Would you put your fate in the hands of an artificial intelligence platform? Probably not, but one driver in the U.K. did, and he has our soon-to-be robot overlords to thank for saving him from a pricey fine.
According to the BBC, Shaun Bosley was slapped with a $124 ticket while dropping off a colleague at Gatwick Airport. The fine was so stiff because authorities say he ignored a previous notice to collect.
Apparently familiar with the AI program ChatGPT from his day job, he let the program do the talking for him. The controversial program can generate news copy, advertisements — and now, apparently, pleasant letters to the authorities — just by feeding it the required information.
“In the end, I just typed, ‘write an appeal to a penalty charge notice for driving through Gatwick Airport. I have received final notice, but never received first notice of the penalty’, and straight away it came back with a great response,” Bosley explains.
He says, “It’s insane how it writes like a human. I didn’t have to look at it and think ‘that sounds like a robot, I need to change some of it’, it was so conversational.”
Part of the robot-brained letter expressed, “I understand that it is my responsibility as a driver to be aware of the rules and regulations regarding driving through an airport. However, I never received the first notice of the penalty and therefore, did not have the opportunity to contest the charge or pay the fine in a timely manner.”
The ChatGPT-generated note successfully got the traffic authorities to “reconsider” their position. They reduced the ticket to the original fine of around $18.
Score one for the robots.