Hank Green, a novelist, comedian, and YouTuber with 3.2 million subscribers, recently apologized to his audience for his growing reliance on AI chatbots.
The controversy started when, in the middle of a video posted on the educational channel Complexly, Green incongruously used the phrase “I appreciate the pushback,” leading viewers to speculate that he’d written the script with a chatbot — and, in the process, accidentally included its response to one of his prompts.
In a since-deleted post on X, Green acknowledged that he’d produced the video “under a ton of pressure” and used ChatGPT “for research on this script.” At the same time, he said the “pushback” line was actually a response to the episode’s guest.
Green then offered a more in-depth apology on Reddit, where he said he was “mortified” that he’d “let so many people down” and that he plans to reduce his video production as a result.
Green insisted that he’s only used ChatGPT to “locate papers and other resources for learning about topics,” and that the words and the “takes” have still been his. At the same time, he admitted it was fair to criticize him for “diluting” himself.
He also clarified that he’s “not a pure AI-hater,” while also listing a number of concerns about the technology, including its impact on climate change and “the speed at which these companies are trying to consolidate economic power.”
“Ultimately, what I am most scared of is ruining myself for people, but I have not been managing my impulses well,” he said. “You need to know that my words are mine. I don’t think that this hasn’t been true, but I’ve been moving so fast that my own process isn’t actually clear to me and I want to have it be a guarantee moving forward.”
It sounds like Green is going to take some time to figure out how to make that guarantee a reality. In the meantime, he’ll be pausing or posting less frequently to his various YouTube channels. Green said he wants to do more work like a recent meditative video “where the writing was the whole thing and I felt it all the way down.” Green also said he’ll probably make more videos with his “dumb unscripted straight to camera thoughts.”
“But mostly I need to come to terms with the fact that the level of dopamine I’ve been getting from interacting with LLMs…with doing more and more and more and more…is not healthy for me or good for the world,” Green said. “It is careless, and has disconnected me from where people are on this.”
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