Technology
Why does the name “David Mayer” cause ChatGPT to crash? OpenAI says privacy tool is broken

Users of the conversational AI platform ChatGPT discovered an interesting phenomenon over the weekend: a preferred chatbot refuses to answer questions on “David Mayer.” Asking him to achieve this will end in a direct suspension. Conspiracy theories have emerged, but there is a more unusual reason behind this strange behavior.
Word spread quickly last weekend that the name was poison to the chatbot, with an increasing number of people trying to trick the service into merely confirming the name. No luck: any attempt to get ChatGPT to spell this particular name leads to the middle name failing and even breaking.
“I am unable to answer,” the message says, if it says anything in any respect.
But what began as a one-off curiosity quickly blossomed when people discovered that ChatGPT couldn’t name greater than just David Mayer.
The names of Brian Hood, Jonathan Turley, Jonathan Zittrain, David Faber and Guido Scorza were also found to be liable for the service outage. (No doubt more has been discovered since then, so this list is not exhaustive.)
Who are these men? And why does ChatGPT hate them a lot? OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to repeated inquiries, so we’re left to piece it together as best we will.* (See update below).
Some of those names can belong to any number of individuals. However, a possible thread of connection identified by ChatGPT users is that these individuals are public or semi-public figures who may prefer that engines like google or AI models “forget” certain information.
Brian Hood, for instance, stands out in that, assuming he’s the same guy, I wrote about him last yr. Hood, an Australian mayor, accused ChatGPT of falsely identifying him as the perpetrator of a decades-old crime that he actually reported.
Although his lawyers contacted OpenAI, no lawsuit was ever filed. Like him he told the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this yr: “Offensive material removed and version 4 released, replacing version 3.5.”

As for the most outstanding owners of the remaining names, David Faber is a longtime CNBC reporter. Jonathan Turley is a lawyer and Fox News commentator who was “encountered” in late 2023 (i.e., a false 911 call sent armed police to his home). Jonathan Zittrain is also a legal expert who has The topic of the “right to be forgotten” was discussed at length. Guido Scorza sits on the Management Board of the Italian Data Protection Authority.
It’s not exactly the same scope of labor, nevertheless it’s not a random selection either. It is possible that every of those people is someone who, for whatever reason, could have formally requested that the information relating to them on the Internet be restricted not directly.
Which brings us back to David Mayer. There is no lawyer, journalist, mayor or other outstanding person with that name that anyone can find (sorry to the many respectable David Mayers).
However, there was Professor David Mayer, who taught drama and history, specializing in the relationship between the late Victorian era and early cinema. Mayer died in the summer of 2023 at the age of 94. However, for a few years the British-American scientist faced a legal and web problem involving his name being related to a wanted criminal who used it as a pseudonym, to the point where he was unable to travel anywhere.
Mayer he continuously fought to have his name distinguished from that of the one-armed terroristregardless that he was still teaching already in the last years of his life.
So what conclusions can we draw from all this? Our guess is that the model ingested or provided a listing of individuals whose names require special treatment. Whether for legal, security, privacy or other reasons, these names are likely subject to special rules, like many other names and identities. For example, ChatGPT may change its response if it matches a name you entered on a listing of political candidates.
There are many such special rules, and every prompt undergoes various types of processing before being answered. However, these rules of conduct after rapid intervention are rarely made public, apart from political announcements akin to “the model will not predict the election results of any candidate for office.”
What probably happened was that one in all these lists, that are almost actually actively maintained or robotically updated, was in some way corrupted by buggy code or instructions that, when invoked, caused the chat agent to immediately crash. To be clear, this is just our speculation based on what we have learned, but this would not be the first time an AI has behaved strangely due to post-training cues. (Incidentally, as I used to be writing this, “David Mayer” began working again for some, while other names continued to cause crashes.)
As usual in such cases, Hanlon’s razor applies: never attribute to malice (or conspiracy) what might be adequately explained by stupidity (or syntactical error).
All this drama is a useful reminder that not only are these AI models not magical, but also they are extremely sophisticated and auto-feeding, and are actively monitored and interfered with by the firms that create them. Next time you are eager about getting facts from a chatbot, consider whether it is likely to be higher to go straight to the source.
Update: OpenAI confirmed on Tuesday that the name “David Mayer” had been flagged by internal privacy tools, saying in an announcement that “There may be cases where ChatGPT does not share certain information about people to protect their privacy.” The company didn’t provide further details about the tools or process.
Technology
Lime scooter and Ebike batteries will be recycled by Redwood Materials

