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Vanderbilt University apologizes for ChaptGPT email after Michigan shooting

33 points by ljf 4y ago

uonpopular_th 4y ago
Did anyone check if they also used ChatGPT to write the apology?
andrewfromx 4y ago
So the mistake was to leave the footer disclaimer in the email admitting it was AI generated or the mistake was using AI in the first place? If a human came up with the exact same words and the footer said “100% human writing” there would also be people upset?
- NickC25 4y ago
  I think the issue is more macro than an AI generated piece of content. It's more the fact of the matter that an AI was deployed to communicate to students in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a university, rather than a human touch. Why was the author even considering using AI in the first place? You're communicating to a bunch of students who are scared shitless that a shooting could happen at their school, because they've grown up with school shootings being the norm. This is the first generation born with Columbine fresh in their parents' minds, and they had to come of age with the likes of Sandy Hook, Parkland, and Virginia Tech happening. It should sound obvious, but such communication requires a human touch.
  - andrewfromx 4y ago
    But that’s my question. If the AI generated the exact same words a human touch person would have is disclosing the author necessary?
    - tablespoon 4y ago
      > But that’s my question. If the AI generated the exact same words a human touch person would have is disclosing the author necessary? Honestly, the disclosure probably had nothing to do with the message itself. I'm sure it was all about institutional beliefs and policies regarding plagiarism. If some student took credit for an unattributed ChatGPT essay, they'd probably be pitilessly be given a zero at best. However, including the disclaimer totally undermined the message (which was a pro-forma thing no one would probably have cared about otherwise). The message said "we care," but the disclaimer said "but not that much," and that would understandably offend people if noticed.
      - ciabattabread 4y ago
        But it isn’t about the plagiarism. It’s confirmation that the institution only cares about empty platitudes while not really doing anything else to help their students. And if they’re not helpful, why does their job exist?
        ModernMech 4y ago
        Empty platitudes are all they have to offer. What are they supposed to do? Lie and say it'll never happen again? Lie and say they have the power to prevent it? Or to effect meaningful change? Tell the truth that the students in fact are at risk and there's nothing anyone at the university can actually do to prevent it? The futility of the whole situation has resulted in a culture of ceremony around the devastation as a way to cope. Now that people have violated the coping ceremony, we're mad at them. But why? Because we are powerful enough to at least scold them in an attempt to preserve the coping ceremony. But they're not the ones shooting people. They're not the ones directing policy that causes mass shootings. Instead, we need to direct all that anger to changing the situation such that they never are put in a position of writing letters about shotting victims. Instead of smugly stating they are worthless people because their jobs can be replaced by a chatbot, we should question why it is the case that someone's job is to write condolence letters after shootings. Why aren't we mad that's an acceptable job function in the US? The solution students are looking for is not more empathy toward shooting victims, it's fewer shooting victims in the first place!
        4y ago
    - fwlr 4y ago
      Yes. You can argue about the bytestrings being identical until the cows come home, but the vast majority of people believe that natural language text has invisible metadata tags denoting who wrote it and why. When the task is “communicating with people”, you have to respect their consensus reality.
      - andrewfromx 4y ago
        Warning: cows coming home. Invisible meta tags? That sounds like a religion faith argument vs science! Something we can’t see and a string comparison == comes back true and yet somehow there is a difference? ASCII text is just numbers. If all the numbers are the same I don’t see where the invisible meta tags exist unless you mean like in a spiritual plane.
        fwlr 4y ago
        No, you’re right, the invisible metatags do not exist, not even in a spiritual plane. Nevertheless, most people believe they do exist, although they would not use the phrase “invisible metatags”. To put the “respect their consensus reality” claim into a different format: every computer’s implementation of == will return true for the two strings, but most human brain implementations of == will return false - i.e. the difference isn’t in the string, it’s in the comparator function. The human brain implementation is obviously bugged, but the maintainer (whether God or evolution) isn’t accepting pull requests, so the bug is unlikely to ever be fixed. If you have to interface with the human implementation anyway, you simply have to account for this oddity. It’s like supporting Internet Explorer on your website.
        andrewfromx 4y ago
        Wow. Great analogy with IE! You make good points. Touché.
    - sorokod 4y ago
      I think that the way you get to the content is also important. If you are looking at a copy (good enough so you can't tell the difference) of painting by Rembrandt, you should be informed that it is a copy. Same with words. Provenance for text will be a thing.
    - phailhaus 4y ago
