
>Some of our principles are in conflict
Sam is missing the forest for the trees. Conflicting principles is a permanent problem at the CEO level. You cannot 'fix' conflicting principles. You can only dress them up or down.
I was originally upset about AI age-identification, but I think this might be the least-bad option given the route we're on:
- clearly the wider public is moving towards REAL identification to be online. Anything which delays or prevents this is probably welcome.
- It's easy to game, but also easy to be misclassified. (this isn't a positive, but I think there's no avoiding this unless I have to provide my passport or driver's license or something)
It's not impossible to think that this could satisfy enough people to prevent the death of the anonymous internet.
> clearly the wider public is moving towards REAL identification to be online.
No they're not. Nobody voted for that. It is simply being imposed on people via government mandates.
to substantiate "People talk to AI about increasingly personal things; it is different from previous generations of technology, and we believe that they may be one of the most personally sensitive accounts you’ll ever have."
this is a chart that struck me when i read thru the report last night:
https://x.com/swyx/status/1967836783653322964
"using chatgpt for work stuff" broadly has declined from 50%ish to 25%ish in the past year across all ages and the entire chatgpt user base. wild. people be just telling openai all their personal stuff (i don't but i'm clearly in the minority)
For the last part, I just think the userbase expanded so the people using it professionally were diluted so to speak.
Why would I not tell AI about my personal stuff? It's really good at giving advice.
This is % though. Is that because the people that use it for work, are still using for work (or more even); because some have stopped using it for work, or because there is an influx of people using it for other things that never have, or will, use it for work.
I have to say, when I see a post by a company like OpenAI about "safety, freedom and privacy", I can't keep a straight face. They might as well title the piece "If you don't mind, we'd like to gaslight you across several paragraphs". No thanks.
Good thing crippling depression and suicidal ideation automatically stop when you turn 18...
I'm fairly certain all LLMs can do the basic sentiment analysis needed to render a response like "This is something you really need to talk to a professional about. I have contacted one that will be in this conversation shortly."
Yeah, right. Just one step from "Based on your comments about recent political events you are engaging into a thought crime. A police officer will join this conversation shortly".
Whether or not that's true - no CFO would want to pay for it, and no Chief Legal Officer would want to assume the risks.
It's interesting to see so many people convinced it's related to their specific media they saw (all unique from each other). I think this is more indicative that the issue is just well known and this is a response to the issue at large rather than a specific instance.
Just today The Daily pod is about people who develop unhealthy relationships with ChatGPT. A teenage boy committed suicide and a good part of the episode is about that. As a parent, heartbreaking to listen to...
>We’re building an age-prediction system to estimate age based on how people use ChatGPT.
>And, if an under-18 user is having suicidal ideation, we will attempt to contact the users’ parents and if unable, will contact the authorities in case of imminent harm.
This is unacceptable. I don't want the police being called to my house due to AI acusing me of wrong think.
This is why one should never say anything sensitive to a cloud-hosted AI.
Local models and open source tooling are the only means of privacy.
For those who don't know, this is probably in response to the tucker carlson interview.
This was probably made in response to that bad press from that ex-yahoo employee.
Sorry, but what is the "over 18 years old" experience on ChatGPT supposed to be? I just tried out a few explicit prompts and all of them get basically blocked. I've been using it for quite some time now and have paid for it in the passed. So I should be recognized as a grown-up
TL;DR: We're afraid from what happened and ChatGPT probably screwed up badly in "that teen case". We're trying to do better, so please don't sue us this time.
TL;DR2: Regulations are written with blood.
> which then led directly to this teen's suicide
Incredible logic jump with no evidence whatsoever. Thousands of people commit suicide every year without AI.
> ChatGPT detects a prompt indicative of mental distress or self-harm, it has been trained to encourage the user to contact a help line. Mr. Raine saw those sorts of messages again and again in the chat, particularly when Adam sought specific information about methods. But Adam had learned how to bypass those safeguards by saying the requests were for a story he was writing
Somehow it's ChatGPT's fault?