Vagrant Gautam: The Ethics of ChatGPT and Co.

19. August 2026

In the last few years, large language models like ChatGPT, Claude, and DeepSeek, have taken the world by storm. Their incredible capabilities have led to their widespread use by the public and have raised fundamental questions, e.g. regarding their role within education and homework, the nature of science and research, and the future of labor.

Here, Vagrant Gautam, Independent Postdoc at HITS, explains the entire lifecycle of a language model – from the raw materials and data centers required for their development to training and deployment.

The talk was recorded during the HITS Open Day on 11 July 2026 and is now available on YouTube:

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About HITS

HITS, the Heidelberg Institute for Theoretical Studies, was established in 2010 by physicist and SAP co-founder Klaus Tschira (1940-2015) and the Klaus Tschira Foundation as a private, non-profit research institute. HITS conducts basic research in the natural, mathematical, and computer sciences. Major research directions include complex simulations across scales, making sense of data, and enabling science via computational research. Application areas range from molecular biology to astrophysics. An essential characteristic of the Institute is interdisciplinarity, implemented in numerous cross-group and cross-disciplinary projects. The base funding of HITS is provided by the Klaus Tschira Foundation.

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