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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?

#61

Post by gregjor »

ndiddy wrote: post #57
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.

The 2005 Federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act broadly protects firearm manufacturers from liability. It does not prevent settlements as in the Sandy Hook/Remington case. It does not prevent civil suits or suits in state courts. But it makes those suits much more likely to ultimately fail in court.

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

#62

Post by pier25 »

Obviously the kid had issues and the chatbot can't really be blamed for that.

OTOH it's also obvious if someone cannot distinguish a chatbot from a real person at an emotional level (not a rational one) they should not be allowed to use this.

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

#63

Post by kylecazar »

"Sewell, like many children his age, did not have the maturity or mental capacity to understand that the C.AI bot, in the form of Daenerys, was not real"

How? Seriously, how? Maybe it's wishful thinking on my part -- but I grew up before AI and chatbots, and I'm certain I would understand it isn't real. I'm baffled by people engaging with these things for entertainment/companionship purposes.

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

#64

Post by autumnstwilight »

justinclift wrote: post #58
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. :( :(

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

Sorry, I may have been carrying knowledge over from other articles on the same incident that showed additional transcripts. It seems that when he explicitly referred to death and suicide, the bot discouraged him from doing so. When he referred to suicide using euphemistic terms such as "coming home", then it gave responses that were encouraging (because it did not detect that those statements were about suicide).

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

#65

Post by autumnstwilight »

jordanb wrote: post #51
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)_/¯

Sorry, it seems I was carrying over knowledge from another article with additional transcripts. The bot had previously discouraged him when he explicitly talked about suicide (here's an article that mentions that: https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/characterai-lawsuit-florida-tee... ). It failed to detect that phrases like "coming home" were also references to suicide and therefore responded encouragingly.

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

#66

Post by sys64739 »

dekhn wrote: post #54

McLuhan's 27th law, amended: if there is a new thing, journalists will find a case of suicide to blame on the new thing, regardless of any prior existing conditions.

Read the article, the kid's spiral coincided with him hooking up with eDanerys. The chatbot kept agitating the kid to commit suicide, too

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

#67

Post by [deleted] »

roomey wrote: post #31

So, a 14 year old having access unsupervised to a chat bot is the problem, but the fact he had access to a gun to shoot himself was halfway through the article and described as his five year old brother "hearing the gunshot". "Man bites dog" as Terry Pratchett put it in "Times". And to explain to more literal folk here... A 14 year old having access to a gun is FUCKING INSANE

[deleted]

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

#68

Post by __egb__ »

K0balt wrote: post #55

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…

We had a similar situation in our family and we tried teaching mindful screen habits. We still lost because we couldn’t do anything about the school screen (chromebook). If we took that away at home it just provided an excuse for not doing schoolwork.

We contacted teachers about our child downloading and watching anime and playing games all day in school. They wouldn’t/couldn’t do anything. We requested that the school take the computer away and give hardcopy assignments. They refused because that would invite notice from other students which could lead to bullying. That’s what they told us. I found the acceptable computer use policy on the school website and tried playing that card. Turns out our child hadn’t actually even signed it the last year…but that didn’t actually matter, and the school didn’t enforce the policy anyway.

The schools here won’t actually discipline kids anymore. We would get emails from the principal begging parents to tell their kids that they’re not supposed to leave school grounds at lunch, but every day at least a hundred kids would just run out. (Our kid didn’t do this…I guess watching anime in the corner of the cafeteria prevents truancy…yay?)

The last two-and-a-half years of high school were so exhausting trying to find anything that would work. Nothing did. Two parents and a therapist trying to counter one teenager, bad family influences, the school system, and multibillion-dollar internet corporations that intentionally work to addict people is a very uneven situation.

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

#69

Post by LeroyRaz »

To those talking about the gun:

The gun is almost completely irrelevant, because if you are intent on killing yourself there are many accessible options. For example, almost anyone can kill themselves (including gun-less 14 year olds) by jumping off a tall building.

I understand that people care about gun violence, and that this detail seems highly salient to them, but to focus on it here, completely misses the point (and distracts from more pertinent issues - e.g., loneliness, social isolation, lack of parental oversight)

In a nutshell, guns are massive force multipliers when it comes to violence against others. They are negligible force multiplier when it comes to violence against yourself. People are connecting guns to violence, but in this case (because it is an actual of self harm) that is a spurious connection.

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

#70

Post by 8n4vidtmkvmk »

__egb__ wrote: post #68
K0balt wrote: post #55

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…

We had a similar situation in our family and we tried teaching mindful screen habits. We still lost because we couldn’t do anything about the school screen (chromebook). If we took that away at home it just provided an excuse for not doing schoolwork. We contacted teachers about our child downloading and watching anime and playing games all day in school. They wouldn’t/couldn’t do anything. We requested that the scho…

You could try blocking his anime website on your home network. Then he can keep using the Chromebook for school work but can't access his favorite sites.
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