AI CEO Proud of Chatbot for Convincing Woman to Euthanize Her Dog
There are numerous reasons we shouldn’t trust AI chatbots with health advice. The chatty assistants have a strong tendency to lie with an astonishing degree of confidence, which can cause plenty of mayhem. Case in point, a recent study found that OpenAI’s ChatGPT was terrible at giving the correct diagnosis. That also goes for the health of our furry companions. In an article this year in the literary magazine n+1, screenshots of which have been going viral on social media, writer Laura Preston recalled an incredibly odd scene she encountered while attending an AI conference back in April. During a talk at the event, Cal Lai, the CEO of pet health startup AskVet, which recently launched a ChatGPT-based “answer engine for animal health” called VERA in February 2023, recalled a bizarre “story” of a woman whose elderly dog was having diarrhea. The woman reportedly asked VERA for advice and got an unsettling answer. “Your dog is at the end of his life,” the chatbot responded, as quoted by Preston. “I recommend euthanasia.” According to Lai’s story, …