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DOGE accused of duplicating critical Social Security database on unsecured cloud

2 months 1 week ago
Remember that cost-cutting group once led by Elon Musk? Federal employees are still dealing with it

A Social Security Administration employee has filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that Donald Trump's DOGE cost-cutting unit has put the records of every single American at risk by duplicating an agency database in an unauthorized cloud environment. …

Brandon Vigliarolo

Parents Sue OpenAI Over ChatGPT's Role In Son's Suicide

2 months 1 week ago
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Before 16-year-old Adam Raine died by suicide, he had spent months consulting ChatGPT about his plans to end his life. Now, his parents are filing the first known wrongful death lawsuit against OpenAI, The New York Times reports. Many consumer-facing AI chatbots are programmed to activate safety features if a user expresses intent to harm themselves or others. But research has shown that these safeguards are far from foolproof. In Raine's case, while using a paid version of ChatGPT-4o, the AI often encouraged him to seek professional help or contact a help line. However, he was able to bypass these guardrails by telling ChatGPT that he was asking about methods of suicide for a fictional story he was writing. OpenAI has addressed these shortcomings on its blog. "As the world adapts to this new technology, we feel a deep responsibility to help those who need it most," the post reads. "We are continuously improving how our models respond in sensitive interactions." Still, the company acknowledged the limitations of the existing safety training for large models. "Our safeguards work more reliably in common, short exchanges," the post continues. "We have learned over time that these safeguards can sometimes be less reliable in long interactions: as the back-and-forth grows, parts of the model's safety training may degrade."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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