The joint company Micromobility Lime has reached an agreement on sending batteries utilized in scooters and electronic bikes to Sewoi materials that extract and recycle critical minerals, comparable to lithium, cobalt, nickel and copper.
The agreement announced on Monday makes Redwood Materials the only real battery recycling partner for common scooters and e-bike bikes situated in cities within the United States, Germany and the Netherlands. The contract doesn’t cover every region where lime worksAn inventory covering cities throughout Europe, Asia and Australia.
In Lime up to now he had other recycling partnerships, especially with Sprout through his suppliers. However, for the primary time, the joint company Micromobility had direct relations with battery recycling in North America, which might directly process the fabric for recovery and returns it to the availability chain.
Redwood Materials, The Carson City, Startup from Nevada founded by the previous CFO Tesla JB Straubel, will get better battery materials when they can’t be used. After recovering and recycling, the materials will be re -introduced within the battery production process. This production system of a closed loop-which can reduce the demand for extraction and refining of minerals-is on the Redwood Materials business center.
The effort can also be consistent with its own goals of limestone sustainable development. Lime is geared toward decarbonization of operations by 2030. The company has made progress in reducing the range 1, 2 and 3 of emissions by 59.5% in five years of basic years 2019. Wapno plans to report the outcomes of carbon dioxide emissions 2024 in May.
“This cooperation means significant progress in the establishment of a more round supply chain, helping our batteries not only to recycled responsibly after reaching the end of their lives, but that their materials are returned to the battery supply chain,” said Andrew Savage, vice chairman for balanced development in Lime.
Lime also has partnerships from Gomi in Great Britain and Voltr in France and other European countries to gather these live battery cells for “Second Life” applications, including, amongst others, in the sphere of consumer electronics, comparable to portable speakers and battery packages.
Redwood Materials has contracts with other micromobility corporations, including Lyft, RAD Power Bikes and bicycle batteries and scooters specialized in recycling. Redwood, which collected over $ 2 billion in private funds, announced at first of this month, opened the research and development center in San Francisco.
(Tagstranslat) ebikes
Technology
The Legal Defense Fund withdraws from the META civil law advisory group over Dei Rolback