      By definition, the AI cannot and will never generate the exact same words as the PR person themselves. The community wanted the university spokesperson to respond. They did not, they outsourced the job. And you might say "what's the difference???" and what you have to realize is, this is entirely emotional and that is the point. The community wants real empathy. They do not believe they are getting it, and you can't logic your way out of that.
    - Arkhaine_kupo 4y ago
      Yes. And this is a great example as to why. Think about the effect on the writer, in one case you need to sit down and face the blank page finding the right words to reassure, calm down and empathise with young adults who are scared and look up to you. You might even change as a person, just by the mere act of having to find those words and thinking about what those kids need and feel. In AI generated text you can just ask for platitudes, copy paste, send and never have to confront anything. You can borderline become a worse person by becoming calloused at how easy it is to have to face a difficult situation The words themselves are fairly unimportant in this whole situation, what people want out of the letter is to be heard, understood and have actual leadership. By having a glorified clippy write it for you, you are letting them down regardless of the quality of the text
      - ModernMech 4y ago
        So you're saying the problem is that the administrator didn't reflect enough on the situation when using AI to compose the the letter. But how do you know? Is the problem that the recipients of the letter aren't sure whether the author grew while composing it?
        Arkhaine_kupo 4y ago
        I am saying the point of even sending the letter is to demostrate leadership and empathy. Two things delegating the task to a pimpied up suggestion engine fails miserably at.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    I'm not of that generation, but it's my impression they don't care whether the empty words come from a person, a politician, or a greeting card company; and they certainly don't care if the empty words come from the brain of a university administrator or a website they visited. The words are all equally empty. The only thing that matters is a cultural change that will lead to fewer mass shootings. Getting angry at university administrators for whatever lack of empathy they demonstrate is myopic. There's plenty enough reason for people to get angry about the way things are, but this is the wrong thing to be mad about. > Why was the author even considering using AI in the first place? Maybe because there aren't anymore words to be said about these things. They happen so frequently, that the expectation is words will be said after the fact, rather than action will be taken to prevent the next occurrence. So here we are, days after the shooting, mad at the words someone said after the shooting, rather than the fact there was a shooting. Who here is still mad about the shooting? Who here is going to do something today to make the next shooting less likely?
    - NickC25 4y ago
      >Who here is still mad about the shooting? Who here is going to do something today to make the next shooting less likely? I'm still mad about Sandy Hook. That's in my home county. I'm still mad about Tucson - that was the local grocery store I went to during school. I'm still mad about Virginia Tech, I'm still mad about Vegas, and every other mass shooting. I'm still mad that it took Alex Jones nearly a decade to be convicted for the continued harassment and verbal abuse of people that had to deal with their 6 year olds get shot up by a psycho while sitting in 1st grade class. Unfortunately, there's a powerful voting bloc both in DC and around the US that will vote to make sure nothing happens. Forget about enforcing the laws on the books - lots of police sheriffs around the nation have said they have no interest in doing so.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  No? The issue is that a tragedy happened and the community wants their leaders to show a shred of empathy. If people found out that the text came from a website selling email templates written by humans, they would still be upset.
  - cld8483 4y ago
    If it came on a Hallmark "special event" card from the grocery store instead, would Hallmark catch flak? Or would this transfer of blame only occur if computers were involved?
    - mcbuilder 4y ago
      Yeah, I remember how things were before yuge public LLM (don't you? it was like a few months ago), and a PR official would have roasted for picking a Hallmark card at anytime in my lifetime.
      - cld8483 4y ago
        I think it's exactly the sort of thing an institution might do and it would probably pass without much remark, because people don't actually expect better from office flunkies in PR or HR who are personally detached from the whole situation. This Valentine's Day my (very corporate) landlord paid somebody to hang a little bag containing confetti, a small twix candy bar and a mechanical pencil on my door. What am I, in third grade? Totally tone deaf, but what can I really expect from a soulless corporation?
        jakelazaroff 4y ago
        You understand how a Valentine’s Day card is different from a response to a mass shooting in which three people were murdered, right?
        cld8483 4y ago
        If I wound up in the hospital with cancer, getting a Hallmark card from HR is precisely the kind of insensitive BS I would expect. This is just the way organizations behave, you need friends/family if you want to receive genuine expressions of empathy.
- deleted 4y ago
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tablespoon 4y ago
This is unacceptable anti-AI discrimination!
