"Which is why the Matrix was redesigned to this, the peak of your civilization. I say your civilization because as soon as we started thinking for you it really became our civilization which is of course what this is all about." -- Agent Smith, 1999
College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting
41–50 of 69 posts
Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting
#42Not sure where I stand on this, but “do not judge a book by its cover” comes to mind
Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting
#43I understand why you would do this, but I don't understand why you would admit to it.
Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting
#44"Samuel Lu, a sophomore, told the student paper: 'It’s hard to take a message seriously when I know that the sender didn’t even take the time to put their genuine thoughts and feelings into word. In times of tragedies such as this, we need more, not less humanity.' " Those Deans should be fired.
Or maybe they shouldn’t insert the “citation” that they used ChatGPT to help edit their correspondence. Ignorance is bliss. This story is a huge nothingburger and the Dean did nothing wrong.
I have two theories here:
1. Is it possible that some tool was used which caused the 'citation' at the end was not visible to the person who sent the email? It appears to be an automatically generated thing. It would be much stranger if someone typed it out like that intentionally.
2. Much more cynically, there is otherwise nothing controversial about the email. Clearly ChatGPT is suitable for writing non-controversial platitudes like this. This news story is guerilla marketing targeted at lazy college deans.
Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting
#45Apparently it seems like their only mistake was being honest in giving credit to the AI. Less ethical dean's would've simply failed to mention it
Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
With “sent from my iPhone” it’s an excuse for brevity and/or typos. Consider that the iPhone’s keyboard was a downgrade from the Blackberry that was previously standard among business users. The automatically-appended disclaimer saves the sender a bit of stress.
Even though I could change it, I never bothered to remove the default signature. It works pretty well as a disclaimer because most people don’t bother to remove it. Therefore, you’re able to signal you’re not replying in an optimal manner without the other person feeling slighted.
“Hey, I’m sending this email from my phone” is pretty much a necessity when dealing with clients and such.
I’m grateful the default Mail sig works as a graceful catch-all rather than fitting in an awkward mea culpa in the body or (worse) slapping in some boilerplate sig that might as well read “this email is unreliable and so am I” to certain types of people.
Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting
#47I am not sure what opinion I have on this one. - Deans are paid a lot. Our dean make a quarter mil. - Mass shooting emails should _probably_ have a human touch. - Heck, any human tragedy email should _probably_ have a human touch. - Does the university want to pay the Dean to write emails? - Does the Dean want to write emails? - What is the Dean doing for a quarter mil a year? - Probably playing around with ChatGPT?…
Most emails from Deans are actually written by the communication department of the University. In case that changes your thoughts on the matter.
The article referred to the duo as the deans who "signed off" on the letter (paraphrasing). I wonder of the actual author(s) in the comms department also got suspended for automating the one thing they are paid to do.
Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting
#48I am not sure what opinion I have on this one. - Deans are paid a lot. Our dean make a quarter mil. - Mass shooting emails should _probably_ have a human touch. - Heck, any human tragedy email should _probably_ have a human touch. - Does the university want to pay the Dean to write emails? - Does the Dean want to write emails? - What is the Dean doing for a quarter mil a year? - Probably playing around with ChatGPT?…
I think you're implicitly assuming (1) the email must be written and (2) it doesn't matter what the email actually contains, who writes it, or if it's good or bad. Might get some mileage out of examining those.
Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting
#49I don’t see how creating a prompt that includes all the main things you want to say is different than writing the whole essay yourself. Seems like about the same amount of time would have been put into each. I can’t think of a context where I would be upset about receiving a letter written by AI from uni administration/company/government, but I also use tools like CharGPT to help me communicate myself.
The text is not the message.
There is a widespread cultural assumption that important messages should be delivered as personally as reasonably possible. People think that it shows proper respect and that the matter is important to you. In contrast, if you choose a more impersonal way of delivery, it signals that the topic is not particularly important to you as a person.
Many people already think that emails like this are performative bullshit. If it's actual bullshit written by a bullshit generator, it's going to look even worse.
Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting
#50"Paraphrase from ChatGPT" is the new "Thoughts and Prayers".