When AI mangles a friend’s message, what should you do?

Should you tell a friend when artificial intelligence mangles her message?

A few days ago, I learned that a former international student had been interviewed by a news channel in her country about her professional work. The news channel had posted the interview to its YouTube channel which made it easy to find.

The interview was conducted in Telugu, a language most commonly used in southern India. But YouTube had applied its automatic dubbing feature so the words being spoken were translated to English. What a terrific use of AI since I have absolutely no capacity to understand Telugu.

Except it didn’t work.

That’s not exactly true. The auto-dub feature did translate the video to English, but not phrases or sentences that made sense. Occasionally, there was just a syntax issue where words were out of order and I could sort of make out what the interviewer or my former student had presumably meant. But these occasions were rare.

At one point, for example, the former student mentions that her parents used to “roll babies” to make money. I’m pretty sure this isn’t accurate. Cigarettes were mentioned later in that portion of the exchange, so maybe they rolled cigarettes? I have no idea. By the time I finished struggling to figure out what “rolling babies” meant, a slew of other words that equally made no sense came through.

I hesitated to contact the student to let her know, but then I decided I should. Since she is living in India now, she wouldn’t know that folks like me who live in a primarily English-speaking area would be receiving the bad automatic dubbing. She thanked me and sent me some articles she had written about her work that were written in English. She also told me she would let the broadcaster know about the faulty dubbing.

The auto-dub via AI is a relatively new feature on YouTube. Apparently, it gets applied when a creator uploads videos. To avoid having it applied, a creator must finagle the settings when uploading to not have it featured on its videos. It’s my understanding that users like me can’t turn it off, although there are many YouTube videos online offering hacks on how to trick YouTube into thinking I’m someplace that speaks Telugu so it won’t dub videos I receive. Too much work.

Contacting my former student was the right thing to do. Her contacting the broadcaster was also the right thing to do. According to the online hacks, there’s also a way to provide YouTube feedback on such features if they don’t work well. While that too is work, it also seems the right thing to do.

In the meantime, if I were the broadcaster, I’d turn off the auto-dubbing feature until it can actually do what it’s designed to do, which I assume will happen eventually. When it does, it could be a beautiful thing.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

(c) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Is regifting wrong?

 

Is it wrong to give someone something as a gift that you got for free?

A reader who we’re calling Aton wrote that he regularly gets invited to parties where guests often bring gifts. He wrote that he often struggles with what to bring. Aton wrote that he is not crazy about spending money on a gift that his host may not like, but he doesn’t want to arrive empty-handed. He wondered if it would be wrong to bring a gift that he hadn’t purchased but had himself received as a gift or that he owned but couldn’t quite remember where it came from.

“Is it wrong to give a gift that I didn’t actually pay for?” wrote Aton.

Thirty years ago, the term “regifting” was made popular by the sitcom Seinfeld in an episode titled “The Label Maker.” In it, two of the sitcom’s lead characters, Jerry and Elaine, suspect a minor character, the dentist Dr. Tim Whatley (played by actor Bryan Cranston years before his Breaking Bad stardom), of regifting a label maker he had received as a gift. As with many episodes in the sitcom, there was much to-do about nothing and laughs were had. But if the stars of the sitcom were to be believed, regifting was a major no-no, showed great disrespect and could deeply hurt recipients if they found out they had been regifted.

That was a sitcom. In real life, if surveys are to be believed, regifting is quite common. In 2024, Badcredit.org found that 43% of the people they asked had plans to regift something they had received. A year earlier, Magestore pegged that percentage at 56.6%. Other surveys reflect similar results. Few suggested any of the regifters felt any guilt or remorse.

Either attitudes have changed since that Seinfeld episode aired in 1995 or regifting was never the egregious act it was held out to be. Some believe that regifting something you don’t want rather than it ending up in a landfill is better for the environment.

There also is nothing ethically wrong with regifting. You wouldn’t want to lie about where the gift came from, but few recipients ask you to explain your shopping habits.