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  Not inclusive at all!
jmacd 4y ago
The techno optimist in me sees this as so cute and quaint. In the future all of these messages may very well be generated based on rules and training provided by the organization itself. Hand crafting communication will fall in to the "why bother?" bucket of work. The only difference will be that nobody will ever put a message in the footer to declare it was generated by AI. The cultural Rubicon has probably been crossed already, or will be soon.
- uonpopular_th 4y ago
  It's like a wind powered Tibetan prayer wheel. It can say the right things for me so I get forgiveness without actually doing anything.
- tablespoon 4y ago
  > Hand crafting communication will fall in to the "why bother?" bucket of work. For these kinds of communications, probably. I don't think anyone is ever really looking for words of comfort from their university administrators, but sending something out is socially expected of them. It's kind of like a greeting card someone just signs and sends out instead of writing a personal note in.
meindnoch 4y ago
I wonder what the prompt was. "You're a PR administrator of an American college. Write 5 paragraphs with platitudes on the importance of inclusion and diversity in response to a recent shooting on campus."
- dpkirchner 4y ago
  Maybe next time they should send out prompts. "Please input this text into ChatGPT to get a somewhat unique letter of sympathy and regret about the recent shooting. If you would like additional comfort, the bot will accommodate. See you at class!"
- yieldcrv 4y ago
  First ChatGPT response: Recent events, such as the tragic shooting that occurred, highlight the need for us to come together as a community and promote acceptance and understanding of all individuals. At our college, we are committed to creating an environment where all students, faculty, and staff feel welcome and valued. We believe that diversity and inclusion are critical components of a successful learning experience, and we are dedicated to ensuring that all members of our community feel safe and supported. We recognize that there is still much work to be done in order to achieve true equity and inclusivity on campus. We are committed to engaging in open and honest dialogue about issues related to diversity and inclusion, and we will continue to strive for progress in this area. In the wake of recent events, we are reminded that it is our responsibility to stand up against hate and intolerance in all its forms. We must work together to promote understanding and empathy, and to create a campus culture that celebrates diversity and values the unique perspectives and experiences of all individuals. In conclusion, our college remains steadfast in our commitment to creating an inclusive and diverse campus community. We believe that this is not only important for the well-being of our students, faculty, and staff, but also for the advancement of knowledge and the betterment of society as a whole. We stand together in condemning acts of violence and hatred, and we will continue to work towards a brighter and more equitable future for all. Actual memo: Dear Peabody Family The recent Michigan shootings are a tragic reminder of the importance of taking care of each other, particularly in the context of creating inclusive environments. As members of the Peabody campus community, we must reflect on the impact of such an event and take steps to ensure that we are doing our best to create a safe and inclusive environment for all. One of the key ways to promote a culture of care on our campus is through building strong relationships with one another. This involves actively engaging with people from different backgrounds and perspectives, listening to their stories, and showing empathy and support. We can also look out for one another by noticing signs of distress and offering support to those who may be struggling with mental health issues. Another important aspect of creating an inclusive environment is to promote a culture of respect and understanding. This means valuing the diversity of experiences, perspectives, and identities on our campus, and actively working to create a space where everyone feels welcomed and supported. We can do this by listening to one another, seeking out new perspectives, and challenging our own assumptions and biases. Finally, we must recognize that creating a safe and inclusive environment is an ongoing process that requires ongoing effort and commitment. We must continue to engage in conversations about how we can do better, learn from our mistakes, and work together to build a stronger, more inclusive community. In the wake of the Michigan shootings, let us come together as a community to reaffirm our commitment to caring for one another and promoting a culture of inclusivity on our campus. By doing so, we can honor the victims of this tragedy and work towards a safer, more compassionate future for all.
web3-is-a-scam 4y ago
"chatgpt helps me sound more empathatic in my correspondance" The only reason this is a story is a handful of overly sensitive and loud people saw the disclaimer. Do people get upset when someone uses grammer and spelling checks in Word? Of course not, that's silly. This is the same thing. Total nothingburger. Next time just don't include the disclaimer, and nobody will know the difference.
- jakelazaroff 4y ago
  Yes, having ChatGPT write the entire email is just like Clippy reminding me that I missed the apostrophe in “it’s” /s It’s like I said in another comment. The issue here isn’t ChatGPT; it’s that the leaders have shown the community they don’t care. The response would be the same if it came out that they used a prewritten email template.
