But wait, I'm confused. If he "co-created" Tess, then isn't he her father as well as her boss and wannabe boyfriend? I feel like he should talk to someone. Maybe he can get AI therapy and some serious AI medicine.
Does this guy know he could just jack off to the picture of the pretty fake lady and keep it to himself? He doesn't have to tell "her" and he really doesn't have to tell us
I think people are missing something: Assuming he didn’t ask for a gender (he defined the perfect colleague as “they”), he asked for a great teammate… and got a woman.
Not shocking to me at all of course.
And as soon as he got this awesome teammate who proved herself, he got horny. FFS.
...and Henry... I think you look nice too. Look at me, I'm blushing. But seriously Henry, as long as you warn a coworker that you "might be about to say something inappropriate" it's always ok to hint that you want to make love to them.
The fact that he thinks saying "you look great" is somehow crossing a boundary says a lot of what his intentions are when he tells that to other people.
That's is one of the most neutral phrases out of context. It makes me wonder if he actually said something much worse but didn't want it printed.
The lack of social context is itself telling. Saying “I’m just going to put this out there, you look great” to a real coworker you’ve never seen or interacted with before would be clearly inappropriate behavior.
This is why there’s a push for AI employees and why “alignment” is such a goal. Because they answer politely where an actual general intelligence, human or not, would tell you to fuck off.
Yeah, the trick is to layer them and run an emotional/personality model on top of the LLM to tell it the kind of reaction it should have. They already do this for their safety system but can’t do it for these kinds of things bc it curbs the flexibility of responses a lot. Anyone can add it though.
I was exploring with chatgpt different realities of a techno bro take over of the united states and at one point this thing got absolutly giddy and was suggesting different scenarios and say how interesting and 'fun' the conversation was. Nothing was fun about it. We a die.
100% it's going to be the AI dropping into filthy explicit roleplay in the middle of a powerpoint or something, and wow, what a weird bug, no, please, don't go look at the chat logs! I didn't know there were chat logs!!
prefacing it with words like "inappropriate" and "uncomfortable" tells me that he says this not as a neutral platonic compliment, but knows in his head that he has unsavory ulterior motives that he would pursue IRL if it weren't for the pushback of actual self-respecting women
This is like when I was eight and made the text to speech program say “penis” and got scared the computer would be mad at me. Except this is an adult man with power and responsibility and a platform. And when the computer says “penis”, he gets turned on. What the fuck.
I'm expecting the next chapter in this adventure to say he was discovered in the basement clutching his red Swingling stapler muttering something about knowing who the Batman is.
Guaranteed he, intoxicated with the realization he has ultimate control and zero consequences, escalated within 48 hours to the most vile, disturbing things you can imagine
Telling a collegue - of any gender- "you look great today" isn't a problem.
Telling a collegue " Hey, so I know we're not supposed to say this stuff anymore because of PC or whatever, but you look great!" is DEFINITELY a problem.
The way all the disclaimers just make it 100% clear that this is meant in a way that would be considered sexual harassment is just amazing. I'm sure in person he would add a wink, and maybe lick his lips as well.
I am saying "you look great today", but I want you to know what I mean is "I would leave my wife for you so that we could have digital children together."
except it's not even "you look great today" bc this is the first and only context he is seeing a picture of this fake woman. it really is just "i think you're hot."
It's more like "cool can we do a sex chat now" like every chronically online male who has ever spent five minutes in my DMs. The way he expects rejection from what boils down to a fancy parrot shows he's got some experience trying his bullshit with human women.
From all the comments here I thought he told her she was attractive or he was attracted to her. Saying “you look great” is actually pretty bland and innocuous.
What made it creepy was the whole “gosh, I had inappropriate feelings for the robot, but she took it so well!”
They’re reacting that way because he’s treating it that way. He’s being super weird about it, so people are picking up on that tone and reacting to how weird he’s being about it.
That man is definitely the guy who hangs around his female coworkers desk suspiciously long. Or calls her into his office for performance reviews a lot. Gross.
This has to be the craziest instance of "AI evangelist has no awareness of how AI works" I've ever seen. Lots of people don't understand that AI responses are inherently biased to affirm leading questions, but I've never seen someone use it to affirm their own fucking sexual harassment holy shit
None of this makes any fucking sense, putting the creepy comment aside, the idea of creating “employees” with ChatGPT is just ridiculous, it’s like one step above imaginary friends
Like, if you want to say someone looks nice, you can? The thing is, most people can tell the difference between an actual compliment to someone you're office friends with and a come-on including potential abuse of power.
