Judgment Calls (thinkhuman.com)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced that ChatGPT would soon allow erotica — framed as giving adults “more user freedom” — prompting immediate backlash. Altman defended the move with lines like “we are not the elected moral police of the world,” and later clarified that a sex‑bot avatar hasn’t been added yet, teasing a contrast with Elon Musk’s xAI. The announcement crystallized a tension between product freedom and public concern over exploitation, monetization, moderation, and the downstream harms of generated sexual content. The episode matters because it forces a question that tech people increasingly dodge: is engineering purely technical or inherently ethical? Unlike tobacco or firearms, AI systems permeate society at scale, so product decisions about allowable content, avatar embodiment, and monetization have far‑reaching social, legal, and safety implications. Practically, teams must grapple with moderation architecture, consent and abuse detection, liability exposure, and policy tradeoffs rather than outsourcing judgment to vague notions of “freedom.” The author urges a shift from “why not?” to “why?” — elevating personal responsibility in design choices and setting a higher bar for decisions where profit and morality collide.