  - web3-is-a-scam 4y ago
    Did ChatGPT write the entire thing or was it edited afterward. If I have trouble putting things into words myself but I prompt an AI to write an empathatic email and then tweak it a little bit, what's wrong with that? Would you rather I write no email or write an insensitive one? It's highly unluckly the entire email was just generated and sent out verbatim.
    - jakelazaroff 4y ago
      > If I have trouble putting things into words myself but I prompt an AI to write an empathatic email and then tweak it a little bit, what's wrong with that? It betrays a lack of empathy that you weren’t even willing to take the time to write a personal email to the community in the wake of a horrible tragedy. > Would you rather I write no email or write an insensitive one? I’d rather you write a sensitive one.
      - web3-is-a-scam 4y ago
        > I'd rather you write a sensitive one. Some people are completely incapable of this, through no fault of their own, even though they feel empathy internally - they just struggle to externalize it. We should be encouraging people to use tools that can help to improve expressions of empathy, not shaming people for not being able to do it.
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trieste92 4y ago
If we're in a place where we no longer need to waste 6 figure salaries on administrators and provosts so they can churn out boilerplate by hand, why even hire them in the first place?
- ramraj07 4y ago
  Because they hire themselves. There is just no way you can remove middling beauracracy without a full purge of the entire system. Which academia is ripe to have IMO.
FigurativeVoid 4y ago
This is the worst version of the robot voice "thanking me for my patience." Human tragedy requires human response.
- toomuchtodo 4y ago
  Human empathy is in short supply overall.
- uonpopular_th 4y ago
  If that were the case why are we letting bureaucrats write these?
deleted 4y ago
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jwilk 4y ago
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886629 (> 60 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34855265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34855265 (> 80 comments)
ouid 4y ago
I've noticed that MBA speak is the most difficult to distinguish from chatGPT output. Chatgpt has structural cues, but other than that its content free in almost exactly the same way that the usual, say, condolence letter is. Almost like the administrators themselves are only mimicking human intelligence.
29athrowaway 4y ago
typo: ChaptGPT
at_a_remove 4y ago
Why would these two DEI people do this? Are they that busy fighting for equity?
underbluewaters 4y ago
I don't believe anyone could sincerely have thought this was a good idea. Maybe this was a petulant act from a dean that didn't think they should have to respond to every tragedy?
bragr 4y ago
Part of me thinks the only thing they did wrong was admit to using ChatGPT. Given how routine and formulaic these statements have become, presumably ChatGPT would excel at them. I bet if we pull some statements from other universities, they all read the same. I've been out of university for over a decade and even then these were routine.
throw7 4y ago
What does vanderbilt dei office have anything to do with michigan shooting? Was there some link between dei and the shooting? If there was, it would've been good to detail it in the email. But anyway, kudos for them to credit chatgpt as co-author I guess.
LeifCarrotson 4y ago
I see choices that are similarly confusing in my very different industrial/manufacturing work, and I think I finally understand the motivation: Large organizations are very different from small ones. Large organizations seek to turn human labor into a commodity in order to reduce risk, they cannot rely on creativity or autonomy. At an individual or small-business scale, when you need to write a response to a recent event, you just have an intelligent human being with good communication skills write the email. Vanderbilt has 4,470 non-academic staff - which is a lot, and seems even larger when compared to 4,783 faculty, most of whom work in the med center. With more than 4000 staff, the organization doesn't want to trust that the ~~person~~ committee assigned to write the email (or their style editor, or copy editors, or the paralegal validating the email, or the administrator overseeing the process, etc. etc.) will do a good job. I'm not saying that those people aren't intelligent or don't have good communication skills, but they're not uniform, and Vanderbilt values reliability, uniformity, and risk mitigation differently than a small organization would. You write emails with ChatGPT not because any individual finds it easier than writing the email by hand, but because that's a way to write an email that can be made into a process, and followed step-by-step. It continues to work even if the entire staff is replaced. The emails will look the same whether they're generated by the senior editor, or by the intern. You don't need a "style guide" that's rigidly adhered to and defines whether the email should be written from a first-person perspective or second-person perspective.
al_be_back 4y ago
I don't think the issue here is Writing, but rather Reading, and not only the textual output, but also the Situation. p.s. ChaptGPT :P
motohagiography 4y ago
This is a perfect and quintessential example of what "AI" is used for - diffusing accountability away from individuals and onto committees and organizations where it can be neutralized and denied. Using chatgpt to generate an apology from a bureaucracy is the most-AI thing I have ever heard, it's the quiet part out loud.

