Just over a decade ago, Guy Rundle was on the ground in Connecticut after the Sandy Hook massacre — in which 20 children between the ages of six and seven, along with six adults, were killed by a school shooter. He noted the one detail of the reporting of what happened that day that he could bear to repeat:
… the teacher who, realising what was happening, started yelling “lockdown”, as per authorised procedure. Meaning, such things are now so anticipated they are prepared for like fires or floods. Meaning, people have sat round in rooms, gaming it out, working out what procedure would limit the deaths, triaging massacre. They work for the education department.
…
Too calm, too practised. They are too good at this now…
There’s something nauseating about such forbearance. The systematic and thorough killing of 20 children under seven should not be an occasion for which anyone is sufficiently prepared. By its very nature, it should be an occasion for hysteria, for disarray, for uncontrollable grief.
In that vein, there’s something grimly appropriate about the news, a decade later — a decade that includes Las Vegas, Parkland, Uvalde and scores upon scores more mass shootings in the US — that Vanderbilt University in Tennessee has used an AI chatbot to write a consoling email filled with profoundly meaningless platitudes to students after the mass shooting at Michigan State University.
“The recent Michigan shootings are a tragic reminder of the importance of taking care of each other, particularly in the context of creating inclusive environments,” the message read.
“One of the key ways to promote a culture of care on our campus is through building strong relationships with one another. This involves actively engaging with people from different backgrounds and perspectives, listening to their stories, and showing empathy and support.”
At the bottom of the email, in small print between parentheses as though hidden in a cough, was: “Paraphrase from OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI language model, personal communication”.
The university has since issued an apology.
Given it draws on the collective material on how the US responds to mass shootings, the message amazingly doesn’t offer “thoughts and prayers” to the victims’ families, or at the very least insist politics be kept out of a tragedy such as this.
It stands then as the logical conclusion of how these things are done, the figurative made literal — the needless deaths of three students (just three, this time), an occasion for no human thought, just a meaningless, automated response.
Yes, this is the logical conclusion. Why waste someone’s time composing meaningless platitudes when we can automate the task? There’s some sort of honesty about it, since nobody is willing and able to do anything more substantial. This is a modern version of the form letters of condolence mentioned in Joseph Heller’s Catch-22.
‘Starting tomorrow,’ he said, ‘I want you and Corporal Whitcomb to write a letter of condolence for me to the next of kin of every man in the group who’s killed, wounded or taken prisoner. I want those letters to be sincere letters. I want them filled up with lots of personal details so there’ll be no doubt I mean every word you say. Is that clear?’ The chaplain stepped forward impulsively to remonstrate. ‘But, sir, that’s
impossible!’ he blurted out. ‘We don’t even know all the men that well.’
What difference does that make?’ Colonel Cathcart demanded, and then smiled amicably. ‘Corporal Whitcomb brought me this basic form letter that takes care of just about every situation. Listen: “Dear Mrs., Mr., Miss, or Mr. and Mrs.: Words cannot express the deep
personal grief I experienced when your husband, son, father or brother was killed, wounded or reported missing in action.” And so on. I think that opening sentence sums up my sentiments exactly…
This was also the first thing that came to my mind when I read the article. According to Paul Fussell in ‘The Great War and Modern Memory’ Heller was in part inspired by the pre-filled ‘field postcards’ that soldiers used to write home in WW1.
Like much of what is terrible in our world, this too springs from 1914-18.
Presumably the next step will be to conduct an enquiry as to why ChatGPT in its missive, failed to include ‘thoughts and prayers’ and some soothing remarks about everything happening for a reason in the fulfilment of god’s plan.
Erdowan has the copyright on “Destiny”……………………
An automatically generated ‘Our thoughts and prayers’ should suffice as a four word condolence. It’s as shallow as any sincere effort to rein in the gun crisis in the USA.
I thought it was better than the usual automatic response….
“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”
Written by humans.
“Written by humans”… who were inspired by the earlier similar provision of a right to bear arms in the English Bill of Rights of 1689; the authors of the Second Amendment, passed in 1791, believed they were preserving an existing right inherited from English law, not inventing a new one. And it was relatively harmless in its application until recent decades when US Supreme Court switched to producing the most perverse and extreme possible interpretations. How the Supreme Court was long ago allowed without any constitutional justification to assume it had power over both the executive and legislative branches of government is another important part of the story, along with the take-over of the NRA, previously a fairly innocuous body, by various fanatics and stooges of gun manufacturers.
However, the connection to ChatGPT being used to generate meaningless platitudes is obscure.
I wonder how long it will be before some bright spark works out how to give ChatGPT access to firearms?…………….
………I am quite sure that the Supreme Court would uphold it’s God-given right to partake in the national pastime of murdering random citizens.
It certainly makes more sense than GOP Justices do.
It won’t be able to use firearms (?!?), but I’ll bet money that in the next year some lunatic shooter will use it for their ‘manifesto’.
There are ALREADY AI-enabled armed robots being developed for armies around the world……………
…………given the “Internet of Things”, how long do you reckon before a Chatbot goes rogue and manages to convince one of them to cut loose on campus?
They all talk to each other.
This is precisely what Bill Gates was warning about some years ago………………