Vanderbilt staff apologizes after using AI to send campus email about Michigan State shooting
Two members of the staff will be stepping back from their responsibilities while the dean's office conducts a review
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Members of the Vanderbilt staff apologized on Friday for using ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence (AI) generator, to send an email to students calling for the community to come together following the shooting at Michigan State University.
The email was sent on Thursday by the Peabody Office of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) at the university’s Peabody College and included a note at the bottom that indicated the email had been written using ChatGPT, Vanderbilt's official student newspaper, The Vanderbilt Hustler, first reported on Friday.
The note at the bottom of the original email read, "Paraphrase from OpenAI's ChatGPT AI language model, personal communication, February 15, 2023."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Associate Dean Nicole Joseph sent another email on Friday and said using ChatGPT to write the email was "poor judgment," according to the Hustler.
OpenAI ChatGPT seen on mobile with AI Brain seen on screen. on 22 January 2023 in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo by Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
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Joseph and Assistant Dean Hasina Mohyuddin will be stepping back from their responsibilities at the college's EDI office while the dean's office conducts a review of what lead to them sending the original email, according to a statement from Camilla P. Benbow, the dean of education and human development at Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College of education and human development.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}"The development and distribution of the initial email did not follow Peabody’s normal processes providing for multiple layers of review before being sent. The university’s administrators, including myself, were unaware of the email before it was sent," Benbow's statement said.
The original email called on students to come together in the wake of the shooting and promote a "culture of inclusivity."
"While we believe in the message of inclusivity expressed in the email, using ChatGPT to generate communications on behalf of our community in a time of sorrow and in response to a tragedy contradicts the values that characterize Peabody College," Joseph's apology email read, according to the Hustler. "As with all new technologies that affect higher education, this moment gives us all an opportunity to reflect on what we know and what we still must learn about AI."
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}The Welcome to ChatGPT lettering of the US company OpenAI can be seen on a computer screen. (Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images)
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AI experts warned that generative AI algorithms like ChatGPT pose a substantial danger to education and business but also has a lot of benefits.
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Chief Technology and Innovation Officer Dr. Chris Mattmann told Fox News Digital that generative AI was like an "accelerated rapid fire" system where the whole human experience is put into a model and, with the help of massive scale and computing power, is trained continuously for 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Experts that spoke with Fox News Digital said it was important for Americans to develop skills that will enable them to take full advantage of artificial intelligence and compete with foreign countries like China. ((AP Photo/Peter Morgan))
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ChatGPT outperformed some Ivy League students at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business on a final exam in January. Wharton Professor Christian Terwiesch revealed that the AI system would have gotten either a B or B- on the final.
Fox News Digital's Nikolas Lanum contributed to this report.