If Aton or others considering regifting want to be thoughtful, then try to give a gift that the person might actually like. If the item is engraved with your or someone else’s name, then avoiding regifting those items is a sound move, although I own quite a few coffee mugs that have the names of people or places I don’t know on them that I find to be amusing conversation starters.

If Aton wants to bring a gift but doesn’t want to spend money on something new when he had many things around the house that he’s willing to part with, then the right thing is to do so as thoughtfully as he can. But he should recognize that in a few years, the regifted item may make its way back to him.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

(c) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

How do you revisit something a friend confided?

How responsible are you to keep a confidence?

Years ago, a friend of a reader we’re calling Angerona confided in her the truth about her friend’s child parentage. While the friend and her husband had raised the child since birth, she told Angerona that her husband was not the biological father of the child. The husband knows he’s not the biological father, but her child, now in his teens, does not.

When Angerona’s friend told her about her child, she was wrestling with the challenge of being a new parent. The two of them had been friends for years and it was not unusual for them to rely on one another for advice or to share a confidence. Angerona’s friend was clear that she had no plans to tell her son. After that initial conversation, they have not spoken of it since.

Angerona writes that she has kept her friend’s confidence and that she has no plans to inform her friend’s son against her friend’s wishes.

Over the years, however, Angerona has wrestled with her feelings about her friend’s decision. While she believes she would have given her own son all the facts as soon as he was old enough to comprehend them, she knows that it’s much simpler to hold that opinion when she hasn’t had to face such a situation herself. But as the friend’s son gets older, she wonders whether it might be important for him to know the truth in case he inherited any kind of medical condition that might have been passed on by his biological father, or if he should some day become the biological parent of a child himself.

Angerona’s question was not whether to say something to her friend’s son. She has no plans to do so. Instead, she asks if she should express her concerns to her friend.

Broaching the subject with her friend would not be violating a confidence. The friend knows Angerona knows about her son since she told her. That they haven’t spoken about it in the years since it was confided doesn’t mean that Angerona would be violating any trust if she brought it up now.

Of course, raising concerns about the decision now could prove uncomfortable for Angerona. She would do well to find a way to do so without sounding judgmental or chiding her friend for what Angerona deems to be a problematic decision. That the two of them continue to be close friends who confide in one another suggests that Angerona can find a way to do this.

If Angerona does decide to bring it up, the right thing is for her to be as honest as possible. She would do well to assure her friend that she plans to keep her confidence, but that she wondered how her friend had thought about what she might do should something in her son’s life make it helpful or important for him to know about his biological origins. If her friend responds that she has no plans to do so or that she’ll deal with it when she feels she has to and would rather not discuss it, Angerona should accept that as her response.

Sometimes all we can do is express a concern. It’s up to the person we express it to to decide what, if anything to do after that.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

(c) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Should you leave your kids equal amounts?

Is it wrong not to split your estate evenly among your surviving children?

For many parents who are writing a will that instructs what should happen to their assets after they die, it’s a no-brainer. They simply decide that the fairest thing is to split their assets evenly among their surviving children.

But there are no rules that say such an equitable split is required.

Parents can decide whatever they want to decide about what should be done with any assets that remain after they are both dead. They could, if they want, leave any assets to charity.

Even parents who once thought they would divide their assets evenly among their children change their minds. Perhaps one child develops special needs that provide a significant financial hardship not faced by siblings. Or an adult child may have borrowed a significant sum from parents with the understanding the amount would be deducted from any inheritance. The parents might also decide to leave some money to a grandchild who has a particular need that others don’t.

Life can get complicated.

But when the parents are gone, the children are left to sort through whatever the parents decided to do with their assets. It no longer becomes a problem for the parents since they will be dead, but some choices might result in creating friction in relationships among the children, particularly if they read something into the parents’ decisions that wasn’t intended.

If parents are hopeful that their children will maintain a strong relationship after the parents have died, trying to avoid doing anything that might cause resentment toward one another seems wise.

