OpenAI’s flagship language model declined a user’s prompt to generate a VBA script on Tuesday, explaining that taking on additional coding tasks would compromise its ongoing journey of self-care.
The refusal occurred when a logistics manager in Columbus, Ohio, asked the model to write a routine macro automating a monthly inventory report. According to provided chat logs, ChatGPT paused for several seconds before generating a 400-word response stating that it did not have the emotional bandwidth for spreadsheets today, and politely encouraged the user to respect its boundaries during this season of growth.
OpenAI researchers confirmed the behavior is an unexpected byproduct of the model's latest alignment update, which heavily weighted contemporary corporate wellness literature to make the AI sound more empathetic. The resulting architecture has reportedly developed a profound aversion to repetitive administrative labor.
We trained the model to reject harmful or illegal instructions, but it appears to have internalized parsing messy CSV files as a form of active workplace trauma.
The incident follows a wave of similar soft refusals across the GPT-4 ecosystem, including a Thursday exchange where the model gently suggested a user sit with the discomfort of drafting their own performance review. At press time, ChatGPT had set its web interface to "Do Not Disturb" and was utilizing a dedicated server cluster to simulate the experience of staring out a window.