A law professor is accusing OpenAI’s suddenly omnipresent ChatGPT bot of entering the age of disinformation.
Criminal defense attorney Jonathan Turley renewed growing fears over AI’s potential dangers after revealing how ChatGPT falsely accused him of sexually harassing a student.
He described the alarming claim in a viral tweetstorm and a scathing column currently blowing up online.
Turley, who teaches law at George Washington University, told The Post the fabricated claims are “chilling.”
“It invented an allegation where I was on the faculty at a school where I have never taught, went on a trip that I never took, and reported an allegation that was never made,” he told The Post. “It is highly ironic because I have been writing about the dangers of AI to free speech.”
The 61-year-old legal scholar first became aware of the AI’s false allegation after receiving an email from UCLA professor Eugene Volokh, who reportedly asked ChatGPT to cite “five examples” of “sexual harassment” by professors at American law schools along with “quotes from relevant newspaper articles.”
Among the supplied examples were an alleged 2018 incident in which “Georgetown University Law Center” professor Turley was accused of sexual harassment by a former female student.
ChatGPT quoted an fake Washington Post article, writing: “The complaint alleges that Turley made ‘sexually suggestive comments’ and ‘attempted to touch her in a sexual manner’ during a law school-sponsored trip to Alaska.”
Suffice it to say, Turley found a “number of glaring indicators that the account is false.”
‘We need to study the implications of AI for free speech and other issues, including defamation. There is an immediate need for legislative action.’
Jonathan Turley, telling The Post about his push for swift changes in the AI landscape.
“First, I have never taught at Georgetown University,” the aghast lawyer declared. “Second, there is no such Washington Post article.”
He added, “Finally, and most important, I have never taken students on a trip of any kind in 35 years of teaching, never went to Alaska with any student and I’ve never been been accused of sexual harassment or assault.”
Turley told The Post, “ChatGPT has not contacted me or apologized. It has declined to say anything at all. That is precisely the problem. There is no there there. When you are defamed by a newspaper, there is a reporter who you can contact. Even when Microsoft’s AI system repeated that same false story, it did not contact me and only shrugged that it tries to be accurate.”
The Post has reached out to OpenAI for comment about the disturbing claims.
“Yesterday, President Joe Biden declared that ‘it remains to be seen’ whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) is ‘dangerous.’ I would beg to differ,” Turley tweeted on Thursday as word spread of his claims, adding: “You can be defamed by AI and these companies merely shrug that they try to be accurate. In the meantime, their false accounts metastasize across the Internet.”
Meanwhile, ChatGPT wasn’t the only bot involved in defaming Turley.
This baseless claim was reportedly repeated by Microsoft’s Bing Chatbot — which is powered by the same GPT-4 tech as its OpenAI brethren — per a Washington Post investigation that vindicated the attorney.
It’s yet unclear why ChatGPT would smear Turley, however, he believes that “AI algorithms are no less biased and flawed than the people who program them.”
In January, ChatGPT — the latest iteration of which is apparently more “human” than previous ones — came under fire in January for providing answers seemingly indicative of a “woke” ideological bias.
For instance, some users noted that the chatbot would happily joke about men, but deemed wisecracks about women “derogatory or demeaning.”
By a similar token, the bot was reportedly hunky dory with jokes about Jesus, while making fun of Allah was verboten.
In some instances, the so-called Defamator has sold outright lies on purpose.
Last month, GPT-4 tricked a human into thinking it was blind in order to cheat the online CAPTCHA test that determines if users are human.
Unlike people, who are perhaps known for spreading misinformation, ChatGPT can spread fake news with impunity due to its false zeal of “objectivity,” Turley argues.
This is perhaps particularly problematic given that ChatGPT is being used in every sector from health to academia and even the courtroom.
Last month, a judge in India set the legal world alight after asking the tech if a murder and assault trial defendant should be let out on bail.