So, some poor bastard in Norway, name of Arve Hjalmar Holmen – sounds like a character out of a goddamn Ibsen play, right? – this guy goes and asks ChatGPT, that digital oracle everyone’s so hot and bothered about, “Who am I?” And the damn thing spits back, “You’re a child murderer.”
Yeah, you heard that right. Accused him of offing his own kids. Cold. Colder than a witch’s… well, you get the picture.
Now, this Holmen fellow, he’s apparently as clean as a freshly poured shot of… well, let’s just say he’s never even had a parking ticket. He’s just some regular Joe, minding his own business, raising his kids, probably paying his taxes and trying to avoid stepping in reindeer shit. And this digital demon decides to brand him a monster.
The kicker? The bot didn’t even get the story completely wrong. It knew the guy’s hometown, the number of kids he had, the age difference between them. Just enough truth sprinkled in to make the lie seem… plausible. Like that one time I told a bartender I was a brain surgeon. I knew enough medical jargon from watching General Hospital to almost pull it off. Almost.
The poor guy’s filed a complaint, naturally. He, and some digital rights group I’ve never heard of. They’re screaming about GDPR and “defamatory” responses. Good for them. I’m all for sticking it to the man, especially when the man is a soulless algorithm that thinks it knows everything.
And here’s the real gut-punch. OpenAI, the geniuses behind this digital Frankenstein, they’re saying, “Oh, we’re working on it. We’re researching new ways to improve accuracy.” Researching? They’re researching? After unleashing this thing on the world? It’s like releasing a pack of rabid wolves into a kindergarten and then saying, “Oops, we’re still researching how to make them… less bitey.”
It’s Friday afternoon, and I’m already halfway through my second bottle of “research material,” trying to figure out how we got here. We’ve got machines making up stories, spreading lies, ruining lives, and the best the tech wizards can come up with is, “We’re working on it.”
These AI chatbots, they’re built on these models that “predict the next most likely word.” It’s like a drunk at a bar, slurring his way through a story, making shit up as he goes along. Except this drunk has access to the entire internet and can ruin your reputation with a single, well-placed hallucination.
It gets worse. The plausible nature of the response. It all sounds so, well, real. This is what scares the living hell out of me. The machine’s not just spitting out random garbage; it’s crafting a believable narrative, a digital fiction that could pass for truth. It’s like those deepfakes, only with words. You can’t trust your eyes, and now you can’t even trust what you read.
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it? What if the machine decides I’m the villain tomorrow? What if it spins some yarn about me being a… I don’t know… a black-market organ harvester, or a secret agent for a foreign power, or – God forbid – a successful tech blogger?
The thought sends a shiver down my spine, colder than the bottom of my whiskey glass.
And the real kicker is… this is what they call progress. We’re handing over our lives, our reputations, our very identities to these things, and we’re calling it innovation. We’re so busy chasing the shiny new toy that we don’t stop to ask, “What happens when the toy bites back?”
This whole thing reminds me of that time I tried to teach my neighbor’s parrot to recite Shakespeare. Ended up with a bird that could only squawk, “To be or not to be, that is the… fuck you!” Close, but no cigar. And a lot less damaging than a chatbot falsely accusing you of filicide.
These AI companies, they’re playing God, only they’re doing it with algorithms and server farms instead of lightning bolts and divine inspiration. And, like most amateur gods, they’re making a royal mess of things.
I might be a cynical, whiskey-soaked hack, but even I can see the writing on the wall. Or, in this case, the writing on the chatbot. We’re heading down a dark road, my friends, a road paved with good intentions and lined with digital landmines. And the worst part is, we’re all walking it willingly, eyes glued to our screens, oblivious to the danger.
So, here’s to Arve Hjalmar Holmen, the unwilling star of this digital tragedy. May his lawsuit be swift, may his name be cleared, and may OpenAI be forced to pay him a sum large enough to buy a lifetime supply of… therapy. Because he’s gonna need it. We all are.
Pouring another one, because the future’s looking bleak, and the only thing that makes sense anymore is the bottom of a glass. Cheers. Or, as my parrot used to say, “Fuck you!”
Source: Norwegian files complaint after ChatGPT falsely said he had murdered his children