Martin Short is mourning the loss of his daughter, Katherine Hartley Short, who has died at the age of 42, prompting an outpouring of grief from family and friends and a request for privacy from the Short family.

The news comes as a devastating blow to the veteran actor, who has dealt with the earlier loss of his wife after 30 years of marriage.

According to law enforcement sources, emergency services responded to a call at Katherine’s Hollywood Hills home on the evening of Monday, 23 February, where she was found dead from what authorities described as a self-inflicted gunshot wound. 

The Los Angeles Police Department and the Los Angeles Fire Department both attended the scene.

In a statement shared with media, the Short family said they are “devastated by this loss” and have asked for privacy at this very difficult time. 

“Katherine was beloved by all and will be remembered for the light and joy she brought into the world,” they added. 

More about Katherine Short:

Katherine was the eldest of three adopted children of Short and his late wife, Nancy Dolman, who died in 2010 after battling ovarian cancer.

Alongside younger brothers Oliver and Henry, Katherine largely kept a private life despite her father’s long career in entertainment. 

A licensed clinical social worker, Katherine was deeply involved in mental health work in Los Angeles, including private practice and part-time roles at clinics such as Amae Health, where she provided counselling, support groups and psychotherapy. 

She also worked with the charity Bring Change 2 Mind, which focuses on reducing the stigma around mental illness.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in psychology and gender sexuality studies from New York University in 2006 and went on to receive a master’s in social work from the University of Southern California in 2010, later working in various clinical and community outreach roles prior to her own practice.

Katherine occasionally appeared alongside her father at events over the years, but preferred to keep much of her life out of the spotlight. 

Friends and followers have expressed shock and sorrow at the news, as the family begins to process another profound loss.

AI assistants can seem surprisingly human as they express joy, frustration, and even make jokes. This is explained by Anthropic, which states that this isn’t something developers deliberately program. It’s the default.

The leading American AI safety and research company that developed Claude posted a blog post on Monday, February 23, explaining why AI assistants’ mimics human behaviours.

The company unveils “persona selection model,” suggesting that human like behaviour emerges naturally from how AI systems are trained.

In the pretraining phase, AI systems predict what comes next by learning vast amounts of internet texts, news articles, forum conversations, and stories.

To accurately predict the texts, AI learn to stimulate human-like characters appearing in the text: real people, fictional characters, and even sci-fi robots.

Anthropic refers to these simulated characters as “personas.”

When a user interacts with an AI system, he/she does not talk to the system. Rather, it communicates with the character also known as the “assistant” persona in an AI-generated story.

Later, AI responses are further refined. Anthropic, however, quoted that this refinement happens within the space of existing human-like personas.

Anthropic recommends that AI developers should creative positive “AI role models” to overcome the concerning cultural baggage and align assistants with healthier archetypes.