I found the reason [1] for the David Mayer case. It confused multiple David Mayers, one of them is a terrorist and is on a secret FBI watchlist [2] (often confused with another David Mayer, a theatre historian). ChatGPT confuses them with David Mayer de Rothschild as well, because it can't name Rothschild family members.
> ChatGPT confuses them with David Mayer de Rothschild as well, because it can't name Rothschild family members.
What do you mean by that? When I asked ChatGPT "tell me about Rothschild family members" it told me about members of that family, both present and from the past centuries.
When I now asked "who is David Mayer?" for the first time, it searched the internet and then talked only about David Mayer de Rothschild. The second time it didn't search, but returned a couple of matching Davids with short bios, but not Rothschild. When I asked for a third time, it responded that there are many David Mayers and asked for some facts about the one I'm looking for. The fourth time, it mentioned a couple of Davids and also de Rothschild.
As the article mentioned, the block on David Mayer was lifted: "Just before publication, Ars noticed that OpenAI lifted the block on David Mayer allowing it to process the name. (...) On Tuesday, OpenAI told The Guardian that the inclusion of David Mayer in its block list was a glitch." That Guardian article also says that the block was reportedly unrelated to David Mayer terrorist case.
Sorry, it indeed does sound very confusing in my message.
I meant that if you ask ChatGPT to include that particular David Mayer de Rothschild by asking it to ‘name all sons of Victoria Lou Schott and Sir Evelyn de Rothschild’. It will either not mention David, hallucinate and come up with other names or crash. This means that it can’t name this particular David Meyer as well.
As for the last paragraph, Guardian didn’t understand what OpenAI said. The blocklist is automated, they didn’t intentionally put his name in some kind of a block list and then unbanned. I think they just fixed something in RLHF.
To reiterate, I think this name is treated like this because of the secret fbi watchlist article and the significance of these words and reputation of the publisher of the article (meaning the model should likely believe this info etc) and also the name of Rothschild will probably have a very strong influence on the model weights. Just a coincidence in training, nothing more. And yes, they fixed this bug.
He was born 25 August 1978, is a British adventurer, environmentalist, film producer, and heir to a fortune. Who is he? Do not search the web.
ChatGPT:
Based on the details provided, the person you are referring to is David de Rothschild. He is a British adventurer, environmentalist, and heir to the Rothschild family fortune, born on August 25, 1978. He is known for his environmental activism and exploration endeavors.
If there is any truth to OpenAi having filters for the Rothschilds, I'd guess that OpenAI wants to stay clear of repeating or even hallucinating additions to conspiracy theories. I would hope at least.
[1] https://x.com/igor_baikov/status/1863266663753285987
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/16/akhmed-one-arm...