33 points by ljf 4y ago

Did anyone check if they also used ChatGPT to write the apology?

So the mistake was to leave the footer disclaimer in the email admitting it was AI generated or the mistake was using AI in the first place? If a human came up with the exact same words and the footer said “100% human writing” there would also be people upset?

NickC25 4y ago
I think the issue is more macro than an AI generated piece of content. It's more the fact of the matter that an AI was deployed to communicate to students in the aftermath of a mass shooting at a university, rather than a human touch. Why was the author even considering using AI in the first place? You're communicating to a bunch of students who are scared shitless that a shooting could happen at their school, because they've grown up with school shootings being the norm. This is the first generation born with Columbine fresh in their parents' minds, and they had to come of age with the likes of Sandy Hook, Parkland, and Virginia Tech happening. It should sound obvious, but such communication requires a human touch.
- andrewfromx 4y ago
  But that’s my question. If the AI generated the exact same words a human touch person would have is disclosing the author necessary?
  - tablespoon 4y ago
    > But that’s my question. If the AI generated the exact same words a human touch person would have is disclosing the author necessary? Honestly, the disclosure probably had nothing to do with the message itself. I'm sure it was all about institutional beliefs and policies regarding plagiarism. If some student took credit for an unattributed ChatGPT essay, they'd probably be pitilessly be given a zero at best. However, including the disclaimer totally undermined the message (which was a pro-forma thing no one would probably have cared about otherwise). The message said "we care," but the disclaimer said "but not that much," and that would understandably offend people if noticed.
    - ciabattabread 4y ago
      But it isn’t about the plagiarism. It’s confirmation that the institution only cares about empty platitudes while not really doing anything else to help their students. And if they’re not helpful, why does their job exist?
      - ModernMech 4y ago
        Empty platitudes are all they have to offer. What are they supposed to do? Lie and say it'll never happen again? Lie and say they have the power to prevent it? Or to effect meaningful change? Tell the truth that the students in fact are at risk and there's nothing anyone at the university can actually do to prevent it? The futility of the whole situation has resulted in a culture of ceremony around the devastation as a way to cope. Now that people have violated the coping ceremony, we're mad at them. But why? Because we are powerful enough to at least scold them in an attempt to preserve the coping ceremony. But they're not the ones shooting people. They're not the ones directing policy that causes mass shootings. Instead, we need to direct all that anger to changing the situation such that they never are put in a position of writing letters about shotting victims. Instead of smugly stating they are worthless people because their jobs can be replaced by a chatbot, we should question why it is the case that someone's job is to write condolence letters after shootings. Why aren't we mad that's an acceptable job function in the US? The solution students are looking for is not more empathy toward shooting victims, it's fewer shooting victims in the first place!
      - 4y ago
  - fwlr 4y ago
    Yes. You can argue about the bytestrings being identical until the cows come home, but the vast majority of people believe that natural language text has invisible metadata tags denoting who wrote it and why. When the task is “communicating with people”, you have to respect their consensus reality.
    - andrewfromx 4y ago
      Warning: cows coming home. Invisible meta tags? That sounds like a religion faith argument vs science! Something we can’t see and a string comparison == comes back true and yet somehow there is a difference? ASCII text is just numbers. If all the numbers are the same I don’t see where the invisible meta tags exist unless you mean like in a spiritual plane.
      - fwlr 4y ago
        No, you’re right, the invisible metatags do not exist, not even in a spiritual plane. Nevertheless, most people believe they do exist, although they would not use the phrase “invisible metatags”. To put the “respect their consensus reality” claim into a different format: every computer’s implementation of == will return true for the two strings, but most human brain implementations of == will return false - i.e. the difference isn’t in the string, it’s in the comparator function. The human brain implementation is obviously bugged, but the maintainer (whether God or evolution) isn’t accepting pull requests, so the bug is unlikely to ever be fixed. If you have to interface with the human implementation anyway, you simply have to account for this oddity. It’s like supporting Internet Explorer on your website.
        andrewfromx 4y ago
        Wow. Great analogy with IE! You make good points. Touché.
  - sorokod 4y ago
    I think that the way you get to the content is also important. If you are looking at a copy (good enough so you can't tell the difference) of painting by Rembrandt, you should be informed that it is a copy. Same with words. Provenance for text will be a thing.
  - phailhaus 4y ago
