OpenAI Is Scanning Users' ChatGPT Conversations and Reporting Content To Police (futurism.com)
- Reference: 0178959170
- News link: https://yro.slashdot.org/story/25/08/31/2311231/openai-is-scanning-users-chatgpt-conversations-and-reporting-content-to-police
- Source link: https://futurism.com/openai-scanning-conversations-police
> Earlier this week, buried in the middle of a [2]lengthy blog post addressing ChatGPT's propensity for [3]severe mental health harms , OpenAI admitted that it's scanning users' conversations and [4]reporting to police any interactions that a human reviewer deems sufficiently threatening.
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> "When we detect users who are planning to harm others, we route their conversations to specialized pipelines where they are reviewed by a small team trained on our usage policies and who are authorized to take action, including banning accounts," it wrote. "If human reviewers determine that a case involves an imminent threat of serious physical harm to others, we may refer it to law enforcement."
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> The announcement raised immediate questions. Don't human moderators judging tone, for instance, undercut the entire premise of an AI system that its creators say can solve broad, complex problems? How is OpenAI even figuring out users' precise locations in order to provide them to emergency responders? How is it protecting against abuse by [5]so-called swatters , who could pretend to be someone else and then make violent threats to ChatGPT in order to get their targets raided by the cops...? The admission also seems to contradict remarks by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who [6]recently called for privacy akin to a "therapist or a lawyer or a doctor" for users talking to ChatGPT.
"Others argued that the AI industry is hastily pushing poorly-understood products to market, using real people as guinea pigs, and adopting increasingly haphazard solutions to real-world problems as they arise..."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader [7]schwit1 for sharing the news.
[1] https://futurism.com/people-furious-openai-reporting-police
[2] https://openai.com/index/helping-people-when-they-need-it-most/
[3] https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/08/29/1116218/a-troubled-man-his-chatbot-and-a-murder-suicide-in-old-greenwich
[4] https://futurism.com/lawsuit-parents-son-suicide-chatgpt
[5] https://www.wired.com/story/purgatory-gores-swatting-us-universities/
[6] https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/25/sam-altman-warns-theres-no-legal-confidentiality-when-using-chatgpt-as-a-therapist/
[7] https://www.slashdot.org/~schwit1
Hello Cyberpunk Authors (Score:3)
I bet you never predicted that people would be this stupid?
Re: (Score:2)
Have you been awake this last couple of years? Trump and the MAGAs have given a voice to the stupid and ignorant. They have emancipated from their basements and caves.
Re: (Score:2)
I think: "ignorant" is the key word here. Many don't really know what they are voting for or against. Did the MAGAs really vote for a national sales tax? For inflation to go up? To lose their health care? It does seem like most MAGAs voted in a way that made them feel good at the moment.
Re: (Score:2)
As the tariffs come into full force, especially the effect of de minimas gone, I expect some pretty angry magas. Many were small biz people I expect and that de minimas thing is going to be much more widespread of a problem than anyone imagined. I'm on a couple DIY forums and the loss of easy access to JLPCB alone is costing some small fries series dollars and serious delays. They are not happy.
Re: (Score:2)
Watched 'Idiocracy' and it felt we are already there.
I don't think so... (Score:3)
> The admission also seems to contradict remarks by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who recently called for privacy akin to a "therapist or a lawyer or a doctor" for users talking to ChatGPT.
AFAIK, therapists and doctors are required by law to report their clients' crimes - or intent to commit crimes - to law enforcement. So OpenAI, according to the information in TFS, is behaving according to Altman's assertion. A lawyer, OTOH, is required by law NOT to rat out his or her clients - and good luck making a case that AI has the status of a lawyer.
I'm defending neither AI nor Altman here: the former is often being used inappropriately, and the latter strikes me as a douchebag. But lame, flawed arguments are worse than none at all when it comes to pushing back against the AI shit-storm that has been unleashed on the world.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Having an interaction with a computer program in no way expressing intent. The input is no more valid than the output.
I say all kinds of shit just to see what it will respond. This is a thought crime.
Good idea (Score:1)
It is probably a good idea to not document your crimes, your planned crimes, your potential crimes, your potentially planned crimes, your activities that may be construed as crimes, etc. etc. etc.
Just keep that shit in your head.
Re: (Score:2)
Are you saying I should not google on how to dispose of a body?
Re: (Score:1)
No.
I'm saying that if you send $50K in Bitcoin to my address, I'll take care of it for you.
Re: (Score:2)
Its wise not to document actual crimes you have committed, but what about hypothetical crimes? Maybe someone is writing a murder mystery. Maybe they just want to win an argument with a friend about how easy or hard it would be to assassinate the president. Maybe they fantasize about crimes they have no intention of ever committing.
I'd like to believe that the police can recognize the difference between fantasy crime and real crime, but I'm not convinced that is always the case.
Re: (Score:2)
I do watch crime shows like "Bones", and she claims to know how to commit the perfect murder, and get away with it... So sometimes my mind wonders that way as a mind experiment, but I know better than to google it, or to talk about it with AI's. Heck, I don't even know anybody I would want off of this planet, but mind experiments can be fun.
Re: (Score:1)
It's wise not to do that either.
problem (Score:2)
lots of stuff said to ai is people messing with it limits.
Everything About AI is Harmful (Score:5, Insightful)
AI has no positive benefit to outweigh the harm it is causing.
Re: (Score:2)
I think it could be a useful tool. Like all tools, any of them will be misused by a small minority of people. Myself, I have "dipped my foot" in it to feel the waters... not ready to dive in yet.
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> Just the fact that it is capable of fabricating things that are not even remotely true, completely negates anything good that it might do.
So are humans, yet I continue interacting with them.
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That's no understanding the danger. If you caught a programmer doing a dangerous obfuscated wrong thing you would fire them. If you caught a human psychologist advising a patient to commit suicide you would report them to the police. If you catch an AI, you just shrug, say "hallucination" and move on to the next one which you fail to spot.
This is the real thing which shows that AI is not "intelligent". Even the people that claim that it's just the same as human intelligence don't ascribe responsibility to t
Re:Everything About AI is Harmful (Score:4, Insightful)
AI certainly has some positive benefit, I use it regularly at work both for coding suggestions as well as for physics an engineering questions. I don't trust the results to be true, but those results often include references that greatly reduce the time I spend investigating things. Does that "outweigh" the harm - I don't have a scale on which to measure that.
Almost every new technology has brought benefits and harms, and it can take a very long time to understand the balance. Did the internal combustion engine cause more benefit or harm? How about plastics, or even television. We've seen basically the full lifecycle of television now, and how would you compare the harm and benefits? More importantly your estimate of harm and benefits might be very different from someone else's estimate.
Re: (Score:2)
Every technology ever, has a good side and a bad side. Each can be used for good, or for evil. AI is no different.