On April 11, the Legal Defense Fund announced that he was leaving the external advisory council for civil rights regarding the fear that the changes in technology company introduced diversity, own capital, inclusion and availability in January.
According to those changes that some perceived as the capitulation of meta against the upcoming Trump administration, contributed to their decision To leave the advisory council of the technology company.
In January, LDF, along with several other organizations of civil rights, which were a part of the board, sent a letter to Marek Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, outlining their fears As for a way changes would negatively affect users.
“We are shocked and disappointed that the finish has not consulted with this group or its members, considering these significant changes in its content policy. Non -compliance with even its own advisory group of experts on external civil rights shows a cynical disregard for its diverse users base and undermines the commitment of the meta in the field of freedom of speech with which he claims to” return “.
They closed the letter, hoping that the finish would recommend the ideals of freedom of speech: “If the finish really wants to recommend freedom of speech, he must commit to freedom of speech for all his services. As an advisory group from external civil rights, we offer our advice and knowledge in creating a better path.”
These fears increased only in the next months, culminating in one other list, which from the LDF director, Todd A. Cox, who indicated that the organization withdraws its membership from the META civil law advisory council.
“I am deeply disturbed and disappointed with the announcement of Medical on January 7, 2025, with irresponsible changes in content moderation policies on platforms, which are a serious risk for the health and safety of black communities and risk that they destabilize our republic,” Cox wrote.
He continued: “For almost a decade, the NACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. (LDF) has invested a lot of time and resources, working with META as part of the informal committee advising the company in matters of civil rights. However, the finish introduced these changes in the policy of the content modification without consulting this group, and many changes directly with the guidelines from the guidelines from LDF and partners. LD can no longer participate in the scope. ” Advisory Committee for Rights “
In a separate but related LDF list, it clearly resembled a finish about the actual obligations of the Citizens’ Rights Act of 1964 and other provisions regarding discrimination in the workplace, versus the false statements of the Trump administration, that diversity, justice and initiative to incorporate discriminates against white Americans.
“While the finish has modified its policy, its obligations arising from federal regulations regarding civil rights remain unchanged. The title of VII of the Act on civic rights of 1964 and other regulations on civil rights prohibit discrimination in the workplace, including disconnecting treatment, principles in the workplace which have unfair disproportionate effects, and the hostile work environment. Also when it comes to inclusion, and access programs.
In the LDF press release, announcing each letters, Cox He called attention Metal insert into growing violence and division in the country’s social climate.
“LDF worked hard and in good faith with meta leadership and its consulting group for civil rights to ensure that the company’s workforce reflects the values and racial warehouses of the United States and to increase the security priorities of many different communities that use meta platforms,” said Cox. “Now we cannot support a company in good conscience that consciously takes steps in order to introduce changes in politics that supply further division and violence in the United States. We call the meta to reverse the course with these dangerous changes.”
(Tagstranslate) TODD A. COX (T) Legal Defense Fund (T) META (T) Diversity (T) Equality (T) inclusion
Technology
Students of young, talented and black yale collect $ 3 million on a new application

Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow, juniors from Yale University, collected $ 3 million in only 14 days to finance their startup, series, social application powered by AI, designed to support significant connections and challenge platforms, similar to LinkedIn and Instagram.
A duo that’s a co -host of the podcast A series of foundersHe created the application after recognizing the gap in the way in which digital platforms help people connect. SEries focuses moderately on facilitating authentic introductions than gathering likes, observing or involvement indicators.
“Social media is great for broadcasting, but it does not necessarily help you meet the right people at the right time,” said Johnson in an interview with Entrepreneur warehouse.
The series connects users through AI “friends” who communicate via IMessage and help to introduce. Users introduce specific needs-are on the lookout for co-founders, mentors, colleagues or investors-AI makes it easier to introduce based on mutual value. The concept attracts comparisons to LinkedIn, but with more personal experience.
“You publish photos on Instagram, publish movies on Tiktok and publish work posts on LinkedIn … And that’s where you have this microinfluuncer band,” Johnson added.
The application goals to avoid the superficial character of typical social platforms. Hargrow emphasized that although aesthetics often dominates on Instagram and the content virus drives tabktok, Number It is intentional, deliberate contacts.
“We are not trying to replace relationships in the real world-we are going to make it easier for people to find the right relationships,” said Hargrow.
Parable projects carried out before the seeded (*3*)Funding roundwhich included participation with Pear VC, DGB, VC, forty seventh Street, Radicle Impact, UNCASMON Projects and several famous Angels Investors, including the General Director of Reddit Steve Huffman and the founder of GPTZERO Edward Tian. Johnson called one meeting of investors “dinner for a million dollars”, reflecting how their pitch resonated with early supporters.
Although not the principal corporations, Johnson and Hargrow based pre-coreneuring through their podcast, through which they interviews the founders and leaders of C-Suite about less known elements of constructing the company-as accounting, business law and team formation.
Since the beginning of the series, over 32,000 messages between “friends” have been mentioned within the test phases. The initial goal of the application is the entrepreneurs market. Despite this, the founders hope to develop in finance, dating, education and health – ultimately striving to construct probably the most available warm network on the earth.
(Tagstranslate) VC (T) Yale (T) Venture Capital (T) Technology (T) APP
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