Naming your baby is not a task that should be taken lightly. It is an important step in the child-rearing process that can fundamentally shape the child’s identity, influencing first impressions and reflecting the parents’ heritage and values.
That hasn’t stopped some people from adopting some surprising technological shortcuts. In form of baltimore sun reportsOne couple – and undoubtedly countless others – used OpenAI’s ChatGPT to name their first-born son.
“We were looking for ChatGPT boy names that would go well with the Winkler surname,” Sarah and Stephen Winkler told the publication. “And then once we found Hudson Winkler, we said, ‘Give us a good middle name.'”
The resulting baby name sounds like a gray millennial porridge: Hudson Oakley Winkler.
The choice to use an AI model for that particular purpose immediately met with outrage online, sparking heated debate over Using technology as a crutch To avoid tough decisions.
“I am amazed at how quickly people are losing either the confidence or the desire to complete basic human tasks,” author and npr Podcast host Linda Holmes wrote in a Post on BlueSky,
“This is all very rude,” another user said. wrote“I keep trying to connect with it, but I can’t,” Other made fun of Named after “Oakley”, it is a name closely associated with a popular brand of sunglasses.
The main complaint: It’s not that any name is intrinsically bad, but that the process of creating one by interacting with another human being is an important part of parenthood.
“As with baby naming, it’s fun to talk about with your partner!” Author Lauren Morrill argued“You get to share stories about why this name is good, but that name is out! So much of AI is used just to keep us from talking to each other,”
The incident highlights how common the use of AI has become in the past three years since ChatGPT was first made available to the public. Due to its ability to generate unlimited amounts of text, this tool has been used not only to write essays and assignments, but also to write scripts for more personal situations, such as tributes to recently deceased loved ones or flirting with strangers on dating apps.
A paper A report released by OpenAI in September found that the proportion of people using ChatGPT for personal use has increased significantly since the tool first launched in late 2022. As of July last year, about 70 percent of consumer queries to ChatGPIT were “unrelated to work”, suggesting that the tool is increasingly being used as an assistant in everyday life.
The rise of tools like ChatGPT has sparked debate over whether we have become too dependent on these tools in both our professional and personal lives. Experts argue that this is a slippery slope.
“(Large language models) are built specifically for mastering conversations,” said AI ethicist James Wilson. told techradar In June. “Combine this with our natural tendency to anthropomorphize everything, and it makes it very easy to form unhealthy relationships with chatbots like ChatGPT.”
In extreme cases, we have already seen a strong emotional attachment to AI chatbots linked to a series of teen suicides, resulting in the surviving parents suing OpenAI and competing AI companies.
This perceived over-reliance on technology has also inspired a passionate counter-movement, as seen in the latest reactions to the Winklers naming their son ChatGPT. As the lines between human expression and content generated by AI models continue to blur, many say they have had enough, arguing that we are losing something innate to the human experience.
One user said, “Something as sentimental as naming your baby on a glorified chatbot represents the era we live in.” expressed condolence On BlueSky.
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