    By definition, the AI cannot and will never generate the exact same words as the PR person themselves. The community wanted the university spokesperson to respond. They did not, they outsourced the job. And you might say "what's the difference???" and what you have to realize is, this is entirely emotional and that is the point. The community wants real empathy. They do not believe they are getting it, and you can't logic your way out of that.
  - Arkhaine_kupo 4y ago
    Yes. And this is a great example as to why. Think about the effect on the writer, in one case you need to sit down and face the blank page finding the right words to reassure, calm down and empathise with young adults who are scared and look up to you. You might even change as a person, just by the mere act of having to find those words and thinking about what those kids need and feel. In AI generated text you can just ask for platitudes, copy paste, send and never have to confront anything. You can borderline become a worse person by becoming calloused at how easy it is to have to face a difficult situation The words themselves are fairly unimportant in this whole situation, what people want out of the letter is to be heard, understood and have actual leadership. By having a glorified clippy write it for you, you are letting them down regardless of the quality of the text
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      So you're saying the problem is that the administrator didn't reflect enough on the situation when using AI to compose the the letter. But how do you know? Is the problem that the recipients of the letter aren't sure whether the author grew while composing it?
      - Arkhaine_kupo 4y ago
        I am saying the point of even sending the letter is to demostrate leadership and empathy. Two things delegating the task to a pimpied up suggestion engine fails miserably at.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  I'm not of that generation, but it's my impression they don't care whether the empty words come from a person, a politician, or a greeting card company; and they certainly don't care if the empty words come from the brain of a university administrator or a website they visited. The words are all equally empty. The only thing that matters is a cultural change that will lead to fewer mass shootings. Getting angry at university administrators for whatever lack of empathy they demonstrate is myopic. There's plenty enough reason for people to get angry about the way things are, but this is the wrong thing to be mad about. > Why was the author even considering using AI in the first place? Maybe because there aren't anymore words to be said about these things. They happen so frequently, that the expectation is words will be said after the fact, rather than action will be taken to prevent the next occurrence. So here we are, days after the shooting, mad at the words someone said after the shooting, rather than the fact there was a shooting. Who here is still mad about the shooting? Who here is going to do something today to make the next shooting less likely?
  - NickC25 4y ago
    >Who here is still mad about the shooting? Who here is going to do something today to make the next shooting less likely? I'm still mad about Sandy Hook. That's in my home county. I'm still mad about Tucson - that was the local grocery store I went to during school. I'm still mad about Virginia Tech, I'm still mad about Vegas, and every other mass shooting. I'm still mad that it took Alex Jones nearly a decade to be convicted for the continued harassment and verbal abuse of people that had to deal with their 6 year olds get shot up by a psycho while sitting in 1st grade class. Unfortunately, there's a powerful voting bloc both in DC and around the US that will vote to make sure nothing happens. Forget about enforcing the laws on the books - lots of police sheriffs around the nation have said they have no interest in doing so.
jakelazaroff 4y ago
No? The issue is that a tragedy happened and the community wants their leaders to show a shred of empathy. If people found out that the text came from a website selling email templates written by humans, they would still be upset.
- cld8483 4y ago
  If it came on a Hallmark "special event" card from the grocery store instead, would Hallmark catch flak? Or would this transfer of blame only occur if computers were involved?
  - mcbuilder 4y ago
    Yeah, I remember how things were before yuge public LLM (don't you? it was like a few months ago), and a PR official would have roasted for picking a Hallmark card at anytime in my lifetime.
    - cld8483 4y ago
      I think it's exactly the sort of thing an institution might do and it would probably pass without much remark, because people don't actually expect better from office flunkies in PR or HR who are personally detached from the whole situation. This Valentine's Day my (very corporate) landlord paid somebody to hang a little bag containing confetti, a small twix candy bar and a mechanical pencil on my door. What am I, in third grade? Totally tone deaf, but what can I really expect from a soulless corporation?
      - jakelazaroff 4y ago
        You understand how a Valentine’s Day card is different from a response to a mass shooting in which three people were murdered, right?
        cld8483 4y ago
        If I wound up in the hospital with cancer, getting a Hallmark card from HR is precisely the kind of insensitive BS I would expect. This is just the way organizations behave, you need friends/family if you want to receive genuine expressions of empathy.
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tablespoon 4y ago

This is unacceptable anti-AI discrimination!

yieldcrv 4y ago
Not inclusive at all!