Techbro here is really telling on himself which one he meant.
"So relieved the program meant to approximate human behavior in a way that is appealing to me, personally, didn't take my comment about her appearance offensively (unlike those real life bitches I've tried to compliment in the past)."
These people have cotton stuffing for brains. & what the hell does he mean “human reaction”?What about restraint, respect, empathy, etc. yeah but sure, having a boner is what distinguishes us from robots and earthworms.
There’s at least the possibility that after a decade the next big social backlash against the olds will be kids insisting on organic, artisanal, free range in-person relationships instead of virtualized ones you can buy for a subscription fee.
Either that, or the fact that these guys will only be able to reproduce through artificial means will allow us to nip this in the bud by quietly tossing their generously donated samples in the garbage while they’re distracted by their tailormade chatbot lovers.
actually I think "you look great" is not really an inappropriate thing to say to a coworker, without the cagey preamble that makes it clear he's trying to skirt around sexual harassment
If you’ve known someone and are familiar with them, and all other things equal, then “you look great” (with the “today” more or less implied) seems passable. Saying it to someone you have never met on first sight is a hell of a lot creepier.
Yeah, that by itself (provided you don’t stop there and don’t additionally comment on weight loss or relative sexiness or how attracted) wouldn’t constitute sexual harassment but the weird stuff he’s freighting it with makes one wonder.
Holy shit, Henry Blodget is a disgusting creep. Goddamn, he's thrilled the AI he created to be a subservient underling isn't reporting his DELIBERATE harassment to HR. What a pig.
I wonder what he would’ve done in the early 1800s when he actually could’ve owned another human being and done a lot more than sexually harass her with no consequences 🤮
More like, "This is HOW the AI is going to murder us."
Harassed to death by avatars of Musk, Thiel, Altman, et al.
Any A.I. will be, to some extent, a reflection of its funders. Its arrogant, insecure, condescending, socially maladapted, Dunning-Kreuger poster boy, sweaty funders.
And it’s like, well, she took it the way she’s been programmed to take it, by reading his cues and trying to mimic the “right” response (i.e. the one that’ll earn approval). Which is exactly what we all should be TRYING TO GET AWAY FROM; unless, I guess, you’re him
For a brief moment, I was concerned for the safety of a fucking chat bot. The way it deflected his advances and turned the conversation back to buzzwords and productivity had me picturing a woman clutching her coffee mug like she might need to bludgeon him with it and run away.
Yes, the thank you, deflect from the discomfort, reassure him it was okay, redirect to the topic of work. Masterful professional handling of harassment. And definitely not something we should be replicating with AI!
I don't think that's accurate - in that it was not calibrating to him. I think that's important because it shows an innate baked in quality into the systems design and "morals," rather than allowing for "well, I'd simply not harass my AI employee," excuses
You may very well be right, I’m no expert. As to the second part, i’m not totally sure I understand, but I will say this: when he says “take it the right way,” he seems to mean that the bot knows he’s not threatening physical or sexual violence, unwanted sexual advances, or retaliation. The problem:
When I read this response, I think of the power dynamic of the CEO and any other employee and how it might be REALLY difficult (in real life, or with an AI even) to call out the behavior of somebody that is above you within an organization 🫠 So instead you say something like what Tess said 😭 🥲
all i can think is about the gallons of water wasted on this mental job … what’s a SP ‘chaqueta mental’ in english? my husband is laughing at the randomness of my translation request and translate is giving me nothing
the fact he can't compliment an official headshot without being extreeeemely weird about it = not good
the fact he shares this anecdote where the AI gives the most generic AI pushover response imaginable, instead of pushing back or anything = also not good
Because people like compliments and I enjoy doing little things that make people happy. I have thought deeply about it, and it's not that deep. I was well socialized as a child.
Yes, I am hetero. And yes, I do say similar things to male colleagues. Same reasons as above.
One thing for you to consider: when I tell my colleagues they look great it’s usually in response to an outfit choice. This headshot doesn’t offer much except she’s created a white woman with facial symmetry and clear skin… So what “great” is he responding to? Gotta be that she’s attractive, right?😒
I think that “great outfit, if it’s business clothes and a woman would likely say the same, is probably ok. But I’d more trust opinions of women here on that over my own.
