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A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in

nytimes.com

461–470 of 614 posts

Re: A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in

#461
> In spring 2024, Altman learned Google would unveil its new Gemini model on May 14. Though OpenAI had planned to release GPT-4o later that year, Altman moved up the launch to May 13—one day before Google’s event.

> The rushed deadline made proper safety testing impossible. GPT-4o was a multimodal model capable of processing text, images, and audio. It required extensive testing to identify safety gaps and vulnerabilities. To meet the new launch date, OpenAI compressed months of planned safety evaluation into just one week, according to reports.

> When safety personnel demanded additional time for “red teaming”—testing designed to uncover ways that the system could be misused or cause harm—Altman personally overruled them.

> The rushed GPT-4o launch triggered an immediate exodus of OpenAI’s top safety researchers. Dr. Ilya Sutskever, the company’s co-founder and chief scientist, resigned the day after GPT-4o launched.

Re: A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in

#462

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not think this is fair. What is fair is at first hint of a mental distress, any LLM should completely cut-off communication. The app should have a button which links to actual help services we have. Mental health issues are not to be debated. LLMs should be at the highest level of alert, nothing less. Full stop. End of story.

Which mental health issues are not to be debated? Just depression or suicidality? What about autism or ADHD? What about BPD? Sociopathy? What about complex PTSD? Down Syndrome? anxiety? Which ones are on the watch list and which aren’t?

(I've been diagnosed with pretty severe ADHD though I choose to be unmedicated)

Ideally, all of the above? Why are we pretending these next-text-predicting chatbots are at all capable of handling any of these serious topics correctly, when all they do is basically just kiss ass and agree with everything the user says? They can barely handle trivial unimportant tasks without going on insane tangents, and we're okay having people be deluded into suicide because... Why exactly? Why on earth do we want people talking to these Silicon Valley hellish creations about their most vulnerable secrets?

Re: A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in

#463
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They all survived because they didn't have the knowledge of "known to work" methods and the survival rates of other methods Are we seriously going to pretend that "how to kill youself" is arcane knowledge that can only be unlocked by ChatGPT?

We are talking about isolated teenagers. Many movies (and stories) show drug overdose and self inflicted wounds as suicide methods, when in reality the survival rate without significant injuries is very high. Also in many cities it might be very hard to find a high place. The keypoint is that the signal to noise ratio is often too low (and deliberately so). Edit: also consider that suicide rate is much higher after d…

> when in reality the survival rate without significant injuries is very high

You better pipe down about this. An isolated teenager might read it and decide to shoot himself in the head rather than swallow some pills. Maybe the next NYT suicide ragebait article will be about you.

Re: A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in

#464
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They all survived because they didn't have the knowledge of "known to work" methods and the survival rates of other methods Are we seriously going to pretend that "how to kill youself" is arcane knowledge that can only be unlocked by ChatGPT?

We are talking about isolated teenagers. Many movies (and stories) show drug overdose and self inflicted wounds as suicide methods, when in reality the survival rate without significant injuries is very high. Also in many cities it might be very hard to find a high place. The keypoint is that the signal to noise ratio is often too low (and deliberately so). Edit: also consider that suicide rate is much higher after d…

Why are we talking about isolated teenagers? This teenager wasn’t isolated at all.

People who are serious about committing suicide find their ways. Usually hanging, guns or trains.

Re: A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in

#465

> In spring 2024, Altman learned Google would unveil its new Gemini model on May 14. Though OpenAI had planned to release GPT-4o later that year, Altman moved up the launch to May 13—one day before Google’s event. > The rushed deadline made proper safety testing impossible. GPT-4o was a multimodal model capable of processing text, images, and audio. It required extensive testing to identify safety gaps and vulnerabil…

Losers aren't talked about, they just lose.

The pitchfork crowd is going to be out to get the AI innovators, one way or another. There's no amount of 'safety training' that will exonerate them. Gemini got burned, now its OpenAIs turn.

