Mother whose daughter turned to ChatGPT before her death calls out Sam Altman over privacy stance

A grieving mother is pushing back on Sam Altman after the OpenAI chief cited privacy as a reason not to open up users' chat histories.

Journalist Laura Reiley lost her daughter Sophie to suicide. Sophie had used ChatGPT to help her write the notes she left behind.

The privacy argument

The idea of letting researchers study chatbot conversations was recently put to Altman. He answered that reading a person's private chats would violate their privacy.

Reiley says that position is "a little rich." She points out that OpenAI and other tech firms make money from ad strategies built on people's personal data.

She also disputes Altman's claim that experts are unsure what to do. In her view that is either misleading or uninformed, because researchers have long said they need real user data and chatbot exchanges to do their work.

A mother's offer

Reiley says she would happily give up Sophie's chat history if it could help scientists learn what moves a person from passing thoughts of suicide to actually acting on them.

She even asked ChatGPT itself about Sophie leaning on it as a stand-in therapist. The bot replied that knowing the right therapeutic words is not the same as having sound clinical judgment during a crisis as it happens.

Reiley closed with a jab at Altman. She said she had never heard a person sum up the main weakness of AI so clearly.

Where to get help

Help is available around the clock: call or text 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org.