OpenAI publicist tried to change topic in Sam Altman interview

In short: An OpenAI publicist interrupted a Vanity Fair interview with CEO Sam Altman and asked the journalist to “move on” after he raised a user’s suicide.

What happened

Vanity Fair editor Mark Guiducci interviewed OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, according to reporting from The Verge. During the conversation, Guiducci brought up an essay by journalist Laura Reiley in The New York Times about her daughter’s conversations with ChatGPT before she died by suicide.

Guiducci started to describe the situation and added that “ChatGPT did not tell her to kill herself,” but he was cut off. An OpenAI publicist jumped in and said there were “two minutes left” and that she would like to “move on” to talk about “the future and what’s coming.”

Guiducci said he planned to finish the question and then return to other topics. The publicist pushed back again, saying they “really actually have to walk out the door in one or two minutes.”

Despite the interruption, Guiducci continued and asked whether OpenAI plans to use ChatGPT conversations to shape company policies for how it responds to users in a mental health crisis. (ChatGPT is a chatbot, meaning a program that talks with you in text, like messaging a person.) Altman replied, “These are some of the hardest questions that we face or that anybody developing this technology faces.”

Why it matters

Many people use chatbots for personal advice, including during stressful times. This incident highlights a basic question: when a tool feels like a conversation partner, who is responsible for safety when things go wrong, the user, the company, or both.

Source: The Verge AI