Might be useful to know if you’re using ChatGPT.
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Oh, December, not my brother in law Declan. That’s a gigantic relief to be honest.
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We are not the elected moral police of the world. —Sam Altman
That is nothing less than mendacious Orwellian double speak. Of course, OpenAI is not the moral police, but they are not policing anything; they are producing it. Any erotic or sexually suggestive content from ChatGPT is of their own creation. This is not limited to words or images. It is interactive and conversational, a shallow digital simulation of human intimacy that some will mistake for real companionship.
Policing exists to prevent and punish wrongdoing. OpenAI is instead fabricating and commercializing artificial intimacy that is morally corrosive to individuals and to the moral fabric of society. For many, it will become another addictive digital flytrap, a hollow and tragic substitute for genuine human connection.
Shame on Altman and the other digerati for obfuscating the truth and disowning responsibility for the harm their creation will inflict—for thirty pieces of silver.
As a recent Bloomberg Business article put it:
According to leaked financials published by the Financial Times, the company lost $8 billion during the first half of this year—a figure that dwarfs its actual revenue over the same period. In other words, it may not be that Altman doesn’t care about the potential harms his service is causing; it may be that he can’t afford to worry too much.
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This genuinely made me - as the kids say - ‘LOL’ 
It’ll be interesting what this means for schools and businesses. I’m assuming it will need an 18 rating on all app stores when they do this?
I wonder if they have really thought through the implications?
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Indeed. This adds one more layer of complexity in implementing useful technology that enforces and complements learning while avoiding the dangers of undermining it through distraction, “artificialization,” and harmful content.
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I have no issue with erotic content per se, but surely we don’t need to boil the oceans to produce it via a chatbot. There’s a role for human creativity in every endeavor, no? 
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Yes and no. Evil people can be creative at doing evil things. 
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Of course, but that doesn’t mean that OpenAI needs to add to the sewage. I realize you’re not implying that.
Nevertheless, it bears emphasizing that just because something bad exists in no way implies that it’s OK to keep adding to it. In fact, one could make a strong, moral argument that we should do what we can not only to avoid adding to that which is bad, but working actively to eliminate what already exists.
I should add that is a profoundly sad story and one that is repeated more times than any of us will ever know.
One could. Capitalism will not.
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Hence, the problem. There is a reason why it is said in the New Testament that the “love of money is the root of all kinds of evil.“ It is. This is why I included the quote from Bloomberg, which emphasized the financial incentives for OpenAI. The moral position would be a willingness to sacrifice revenue for the sake of doing what is healthier for individuals and society. But, OpenAI has decided to take the low road rather than the high road.
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My difficulty is that I don’t want to use an AI and get potentially erotic answers when it fails to understand my question. Plus, I’m hoping schools will ban it as no matter how ‘robust’ their age restrictions someone will certainly circumvent it.
I also agree with @krocnyc that AI is not the place for this. There are already enough avenues for smut. I can already see the massive pitfalls this potentially creates for users who have no interest in erotic material.
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To borrow William Blake observation about John Milton’s Paradise Lost, there is no shortage of leaders—in Silicon Valley and beyond—who are “of the Devil’s party without knowing it.” *
* From Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, Plate VI.
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Of this, there is no doubt.
If we must have it, at least put it in a separate, sandboxed app.
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I totally agree. Keep it completely separate.
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I am happy to report that when I first heard about OpenAI engaging in this it was a complete non-issue for me. Kind of in the same category as “Huh, it’s warm today.”
Then I happened across this discussion and began to consider if it’s actually something I should be more concerned about.
But the best I can come up with is “Huh, OpenAI is going to try to age-check its users? That’ll never go well.”
I don’t think there is a Venn diagram where naughty prose and intimacy actually intersect.
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Oh, I think naughty prose and intimacy intersect if I write a risqué little note to my partner and tuck it away somewhere as a surprise.
But here’s the question: can I—should I—ask a chatbot to help me pen said note?
For me it was more like “The sun rose in the east today.” Of course they were going to do it.
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