Does ChatGPT know your name? You’ve probably never given it a thought, but if your name is David Mayer, ChatGPT didn’t know who you were until very recently.
Why did this happen, and what does the mystery of how a common name failed to register with ChatGPT tell us about AI hallucinations?
Tech expert Omar Gallaga wrote recently for CNET that it isn’t clear why the AI language model had so much trouble with a relatively common name.
Highlights from this segment:
– ChatGPT “clammed up” when asked for information related to David Mayer and six other names. Mayer can now be found in ChatGPT queries, but several others cannot. When it encounters these specific names it doesn’t recognize, ChatGPT often responded, “I’m unable to produce a response.”
– Observers speculated that someone named David Mayer might have used the European Union’s Right to be Forgotten law to have his name removed from large language models, including ChatGPT.
– OpenAI has not addressed why the names that are still unsearchable on ChatGPT remain unavailable.
