Ethics in Artificial Intelligence
Both Google and Anthropic have a sort of "PR" statement about how they will use their AI models. Both explain how they care so much about people's safety, and that their top priority is to remain ethical, while still being innovative. My only issue with this is the lack of solid proof that anything is being done to uphold these standards.
There is no real way for the public to know whether or not Google and Anthropic are even making an attempt to keep their chatbots ethical, and it is hard to believe that there is any rock-solid way for them to do it in the first place. Just about a year and a half ago, I remember hearing about Google's chatbot Gemini telling a user to end their own life, and with as little as a four-word search, several articles were talking about the incident. According to CBS, the message read, "This is for you, human. You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe. Please die. Please."(Alex Clark) With a message like this being possible to generate, it is hard to believe that there is much that holds back Claude and Gemini from saying just about anything.
I am sure that now, nearly two years later, there are even more guidelines built into chatbots, but even at the time the guidelines were supposed to stop Gemini from being able to say anything close to this. This means that somehow the AI was able to slip past these bumpers, which in turn means this could happen again in the future. I believe there is little that even these behemoths of companies can do to make AI fully ethical, and that this is a solid reason that many people have for disliking AI. In my own opinion, I think AI should be vastly more restricted than it is currently, especially until people can get a grasp on how to control its generations, and can make sure nothing like this happens again.
Citations
Clark, Alex, and Melissa Mahtani. “Google AI chatbot responds with a threatening message: "Human … Please die."” CBS News, 20 November 2024, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/google-ai-chatbot-threatening-message-human-please-die/. Accessed 8 May 2026.
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