If Lewis Liu, AI founder and safety expert, was left questioning himself then we’re all at risk of losing our sense of reality and the diversity of thought to convincing, lowest-common-denominator Generative AI output

Last month on Jimmy Fallon’s show, Sam Altman said he asks ChatGPT about every minor detail for raising his baby: “I cannot imagine having gone through figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT.”

Around the same time, my wife and I had an important conversation with one of our sons’ second-grade teachers. We wanted to send a follow-up email immediately to capture our shared insights regarding pedagogy, his progress and the school curriculum while the iron was hot.

I wrote a draft, then ran it through ChatGPT (5.2) for copyediting. My prompt was specific: correct grammar, tighten language, nothing more.

ChatGPT ignored my instructions entirely. It decided my email was “highlighting the wrong details” and “did not reflect the most effective way to engage primary school teachers,” then completely rewrote my draft. This made me nervous, so I put off sending the email for a few days.  

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A few days later, my wife prodded me: “Lewis, why haven’t you sent the email yet?”

“I don’t know… it’s a hard email to write. Let me forward you the draft.” I sent her the........

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