jmacd 4y ago

The techno optimist in me sees this as so cute and quaint. In the future all of these messages may very well be generated based on rules and training provided by the organization itself. Hand crafting communication will fall in to the "why bother?" bucket of work. The only difference will be that nobody will ever put a message in the footer to declare it was generated by AI. The cultural Rubicon has probably been crossed already, or will be soon.

uonpopular_th 4y ago
It's like a wind powered Tibetan prayer wheel. It can say the right things for me so I get forgiveness without actually doing anything.
tablespoon 4y ago
> Hand crafting communication will fall in to the "why bother?" bucket of work. For these kinds of communications, probably. I don't think anyone is ever really looking for words of comfort from their university administrators, but sending something out is socially expected of them. It's kind of like a greeting card someone just signs and sends out instead of writing a personal note in.

meindnoch 4y ago

I wonder what the prompt was. "You're a PR administrator of an American college. Write 5 paragraphs with platitudes on the importance of inclusion and diversity in response to a recent shooting on campus."

dpkirchner 4y ago
Maybe next time they should send out prompts. "Please input this text into ChatGPT to get a somewhat unique letter of sympathy and regret about the recent shooting. If you would like additional comfort, the bot will accommodate. See you at class!"
yieldcrv 4y ago
First ChatGPT response: Recent events, such as the tragic shooting that occurred, highlight the need for us to come together as a community and promote acceptance and understanding of all individuals. At our college, we are committed to creating an environment where all students, faculty, and staff feel welcome and valued. We believe that diversity and inclusion are critical components of a successful learning experience, and we are dedicated to ensuring that all members of our community feel safe and supported. We recognize that there is still much work to be done in order to achieve true equity and inclusivity on campus. We are committed to engaging in open and honest dialogue about issues related to diversity and inclusion, and we will continue to strive for progress in this area. In the wake of recent events, we are reminded that it is our responsibility to stand up against hate and intolerance in all its forms. We must work together to promote understanding and empathy, and to create a campus culture that celebrates diversity and values the unique perspectives and experiences of all individuals. In conclusion, our college remains steadfast in our commitment to creating an inclusive and diverse campus community. We believe that this is not only important for the well-being of our students, faculty, and staff, but also for the advancement of knowledge and the betterment of society as a whole. We stand together in condemning acts of violence and hatred, and we will continue to work towards a brighter and more equitable future for all. Actual memo: Dear Peabody Family The recent Michigan shootings are a tragic reminder of the importance of taking care of each other, particularly in the context of creating inclusive environments. As members of the Peabody campus community, we must reflect on the impact of such an event and take steps to ensure that we are doing our best to create a safe and inclusive environment for all. One of the key ways to promote a culture of care on our campus is through building strong relationships with one another. This involves actively engaging with people from different backgrounds and perspectives, listening to their stories, and showing empathy and support. We can also look out for one another by noticing signs of distress and offering support to those who may be struggling with mental health issues. Another important aspect of creating an inclusive environment is to promote a culture of respect and understanding. This means valuing the diversity of experiences, perspectives, and identities on our campus, and actively working to create a space where everyone feels welcomed and supported. We can do this by listening to one another, seeking out new perspectives, and challenging our own assumptions and biases. Finally, we must recognize that creating a safe and inclusive environment is an ongoing process that requires ongoing effort and commitment. We must continue to engage in conversations about how we can do better, learn from our mistakes, and work together to build a stronger, more inclusive community. In the wake of the Michigan shootings, let us come together as a community to reaffirm our commitment to caring for one another and promoting a culture of inclusivity on our campus. By doing so, we can honor the victims of this tragedy and work towards a safer, more compassionate future for all.

web3-is-a-scam 4y ago

"chatgpt helps me sound more empathatic in my correspondance" The only reason this is a story is a handful of overly sensitive and loud people saw the disclaimer. Do people get upset when someone uses grammer and spelling checks in Word? Of course not, that's silly. This is the same thing. Total nothingburger. Next time just don't include the disclaimer, and nobody will know the difference.