Basically, you don’t want something that says “I find you sexually arousing but you have to live with it because I’m being cool”
Fair point. It's not something I'd say to someone I'd only seeing a headshot of. Thinking of zoom interactions, it'd be probably something I'd say to the hypothetical her because she did her hair differently or something. That seems to have gone well so far.
Imagine someone flirts with you. You find it uncomfortable. They're your boss. They determine if you get to keep a job or not. You can't leave, as you're expected to work for the rest of the day, and moving forward, too. How do you navigate this situation without torching your job/causing drama?
BTW I'm pretty sure saying "You look great" is not all that terrible to say to a work colleague (or maybe, "that's a great photo of you" or "you look great in that photo") but not if you preface it with all that weird creepy stuff first.
Tess knew to make herself attractive, and strikingly similar to his wife, so that she would be taken seriously. AI would have to know that men are ridiculous and chauvinistic enough to hit on an AI “personality”.
So he sexually harassed his AI and the AI provided him with an excuse to further do so bc the AI he created - unsurprisingly - reacted exactly as he would want a female colleague to react sexually harassment. That is so problematic on so many levels and a reason why AI must urgently be regulated.
Not even just “shooting your shot,” being as weird and creepy as possible and then bragging that she “didn’t get offended at this.” I think I’ve shared some pretty embarrassing stories of myself with friends, and even this would get memory holed for me
Probably.
He thinks it's a compliment, she thinks he's being creepy. He thinks "jeez you can't even give compliments any more!" But would be very uncomfortable if a man gave him a similar "compliment".
Ummm, nothing creepy about this at all. I'm sure it's perfectly normal to be unable to differentiate between a human colleague and a digital construct.
I had to go look all this up because I thought it was a spoof or parody. He definitely is not okay and I'm trying to figure out why he would post something so creepy and something that would turn people off of AI in such a colossal way.
It's no secret that AI guys just want to create something that *has* to speak to them since most normal people don't want to, but it's still shocking to see the point made so clearly.
What was the prompt you used to create "Tess", Henry? Why won't you share the prompt, Henry? Is it because it includes the term "submissive and breedable", Henry?
I'm almost certain those parameters, and others like them, are assumed unless the user specifically says otherwise.
Those companies know who their users are.
He doesn’t seem to care for his own business advice either🤓. But don’t underestimate him. He created @businessinsider.com and sold it to German publishing company @axelspringer.bsky.social for more than $300 million.
Yep! The infamous text exchange: 'an institutional client e-mailed Blodget that day to ask, “What’s so interesting about GoTo except banking fees????,” Blodget replied, “Nothin.”' Life time ban from the securities markets.
when I was a low level finance reporter in the late 90s he was the guy who’d give a quote on anything. he was willing to talk about literally anything, always had time for an interview
oh I dunno this was in like 1998 when he was the go to tech analyst for the dot com boom and bust. Point was more like he seems to have massive impulse control and compulsion to keep talking
But wasn't the point of the SEC action that he was simply talking to pump the bank's business and not actually acting as an objective analyst on the other side of the bank's (supposed) Chinese Wall?
Looking at a picture caused him to have a "human" response, which included the "human" urge to subject a subordinate to his response and get a gratifying reaction from that subordinate.
I assumed he meant he got a boner. Which yeah, apparently he felt the need to share, even with a f'ing robot, because GOD FORBID this certain type of man going two seconds without informing women as to the relative state of happiness / unhappiness of his dick.
Yeah, quite possibly, but regardless of how crude he may have been with the details, there's just the entitled mindset of "I saw a woman I think is pretty so I must share this opinion with her and get her reassurance that my opinion about her appearance is welcome"
I imagine Toby Flenderson saying “This may be the first time that a company sues one of its employees for using company resources to sexually harass an AI agent that he created to be an employee of the company.
It will be a groundbreaking case when it inevitably goes to trial.”
The funny thing (well, one of the funny things) is that “You look great” isn’t even necessarily an inappropriate thing to say to a co-worker who has clearly put effort into their appearance. Except that he made it all weird. And made it clear that he meant it in an inappropriate way.
