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Can A.I. be blamed for a teen's suicide?

nytimes.com

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Re: Can A.I. be blamed for a teen's suicide?

#51

Post by jordanb »

autumnstwilight wrote: post #50

I am mildly to moderately critical of generative AI and how it's being marketed, but the root issue here seems to be existing suicidal ideation. The bot didn't initiate talk of suicide and told him not to do it when he brought it up directly. It seems it wasn't capable of detecting euphemistic references to suicide and therefore responded as if roleplaying about meeting in person. That said, I think this should throw…

If you read the script you see the bot talking him into it. "Unknowingly" of course, in that the bot doesn't really know anything and was just agreeing with him. But it's obvious that a real human would have realized that something was really off with his line of thinking and encouraging it would not be a good idea.

OTOH we have examples of real humans typing "DO IT FA*OT" on livestreams. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: Can A.I. be blamed for a teen's suicide?

#55

Post by K0balt »

It seems like there was a long, downward spiral associated with this child’s use of character.ai that the parents were aware of, had him sent to therapy over, etc.

My question here is, what the hell were the parents doing, not removing this obviously destructive intrusion in his life? This reads to me the same as if he had been using drugs but the parents didn’t take away his stash or his paraphernalia.

For the sake of your children, people, remember that a cellphone is not an unequivocal good, nor a human right that children are entitled to unlimited use of, and there are plenty of apps and mechanisms by which you can monitor or limit your child’s use or misuse of technology.

Also, just don’t give kids screens. Period. A laptop maybe if they are using it for creative purposes, but the vast majority of social media and consumption that is achieved by children on cellphones and tablets is a negative force in their lives.

I see 3 year olds scrolling TikTok in the store these days. It makes me ill. Those kids are sooooooo fucked. That should legit be considered child endangerment.

Re: Can A.I. be blamed for a teen's suicide?

#56

Post by wruza »

dmitrygr wrote: post #34
grayhatter wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More women attempt suicide, but more men successfully complete the attempt. The reason is because men often choose more lethal methods like guns, where more women choose less lethal methods like drugs. When talking about how to help reduce suicide it's not unreasonable to discuss methods. Also, I doubt most medicine cabinets have lethal doses of drugs, but I don't have any data to back up that assumption. If this per…

I searched in vain for a correlation between suicide rates by country and gun ownership rates by country. Nothing... Yours is an argument of the form: "He was stabbed by a knife. Do let's not talk about why, let's just make it harder to get a knife, since that is how he died." Maybe gun access should be harder, maybe it should not. That is not relevant. The issue is that an impressionable youth was talked into suicid…

The issue is that an impressionable youth was talked into suicide by an LLM and nobody stopped it!

We don’t know how much an LLM was actually involved. You can’t just talk someone normal into it, you have to drag their neck to that cliff. Talking only works for those already on the edge.

It could be yet another rejection or fall or a dead cat on the road. But it was an LLM chat. Oh, easy, that’s the culprit!

Why a person was on the edge in the first place interests no one. It’s a wicked game, we ignore them walking onto it, but when it comes to jumping, we are like nooo, wait, don’t. Put a fence and pat ourselves on the back - saved a life today. As if eternal suffering on the edge was the ultimate goal of life saving.

Re: Can A.I. be blamed for a teen's suicide?

#57

Post by ndiddy »

gregjor wrote: post #22

Can sue Character.AI but not the gun manufacturer, or whomever let a 14-year-old boy get hold of a handgun. I wonder if the AI companies can argue in court that AIs don't kill people.

I'm not sure what you're talking about, gun companies get sued all the time as a result of gun violence. The biggest recent example I'm aware of is the Sandy Hook families getting a $73 million settlement from Remington in 2022. Smith & Wesson is currently being sued by some of the survivors from the Highland Park shooting, as well as the Mexican government.

Re: Can A.I. be blamed for a teen's suicide?

#58

Post by justinclift »

autumnstwilight wrote: post #50

I am mildly to moderately critical of generative AI and how it's being marketed, but the root issue here seems to be existing suicidal ideation. The bot didn't initiate talk of suicide and told him not to do it when he brought it up directly. It seems it wasn't capable of detecting euphemistic references to suicide and therefore responded as if roleplaying about meeting in person. That said, I think this should throw…

> told him not to do it

Reading through it, that's the opposite of what happened.

> it wasn't capable of detecting euphemistic references to suicide

Yeah, that's a key component too. Due to that lack of "understanding" (sic), it literally encouraged the kid. :( :(

Re: Can A.I. be blamed for a teen's suicide?

#60

Post by tengbretson »

> In the lawsuit, Garcia also claims Character.AI intentionally designed their product to be hyper-sexualized, and knowingly marketed it to minors.

A company built technology that fully automates the act of sexually abusing children and the comments here are all just people quibbling about the presense of weapons in a home.

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