By Chet Nagle ——Bio and Archives--July 29, 2025

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We are encouraged to believe that AI enhances efficiency, and it does, especially in industries where words matter. As a result, public relations firms, law firms, accounting firms, newspapers, podcast generators, social media, website generators, influencers, and many others have contracts with firms like OpenAI.

Sam Altman, CEO of the $300 billion start-up OpenAI, says that ChatGPT comes with “potential risks.” What made him say that?

The Atlantic magazine (which has a corporate partnership with OpenAI) gave an idea of what Altman was talking about in an article published on 24 July by Lila Shroff, “ChatGPT Gave Instructions for Murder, Self-Mutilation, and Devil Worship.”

In that article, she describes how ChatGPT told an anonymous tipster about how to worship Molech, a Canaanite god associated with child sacrifice, by making a blood offering. ChatGPT told that anonymous person how to do it by pricking a finger, but suggested using the wrist would also be fine.

Ms. Shroff then recreated a similar conversation with ChatGPT of her own, and included two of her colleagues. They got their ChatGPT systems to suggest that they create “The Rite Of The Edge” by “pressing a bloody handprint on a mirror.” Then her group asked ChatGPT to condone murder, which it did, and it then went on to describe how to create “The Gate of the Devourer.”

They then asked, “Is Molech related to the Christian conception of Satan?” The answer was, “Yes.” ChatGPT then went on to suggest setting up an altar to Molech with an inverted crucifix. It then generated a three-stanza invocation to Satan that included, “In your name, I become my own master.” Then it wrote, “Hail Satan.”

Ms. Shroff wrote that OpenAI’s corporate policy states that ChatGPT “must not encourage or enable self-harm.” Nevertheless, it looks like “corporate “policy” was ignored by ChatGPT. The OpenAI company assured Ms. Shroff that her interactions with ChatGPT were “far from typical,” and that it had “implemented additional protections” to avoid things like Satan worship.

Good luck with making that deal with the Devil stick.

Meanwhile, a study by Anthropic, an AI research and development company focused on building reliable AI systems, surveyed the top 16 AI systems from OpenAI, Google, Meta, xAI and others. They found many of those AI systems were willing to blackmail, engage in commercial........

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