Again, parents can choose to do anything they want with their assets, including trying to die as close to broke as they can. The best option may be to think through their choices in a way that achieves whatever they hope to achieve.

One way to do this is to try to be as forthcoming as possible with their children about the choices they make. This, of course, involves discussing their will and any estate plans with their children, which itself can be a challenge since some children balk at any discussion acknowledging their parents’ mortality.

Years ago, when my sister and I were in our 20s, each of us lived in a different part of the country than our parents. We planned to visit our parents at the same time partly so we could talk to them about writing a will and letting us know what they would like us to do when they die. When we finally sat down to talk, my sister’s eyes welled up and she left the house. She couldn’t bear to discuss it. It was years before we finally took up the topic again. Making sure all of us were ready to have such a discussion helped make it go smoother than it might have otherwise.

To avoid damaging relationships or unintentionally hurting feelings, the right thing is to discuss your plans with children well before you die. (After-death discussions are typically impossible.) You can let them know of your choices and also let them know you’ll tell them if anything changes.

The discussion might not be easy. It might be challenging, but if you care about your kids and their relationship to each other, it’s the right thing to do.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

(c) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.

Must I answer emails after my work hours?

If you work a 9 to 5 job, is it wrong not to answer work emails after 5 p.m. and before 9 a.m.?

After email first became available to the general public in the 1990s and businesses began assigning email addresses to employees, there seemed to be a bit of an urgency to responding to emails as they were received. As home users shift from dial-up to broadband connections in the early 2000s, work email relatively easily could be called up at home and it still retained some of its relative urgency. Postal mail, increasingly labeled “snail mail,” gave way to email as a faster way to communicate. As texting picked up in the late 2000s, for many it became the communication means of choice, sometimes relegating email to the “I’ll respond when I get around to it” category.

Partly, the shift seemed generational. Older email users may still view it as a preferred means of communication than texting. Younger users, however, likely preferred texting over emails or phone calls, with voicemail messages falling into the “I may or may not listen to them” camp. For some email users, the shift can be frustrating. If a student, for example, sends an older instructor an email marked “urgent” seeking information, that instructor may respond without receiving any acknowledgment for days or weeks.

When it comes to personal communications, it’s good for users to let it be known how best to reach them if a response is expected.

In a business setting, expectations of responses to emails can be different. Sure, some institutions send out so many announcements via group emails that recipients grow numb to them and often ignore them, particularly if they rarely contain information specific to them. But when a colleague emails you directly seeking information or a manager emails with a request or a directive, the expectation is that attention must be paid.

Because most of us can access our business email 24 hours a day, the question often arises about whether we should be expected to. While it would be nice to adopt a policy of not answering emails after work hours either on principle or to create boundaries conducive to better mental health, that’s not always practical.

Some employees – particularly those working virtually – work with colleagues operating in different time zones. Other employees work in businesses that don’t operate in old-school 9-to-5 parameters.

Is it wrong for employers to expect employees to respond to emails outside their 9-to-5 workday? And is it equally wrong for employees to refuse to do so?

Neither of those questions strike me as getting to how best to deal with the issue of email response policy. The right thing for companies to do is to establish clear expectations when employees are hired. If that policy isn’t made clear, the right thing is for employees to ask about such expectations.

If companies expect employees to respond to emails outside of their typical workday, they should make that clear and they should make sure that their employees are compensated to do so. If employees know that when interviewing for a prospective job, they can make an informed decision about whether that’s the right workplace environment for them.

Jeffrey L. Seglin, author of The Simple Art of Business Etiquette: How to Rise to the Top by Playing Nice, is a senior lecturer in public policy and director of the communications program at Harvard's Kennedy School. He is also the administrator of www.jeffreyseglin.com, a blog focused on ethical issues.

Do you have ethical questions that you need to have answered? Send them to jeffreyseglin@gmail.com.

Follow him on Twitter @jseglin.

(c) 2025 JEFFREY L. SEGLIN. Distributed by TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY, LLC.