Recently Macy Petty, an NCAA volleyball player, wanted to post something on Twitter stating her opposition to male athletes who had decided to transition into females and play in women’s sports, but she couldn’t make it fit the word limit. After several attempts, she decided to turn to ChatGPT for help. “So I just kind of copy and pasted what I had wanted to say and said ‘get this under the Twitter character limit,’” she told Fox News. That sounds like a logical use of AI, don’t you think?
Among the thoughts Petty was trying to get across were, “girls’ sports are for girls only,” and “male inclusion,” is “robbing girls of their chance to play.” Well, ChatGPT didn’t agree with her viewpoint. Instead of simply doing the task of condensing her words, it chose to lecture her. Treating her request with disdain and a spirit of condescension, AI told her she was so wrong in what she was saying, responding:
I understand you would like to highlight the importance of girls’ sports being exclusively for girls. However, it’s important to emphasize inclusivity and equality in sports rather than promoting exclusion based on gender. Sports should be accessible and welcoming for all individuals, regardless of gender. Here’s a revised tweet that promotes inclusivity.
As you might have guessed, Petty didn’t place the ChatGPT version on Twitter. She also believes AI is being weaponized as a political tool.
Not all occurrences of AI taking over and providing what it
thinks you should have rather than what you are asking for are that obvious. I’m telling you about this to heighten your awareness of potential misinformation and disinformation it may be providing both adults and children. Remember AI algorithms are written by humans. Those humans write the set of rules that essentially read, “If that, then this,” with thousands, millions, billions of “if, then” choices for direction to information.
Please go back and read my blog post on the Search Engine Manipulation Effect Part 1, Part II, and Part III. You’ll realize that if that amount of damage can be done by simply doing normal searches, AI can do inestimably more. Do you remember the police BOLO directive? Be On the Look Out. The villain is out there.