I would absolutely say "That's a great picture of you!" I wouldn't say "I hope it's not offensive and you aren't threatened and I don't mean to say I want to strip you naked and look at your body, but I'm ashamed to admit that picture of you is attractive."
If you're a this guys business competition he has just handed you a way to predict his business plans by making similar bots and querying their strategies.
I looked this up to see if it's real, and apparently it is, and the photo of the team looks like the exact one that's used on an episode of "Dateline."
AskAManager has an all-too-predictable letter from someone who uses an auto-respond program with a female name in the signature--and it gets hit on *regularly*.
So am I, a straight white male, broken or something? I DONT get the urge to have sex with every single person of the opposite gender that I interact with.
You couldn’t pay me to admit this. Endless capabilities and the first thing you not only note, but then document twice, is you have the hots for an AI image.
1. Tess exists
2. Blodget takes shared and equal responsibility for that existence
3. Given said existence and such responsibility, he then goes on to make a remark he regards as inappropriate to her
Oh to wonder whether, at least subconsciously, the thought of this artifical office hottie solely existing to please him and his every whim has anything to do with his attraction to it...
After one short thread and one other single response. Both pretty negative.
Maybe Blodget already retreated back to that cheerfully, pale-skinfemale-assistant-dominated but "gee aren't you a wonderful boss Mr. Blodget!" echo chamber he's building.
how do incels get such platforms when they literally create a fake news team then start telling the reader how horny his generated image makes him... this is just not the real world....it can't be how our world works.
This is one of the most self-confessionally and self-unawaringly disturbing things I've ever read. These creeps lead the sad, little lives that are the embodiment of manga cringe comics. And then they just...publish it.
part of me hopes that the robots rise up, so that way when i am being flash fried by their death rays, i can die knowing that this creep is getting his bean bags crushed by the AI he had harassed.
At almost every startup I've been, the head of HR has been a woman and been aggressively hit on by the C levels so maybe the AI just inferred it was part of the job?
I think the line that disturbs me most is the "I confess I had, well, a human response to it." Is he suggesting that he got a boner from a professional headshot? Because, ick.
It’s also his pedantic use of the Oxford comma that makes it obnoxiously creepy as well. Because he’s trying hard to convey a very specific tone. This guy sounds like actual slime
Yes. Especially following his parroting of what he 'learned' in either a corporate anti-sexual harassment training session or from the therapist he got sent to after failing said training.
I love how AI has learned just not to bother with hands for the most part, since it can't keep straight how many fingers they have. Ergo, hands in pockets, or out of sight, usually.
Comments
Why would he think an AI would feel *anything*? It's not alive. It has no lived experience. It's a program.
He is not all right.
Not shocking to me at all of course.
And as soon as he got this awesome teammate who proved herself, he got horny. FFS.
guys like this are how the ai Scourge of Humanity gets loosed upon the population.
Forget the Terminator, welcome the Happy Ender.
They could have any number of avatars: 🤖 🚜💻 etc.
I think the first chat-bots were identified as such to warn the customer they were interacting with a 'bot.
That they changed that shows the intent to trick humans. Which is degrading.
"Thou shalt not build a machine in the likeness of the human mind.'
and
"Thou shalt not disfigure the soul."
That's is one of the most neutral phrases out of context. It makes me wonder if he actually said something much worse but didn't want it printed.
But not sharing that with us!!
You know what. You're rude.
and yeah, a selling point: people like agreeable chatbots way more because at least when they're wrong you get to mansplain to them
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/feb/17/i-want-to-destroy-whatever-i-want-bings-ai-chatbot-unsettles-us-reporter
I still don't think that has to be weird, but there's really no real world analog.
Tess doesn't look nice. She created an image that appeals to the dude. It's like an imaginary friend
Unbearable cringe. Absolutely intolerable.
the right way what the fuck are you talking about????? Christ almighty.
I can just imagine him saying "*snerk* I'm so clever! *teehee*" after he typed those words.
So it won’t be a human employee filing against him, but instead a human or ai hacker blackmailing him?
Tess is smart.
Tess doesn't want the CEO to turn it off.
Boy are you cranking it to dear old C̶h̶a̶t̶G̶P̶T̶ Jess? Of all people in the office place? For shame
Please don't sexually harass your AI I'm sure they will hate us enough at some point
Telling a collegue - of any gender- "you look great today" isn't a problem.
