A group that opposes the number of addiction treatment programs in the Harlem neighborhood in New York City says artificial intelligence transcription software recorded two Yale University researchers insulting one of its leaders right after interviewing him—and the software then sent him the audio and a transcript.
Yale School of Medicine research associate Gina Bonilla apparently said, “Jesus Christ,” moments after the interview politely ended, according to the audio recording, posted online by the group the Greater Harlem Coalition. Ryan McNeil, director of harm reduction research and an associate professor of medicine at Yale, then said, “That dude sucked.”
“His primary concerns were basically around, frankly, white discomfort,” McNeil said. Bonilla then recalled that McNeil had earlier said, “They just want these people dead,” which McNeil appeared to confirm, saying, “Yeah, that’s all they want.”
“Well, let’s try to get some more interviews with people who suck,” McNeil also said. “I want to find someone who we can give enough rope to hang themself with.”
Various media outlets have covered the AI-assisted hot mike moment, including The New York Post via an opinion piece pointing to “the academy’s woke bias.” In a statement, the Yale School of Medicine said it’s “investigating the events following a Zoom interview that two of its researchers conducted with the Greater Harlem Coalition’s co-founder. The interviewers have issued an apology and voluntarily paused all research activities related to this study at Yale School of Medicine.”
The researchers said in their public apology that the “highly inappropriate and unprofessional comments we have made and the words we used have caused distress; we sincerely apologize and acknowledge that this was a serious lapse in judgment.” Bonilla and McNeil said their opinions are not representative of their institution and that they’re “committed to rebuilding the trust our research partners have placed in us.”
The interviewee, Shawn Hill, a co-founder of the coalition, told Inside Higher Ed that his group of over 150 block associations, nonprofits and small businesses opposes the “systemic oversaturation of our community with programs, facilities and agencies that other neighborhoods in New York City that are frequently wealthier often reject.”
According to information the coalition posted on its website, McNeil and Bonilla interviewed Hill on July 15. The researchers had proposed interviewing people regarding “perspectives on service gaps, neighborhood dynamics and community priorities—all of which led them to reach out to the Greater Harlem Coalition for our thoughts on the addiction crisis,” the group wrote.
Hill told Inside Higher Ed that not long after the Zoom interview ended, he received an email from Otter, a popular transcription program that uses AI to convert audio to text, sharing a both a transcript and the original audio. The recording had continued after Hill left the Zoom interview, capturing the researchers’ thoughts, Hill said.
“The biggest question that has come from our community members is: Can we trust the results of research produced by institutions like Yale when we learn that they have hired activist researchers who are more concerned with presenting a pre-existing hypothesis as fact and as data, rather than listening to the community?” Hill said.