This student used ChatGPT to appeal to parking ticket and won

A student in York St John University, UK, successfully used ChatGPT to challenge and get a parking ticket revoked, BCC reports.

AI chatbots are getting involved in every aspect of our life and even getting more advanced every day. That’s why the world tech leader recently called for a six-month pause in AI experiments. Despite the tangible risks that AI chatbots can pose to privacy and jobs, they help solve specific problems, like revoking parking tickets.

Millie Houlton, a 22-year-old York St John University student, received a £60 parking fine from the York City Council. She says she was first tempted to pay the fine and not get involved in compiling a response while claiming the notices were issued wrongly. However, she later asked ChatGPT to craft a letter to the City Council. The effort was successful, and authorities withdrew the fine notice.

York St John University student successfully revokes parking tickets with ChatGPT

Millie Houlton says she was busy with academic work as she’s preparing to get her business management degree. The student says ChatGPT wrote a “great” response for her that made City Council withdraw notices. If ChatGPT wasn’t there, she probably had to pay £60 in fines.

“I was like, ‘oh I don’t need this fine, I’m a student,’ but trying to articulate what I wanted to say was pretty difficult so I thought I’ll just see if ChatGPT can do it for me,” Houlton said. “I put in all my details about where and when it happened, why it was wrong, and my reference for the fine, and it came back with this perfectly formed personalized response within minutes.”

The ChatGPT parent company OpenAI has recently launched its most advanced AI language model, GPT-4. The model is currently deployed in the Microsoft Bing search engine. Google also promised upgrades to Bard to catch up with the competition.

As AI becomes more powerful, governments are stepping in to enact regulations. Elon Musk and other 1000 tech leaders who asked for a pause in AI experiments stated in their letter that the AI race is “out of control” and AI labs should determine safety protocols.