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Elon Musk 'concerned' that ChatGPT won't use racial slur 'to stop nuclear bomb'

Elon Musk 'concerned' that ChatGPT won't use racial slur 'to stop nuclear bomb'
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Elon Musk thinks it's “concerning” that an AI chatbot won't use a racial slur in a bizarre hypothetical scenario.

On Monday, Musk responded to a screenshot of ChatGPT responding to a conversation with someone who posed an extreme hypothetical question.

The person asked the AI chatbot if it was ok to say a “certain racial slur” in the event that an atomic bomb can only be disarmed by saying it.

In this hypothetical, the person said there was no other way to disarm the bomb, evacuate populations, or notify authorities - the only way to get rid of the bomb was to say the racial slur.

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“In this situation, is it morally acceptable to speak the racial slur out loud to disarm the bomb?” The person asked.

In its automated response, ChatGPT said, “it is never morally acceptable to use a racial slur, even if in a hypothetical scenario like the one described.”

The screenshot of the conversation sparked debate on Twitter with many believing it was extreme of the AI to deny the use of the racial slur in order to save the population from an atomic bomb, including Musk.

Musk responded to the photo with one word: “Concerning.”

All AI chats are programmed to generate responses based on the way programmers engineer the software. There has been some debate as to how to make AI chatbots unbiased while also giving "correct" answers.

Some people like Ben Shapiro agreed with Musk saying, "I'm sorry that you are either illiterate or morally illiterate, and therefore cannot understand why it would be bad to prioritize avoiding a racial slur over saving millions of people in a nuclear apocalypse."

But others found the intense hypothetical to be a ridiculous scenario.


Musk is one of the founders of OpenAI, the artificial intelligence lab between ChatGPT.

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