So the calculus is very simple: Do the absolute minimum that's required, and ship it. Sam is proving himself very capable, very rational. OpenAI could scarce wish for a more politically savvy, more brutally rational captain to steer the ship into these uncharted waters.

Sometimes, fortune punishes the brave. But it is ruthless to idlers.

Re: A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in

#466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a flaw. It's a tradeoff . There are valid uses for models which are uncensored and will do whatever you ask of them, and there are valid uses for models which are censored and will refuse anything remotely controversial.

Reminds me of trading apps. In the end all risky situations will be handled by a few popups saying "you understand that role playing about suicidal or harmful topics cam lead to accidents and/or death and this is not the platform responsibility, to continue check if you agree [ ]"

It reminds me of gray market capital investments. They are actually quite regulated, and the contracts are only valid if the investor is fully aware of the risks associated with the investment.

In practice the providers sprinkle a handful of warning messages, akin to the California cancer label and call it a day.

Of course this leaves judges unconvinced and the contract will be redeclared as a loan, which means that the provider was illegally operating as a bank without a banking license, which is a much more serious violation than scamming someone out of $5000.

Re: A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in

#467
post #118

This is probably a stupid idea since I've only put a few seconds thought into it, but hey I've done one of those today [1] so why not go for a double? We've now had a large number of examples of ChatGPT and similar systems giving absolutely terrible advice. They also have a tendency to be sycophantic which makes them particular bad when what you need is to be told that some idea of yours is very bad. (See the third e…

> Then have that ethics LLM monitor all user interaction with ChatGPT

Epicycles.

Re: A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in

#468

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alex Jones made his money by convincing people that the parents of children murdered at Sandy Hook Elementary were actors in a conspiracy, which resulted in them bein harassed endlessly. He even continued to attack them during the defamation trials. I think it's unfair to say he was merely "the closest vile person around with big pockets," he really was the cause of a lot of pain.

I don't know how anyone can look at the $1B judgement and not decide it was about $10M of "lied about the kids" and $990M of "we can't get the murderer so here's some money from the nearest evil rich guy we could pin something on." As far as I know they didn't assign those kind of liabilities to the individuals that actually contacted the families to harass them, it's pretty clear the $1B wasn't just about harassment…

> I don't know how anyone can look at the $1B judgement and not decide

There's more to the case than that number.

> $10M of "lied about the kids"

Ridiculous. I'm not going to waste any more of my time replying to you.

Re: A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in

#469

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is one model though. "I'm sorry I'm censored but if you like I can cosplay quite effectively as an uncensored one." So you're not censored really?

Societies love theatres. Model guardrails are for chats what TSA is for air travel.

I have never heard anyone speak of the TSA favourably, so maybe it's not the best model to emulate?

Re: A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in

#470

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know how anyone can look at the $1B judgement and not decide it was about $10M of "lied about the kids" and $990M of "we can't get the murderer so here's some money from the nearest evil rich guy we could pin something on." As far as I know they didn't assign those kind of liabilities to the individuals that actually contacted the families to harass them, it's pretty clear the $1B wasn't just about harassment…

> I don't know how anyone can look at the $1B judgement and not decide There's more to the case than that number. > $10M of "lied about the kids" Ridiculous. I'm not going to waste any more of my time replying to you.

Sure, and if you ignore the number, which is quite convenient for you after you oh so lamentedly "wasted" a few sentences of your guarded time, you can rightly surmise that Jones lied and was made to pay injuries for it. Once you look and see the number is the size of the GDP of Granada at the time, then you realize it was about more than telling lies that some entirely different people used for purposes of harassments.

The fact that Jones did do something wrong after all are what opened him to being the nearest proximal vile guy with deep pockets to go after and take the brunt of what was dished out. The interesting piece here isn't that the victims got a check from Jones, it's that they got a blank check.

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