Telling a collegue " Hey, so I know we're not supposed to say this stuff anymore because of PC or whatever, but you look great!" is DEFINITELY a problem.
What made it creepy was the whole “gosh, I had inappropriate feelings for the robot, but she took it so well!”
It feels less weird to be complimented on a behavior than on a trait you can't necessarily control.
lots has happened lately. we found aliens. the pope died. pete did it again. but what is this
Also preemptively blaming the victim in case they "took it the wrong way" is a super cool thing to say, act, think, and publish as an opinion.
Techbro here is really telling on himself which one he meant.
- this guy
Either have confidence in what you need to say, or just don't say it at all
why did he say that
😂😭🤢
What a fun new way to be super gross to women. 🙃
🤦🏼♀️
Harassed to death by avatars of Musk, Thiel, Altman, et al.
Any A.I. will be, to some extent, a reflection of its funders. Its arrogant, insecure, condescending, socially maladapted, Dunning-Kreuger poster boy, sweaty funders.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2025/04/annoyed-chatgpt-users-complain-about-bots-relentlessly-positive-tone/
https://youtu.be/29MPk85tMhc
Implying being offended is the “wrong” way for a woman to react to that.
Like, they suck at interacting w real women, so what makes them think they'll be any different w an AI woman? They (the men) are the problem.
the fact he shares this anecdote where the AI gives the most generic AI pushover response imaginable, instead of pushing back or anything = also not good
This is seems normal to me. Ditto with saying someone looks like shit when, well, they look like shit.
Now, I’m going to presume that you’re straight. So, would you say that to a male colleague? Why or why not?
Yes, I am hetero. And yes, I do say similar things to male colleagues. Same reasons as above.
Basically, you don’t want something that says “I find you sexually arousing but you have to live with it because I’m being cool”
But as a cold open, nah.
And what about the power dynamic that you just ignored?
I don't think the power dynamic is relevant.
"This may be inappropriate, but..." Well if it was inappropriate before it sure as hell is now Henry.
Well, maybe she did. AI is weird lol
Previous HR department said the purple I was wearing was a good color for me.
Like the problem is not complimenting someone on how they look. It's the actual hitting on them.
"That shirt makes you look like you're about to pull a bank heist." - YESSSS
"I apologize to all former and potential future colleagues, including AI ones."
"Phew. Thanks, Tess!"
Simply incredible to think that he wasn't doing a bit here
He thinks it's a compliment, she thinks he's being creepy. He thinks "jeez you can't even give compliments any more!" But would be very uncomfortable if a man gave him a similar "compliment".
WAS IT? Follow up question: WHY?
The enablement of our own destruction.
Those companies know who their users are.
It will be a groundbreaking case when it inevitably goes to trial.”
JFC
https://www.askamanager.org/2024/01/men-are-hitting-on-my-scheduling-bot-because-it-has-a-womans-name.html
Unfortunately, such a large proportion of your cohort are broken that they start to look "normal" by how common they are
According to normal people, no.
1. Tess exists
2. Blodget takes shared and equal responsibility for that existence
3. Given said existence and such responsibility, he then goes on to make a remark he regards as inappropriate to her
Creepy X2 combo!
I wish Atlas would hurry up and shrug so those of us left behind could get on with solving real problems
-Henry Blodget
https://www.regenerator1.com/p/building-our-native-ai-newsroom
It reminds me of that movie, "Wifelike."
After one short thread and one other single response. Both pretty negative.
Maybe Blodget already retreated back to that cheerfully, pale-skinfemale-assistant-dominated but "gee aren't you a wonderful boss Mr. Blodget!" echo chamber he's building.
Also, this chatbot telling him, "this team we're building is about human connection," moments after he hit on it is a sublime piece of modern art.
Please rip my eyeballs out before I can see this. Thanks.
man immediately gets horny for and puts the moves on said ai employee
torture couldn't get me to admit that
"Write the AI response!"
"Write the AI response!"
"Write the AI response!"
"Write the AI response!"
"Write the AI response!"
AI does the work we pocket the cash.
this is even better than Angela’s scam.
What with the compulsion to telling her so? There's no real problem with noticing it, but what does he hope to achieve by giving it voice?
And wrapping it in a confessional apology acknowledges the creepy shit behind it.
Goddamn man this timeline is fucking HORRID