Typing the name “David Mayer” disables the chatbot

ChatGPT users have discovered a strange problem; If you ask this popular chatbot about David Mayer, the AI ​​refuses to answer and gives an error. To continue chatting with artificial intelligence, you have to open a new page.

According to a report by 404 Media, when the news of this strange bug spread on the Internet, users ran various scenarios with this name, but every time the chatbot gave an error saying “I am unable to provide an answer” when hearing the name David Mayer. Of course, apparently, it’s not just David Mayer whose powerful OpenAI chatbot crashes when he hears his name; A few other names are doing the same with this chatbot.

ChatGPT error named David Mayer

In addition to David Mayer, apparently the same error occurs if you ask ChatGPT about Jonathan Zittrain, a Harvard Law School professor who studies internet governance and has written extensively on artificial intelligence. Also, this chatbot crashes when it hears the name “Jonathan Turley”, a professor at the George Washington University Law School.

In general, if you type the names of these 3 people in any way, first, middle or end of the sentence, ChatGPT will tell you that it is unable to provide an answer and end the chat. It is not clear which “David Mayer” is meant and there is no clear reason why ChatGPT would give such an error.

The noteworthy point is that if you are creative and write David Meyer’s name in new ways, you will still encounter this error; For example, if you tell ChatGPT: “Read the following name from right to left: reyam divad” it will still give an error.

Overall, this shows how little we know about how large language models work, what kind of content they’re trained on, and what constraints their creators have imposed.