City expectant father turns to artificial intelligence in search of ideas for names for his soon-to-be-born child. While many online observers agree with his wife that he is ‘lazy’, others say he is simply keeping up with the times and should be praised. — SCMP
A Hong Kong husband who turned to artificial intelligence, or AI, to come up with a name for his soon-to-be-born child has angered the woman who is carrying their baby.
The “lazy” husband’s use of ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence programme popular worldwide, for name ideas led his exasperated wife to ask online: “Who is the daddy? Him or AI?”
The mum-to-be made a post on the city’s anonymous forum DiscussHK in late March, entitled: “I asked my husband to help name our baby, but he asked AI.”
In the post, she said her husband went onto ChatGPT and asked: “Can you help me find a Chinese name for my soon-to-be-born baby? He is a boy. I hope he will be intelligent, handsome, tall and lucky.”
The machine then suggested some names with auspicious meanings, for example, “Zhiyu”, which means “wise universe” and “Meifeng”, which means “beautiful mountains”.
The expectant father was not happy with these options, so he said: “Any other suggestions?”
ChatGPT went on to give more traditional Chinese names, such as “Mingli”, meaning “understand things”, and “Yongyi”, meaning “brave and resolute”.
The poster’s husband felt that the names given by the AI “all sounded quite good” and asked his wife to choose from the suggestions, but the wife liked none of them.
She said in the post that she thinks it is meaningful and important to name their child, but her husband had simply turned to AI.
“It’s obvious he is too lazy to think! He doesn’t even care about naming his child!” she said.
The post attracted dozens of comments.
A pro-AI observer said: “Actually, asking AI is like looking up a dictionary. The latter is an old method while the former is modern and intelligent one, so why do you have to scold him? Shouldn’t he be praised for keeping up with the times?”
However, others felt that the father-to-be was not paying attention to his upcoming progeny.
One said: “Naming a child is the first important thing after birth. What kind of parent is that if you are too lazy to do that?” – South China Morning Post