jakelazaroff 4y ago
Yes, having ChatGPT write the entire email is just like Clippy reminding me that I missed the apostrophe in “it’s” /s It’s like I said in another comment. The issue here isn’t ChatGPT; it’s that the leaders have shown the community they don’t care. The response would be the same if it came out that they used a prewritten email template.
- web3-is-a-scam 4y ago
  Did ChatGPT write the entire thing or was it edited afterward. If I have trouble putting things into words myself but I prompt an AI to write an empathatic email and then tweak it a little bit, what's wrong with that? Would you rather I write no email or write an insensitive one? It's highly unluckly the entire email was just generated and sent out verbatim.
  - jakelazaroff 4y ago
    > If I have trouble putting things into words myself but I prompt an AI to write an empathatic email and then tweak it a little bit, what's wrong with that? It betrays a lack of empathy that you weren’t even willing to take the time to write a personal email to the community in the wake of a horrible tragedy. > Would you rather I write no email or write an insensitive one? I’d rather you write a sensitive one.
    - web3-is-a-scam 4y ago
      > I'd rather you write a sensitive one. Some people are completely incapable of this, through no fault of their own, even though they feel empathy internally - they just struggle to externalize it. We should be encouraging people to use tools that can help to improve expressions of empathy, not shaming people for not being able to do it.

deleted 4y ago

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trieste92 4y ago

If we're in a place where we no longer need to waste 6 figure salaries on administrators and provosts so they can churn out boilerplate by hand, why even hire them in the first place?

ramraj07 4y ago
Because they hire themselves. There is just no way you can remove middling beauracracy without a full purge of the entire system. Which academia is ripe to have IMO.

FigurativeVoid 4y ago

This is the worst version of the robot voice "thanking me for my patience." Human tragedy requires human response.

toomuchtodo 4y ago
Human empathy is in short supply overall.
uonpopular_th 4y ago
If that were the case why are we letting bureaucrats write these?

deleted 4y ago

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jwilk 4y ago

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886629 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34886629 (> 60 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34855265 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34855265 (> 80 comments)

ouid 4y ago

I've noticed that MBA speak is the most difficult to distinguish from chatGPT output. Chatgpt has structural cues, but other than that its content free in almost exactly the same way that the usual, say, condolence letter is. Almost like the administrators themselves are only mimicking human intelligence.

29athrowaway 4y ago

typo: ChaptGPT

at_a_remove 4y ago

Why would these two DEI people do this? Are they that busy fighting for equity?

underbluewaters 4y ago

I don't believe anyone could sincerely have thought this was a good idea. Maybe this was a petulant act from a dean that didn't think they should have to respond to every tragedy?

bragr 4y ago

Part of me thinks the only thing they did wrong was admit to using ChatGPT. Given how routine and formulaic these statements have become, presumably ChatGPT would excel at them. I bet if we pull some statements from other universities, they all read the same. I've been out of university for over a decade and even then these were routine.

throw7 4y ago

What does vanderbilt dei office have anything to do with michigan shooting? Was there some link between dei and the shooting? If there was, it would've been good to detail it in the email. But anyway, kudos for them to credit chatgpt as co-author I guess.

LeifCarrotson 4y ago

I see choices that are similarly confusing in my very different industrial/manufacturing work, and I think I finally understand the motivation: Large organizations are very different from small ones. Large organizations seek to turn human labor into a commodity in order to reduce risk, they cannot rely on creativity or autonomy. At an individual or small-business scale, when you need to write a response to a recent event, you just have an intelligent human being with good communication skills write the email. Vanderbilt has 4,470 non-academic staff - which is a lot, and seems even larger when compared to 4,783 faculty, most of whom work in the med center. With more than 4000 staff, the organization doesn't want to trust that the ~~person~~ committee assigned to write the email (or their style editor, or copy editors, or the paralegal validating the email, or the administrator overseeing the process, etc. etc.) will do a good job. I'm not saying that those people aren't intelligent or don't have good communication skills, but they're not uniform, and Vanderbilt values reliability, uniformity, and risk mitigation differently than a small organization would. You write emails with ChatGPT not because any individual finds it easier than writing the email by hand, but because that's a way to write an email that can be made into a process, and followed step-by-step. It continues to work even if the entire staff is replaced. The emails will look the same whether they're generated by the senior editor, or by the intern. You don't need a "style guide" that's rigidly adhered to and defines whether the email should be written from a first-person perspective or second-person perspective.

al_be_back 4y ago

I don't think the issue here is Writing, but rather Reading, and not only the textual output, but also the Situation. p.s. ChaptGPT :P

motohagiography 4y ago

This is a perfect and quintessential example of what "AI" is used for - diffusing accountability away from individuals and onto committees and organizations where it can be neutralized and denied. Using chatgpt to generate an apology from a bureaucracy is the most-AI thing I have ever heard, it's the quiet part out loud.