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College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting

dailymail.co.uk

51–60 of 69 posts

Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting

#51
I'm heavily on the spectrum, and sorry, but I don't see anything wrong with using chat GPT to polish up communication.

My guess is these deans too are heavily on the spectrum.

Many times in my life what seemed normal and okay to me, was severely offensive to others. It's a cross I have to bear.

Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting

#52
Public comms are always a charade. In fact I’d go so far as to say I think communication in general is just a game where you try to say the right thing and create the right impression. Expecting “genuine feeling” from other people, much less from a public statement, is a big misunderstanding of how social interaction works.

The dean who wrote this message doesn’t care about the students. She doesn’t know them. She’s fulfilling a role where she acts as a figurehead that students can project feelings of compassion onto. Like any other job, this one also involves some degree of drudgery, such as writing emails like this. It’s good that ChatGPT can make her life easier by automating that task. Her actual fault was accidentally admitting to it and ruining her image as a figurehead, which is her actual job. But if you’re looking for a referendum on the dangers of ChatGPT on society or something, this story isn’t it.

Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting

#53
post #14

Earlier 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.

that's one take. Personally I think it was motivated by trying to create a marketed feeling of exclusivity , drive a stake between Those With and Those Without, and alienate those without into buying an iProduct and joining The Club.

Or more simply to convey "I sent this email while on the go so without access to my pc/office/documents/files/etc". Gives important context.

Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting

#54
I can understand why someone would think it's ok to use this tool, and I can understand why some people are upset by it. I hope that they will take a lenient approach in this case considering that the norms in this space haven't been firmly established yet, even if we ultimately decide that going forward communication of this magnitude has to be handwritten.

Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting

#55
post #30

I 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?…

Haha, this is why sometimes people don't really like "five whys" - you can get to an uncomfortable place pretty quickly... Q1. Why was the service down for so long? A1: Because the on-call engineer didn't respond to the pager Q2: Why didn't the on-call engineer respond? A2: Because they're exhausted from being on-call so often since the team was downsized Q3: Why was the team downsized? A3: Because the manager's mana…

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Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting

#56
I'm very confused by how this occurred. Did the school implement a policy that it's okay to send out AI generated emails so long as the use of AI is disclosed? Did the sender not proofread the email and notice that it mentioned ChatGPT at the bottom? What other emails are being sent out without a human so much as bothering to look at them?

Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting

#57
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think the source is bad for whatever reason, could you link some that you think are better?

In case parent comment context is not clear, since it is UK-specific: the Daily Mail has a bit of a reputation in the Uk among some for being low quality and inflammatory.

But is it good for the purposes of this article? It's not like its a wordpress or similar. I think the China in the cabinet will remain intact.

Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting

#58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the only thing they did wrong. Why mention you used ChatGPT? It's like emails that end with "sent from my iPhone" like who cares what technology you used to send an email?

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.

[deleted]

Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting

#59

Public comms are always a charade. In fact I’d go so far as to say I think communication in general is just a game where you try to say the right thing and create the right impression. Expecting “genuine feeling” from other people, much less from a public statement, is a big misunderstanding of how social interaction works. The dean who wrote this message doesn’t care about the students. She doesn’t know them. She’s…

You it the nail on the head.

Re: College deans suspended after ChatGPT used to email students about mass shooting

#60

If you’re just wondering how students knew that the email was written using ChatGPT, the last line of the email weirdly reads “Paraphrase from OpenAI's ChatGPT AI language model, personal communication, February 15, 2023”.

Models that recognize chatgpt also seem to pick it up easily though [0]. Adding it in the email is quite weird though. Or maybe they agreed that is was fine to do so (generating this email by an AI), which is indeed tonedeaf.

[0] https://filteroutai.com/validate/114ddca7445e6b5119715111623...

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