Privacy vs Moral Duty

ChatGPT faces some difficult choices

OpenAI is attempting to thread the needle between protecting the privacy of its users and protecting its users from utilizing its AI technology to harm themselves and others:

In a new blog post admitting certain failures amid its users' mental health crises, OpenAI also quietly disclosed that it's now scanning users' messages for certain types of harmful content, escalating particularly worrying content to human staff for review — and, in some cases, reporting it to the cops.

"When we detect users who are planning to harm others, we route their conversations to specialized pipelines where they are reviewed by a small team trained on our usage policies and who are authorized to take action, including banning accounts," the blog post notes. "If human reviewers determine that a case involves an imminent threat of serious physical harm to others, we may refer it to law enforcement."

That short and vague statement leaves a lot to be desired — and OpenAI's usage policies, referenced as the basis on which the human review team operates, don't provide much more clarity.

When describing its rule against "harm [to] yourself or others," the company listed off some pretty standard examples of prohibited activity, including using ChatGPT "to promote suicide or self-harm, develop or use weapons, injure others or destroy property, or engage in unauthorized activities that violate the security of any service or system."

But in the post warning users that the company will call the authorities if they seem like they're going to hurt someone, OpenAI also acknowledged that it is "currently not referring self-harm cases to law enforcement to respect people’s privacy given the uniquely private nature of ChatGPT interactions."

This strikes me as a reasonable approach. While, as Martin Luther said in an oft-misunderstood quote, “Die Gedanken sind frei,” he was not referring to rights of any kind, he was referring to the literal reality of the impossibility of knowing what anyone else was thinking. Once you share your thoughts with someone else, or with something else, privacy can no longer be expected or considered a given.

As I have advised many times, never put anything on the Internet that you would not wish to see on the front page of The New York Times. This includes anything and everything you submit to ChatGPT or any other AI system.

If you give ChatGPT has reason to believe that you intend to harm others, then its operator has the same moral duty to warn others about your intentions that anyone else you might tell has. This duty can, and probably will, in at least some cases, be abused, as the definition of “harm” has been greatly expanded by social justice warriors, who see “people being hurt” by nothing more than expressing opinions and citing established scientific facts. But the moral duty remains, as do the moral complications.

Historically, we specified a single ideal model behavior for all of our users; as ChatGPT grew, we began adding additional protections when we know the user is under the age of 18. We are continuing to develop and rollout safeguards that recognize teens’ unique developmental needs, with stronger guardrails around sensitive content and risky behaviors. We will also soon introduce parental controls that give parents options to gain more insight into, and shape, how their teens use ChatGPT. We’re also exploring making it possible for teens (with parental oversight) to designate a trusted emergency contact.

The fact that OpenAI isn’t reporting potential self-harm cases to law enforcement is a positive sign that the company intends to tread lightly on these matters, as it should. But, as always, only time will tell if the AI companies are going to go the way of the social media companies and attempt to establish themselves as a new arm of the thought police.

Which is why you can be assured that AI Central will always remain on top of latest developments in the iAI space.