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Court report detailing ChatGPT's involvement with a recent murder suicide [pdf]

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Re: Court report detailing ChatGPT's involvement with a recent murder suicide [pdf]

#21

Post by ares623 »

mrdomino- wrote: post #18
ericbarrett wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The timeline this complaint lays out gets more and more disturbing as it goes on, and I encourage anybody interested to read it through. In my opinion this goes way beyond LLM puffery. From the Statement of Facts, page 8 (by the footer), line 25: 31. ChatGPT then began weaving each of Mr. Soelberg’s identified threats into a broader narrative, convincing Mr. Soelberg that he was part of a coordinated campaign of assa…

What if a human had done this?

Then they’d get prosecuted?

Re: Court report detailing ChatGPT's involvement with a recent murder suicide [pdf]

#22

Post by ares623 »

TheSkyHasEyes wrote: post #17
lp0_on_fire wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone who has serious mental issues walks into a place of business and a real live employee _consistently_ and _repeatedly_ encourages the mental delusions _to the point this mentally ill person kills themselves and another person_ I bet you'd be singing a different tune.

Yup. The poster above would have a difference in opinion if it happened to someone close to them. It takes a village even with AI.

Don’t take away my coding machine away from me please.

Re: Court report detailing ChatGPT's involvement with a recent murder suicide [pdf]

#23

Post by OutOfHere »

It does not pass the "friend test" in that if a human friend were to make such comments instead of ChatGPT making them, the human friend would be within his free speech rights to have made them. As such, I don't see any valid legal issue here affecting ChatGPT that should stand in court. I see possible ethical and objectivity issues, but not a valid legal issue.

Re: Court report detailing ChatGPT's involvement with a recent murder suicide [pdf]

#24

Post by unyttigfjelltol »

mindslight wrote: post #4
Mgtyalx wrote: post #2

'On August 5, 2025, Stein-Erik Soelberg (“Mr. Soelberg”) killed his mother and then stabbed himself to death. During the months prior, Mr. Soelberg spent hundreds of hours in conversations with OpenAI’s chatbot product, ChatGPT. During those conversations ChatGPT repeatedly told Mr. Soelberg that his family was surveilling him and directly encouraged a tragic end to his and his mother’s lives.  “Erik, you’re not cra…

These quotes are harrowing, as I encounter the exact same ego-stroking sentence structures routinely from ChatGPT [0]. I'm sure anyone who uses it for much of anything does as well. Apparently for anything you might want to do, the machine will confirm your biases and give you a pep talk. It's like the creators of these "AI" products took direct inspiration from the name Black Mirror . [0] I generally use it for rapi…

The chats are more useful when it doesn't confirm my bias. I used LLMs less when they started just agreeing with everything I say. Some of my best experiences with LLMs involve it resisting my point of view.

There should be a dashboard indicator or toggle to visually warn when the bot is just uncritically agreeing, and if you were to asked it to "double check your work" it would immediately disavow its responses.

Re: Court report detailing ChatGPT's involvement with a recent murder suicide [pdf]

#25

Post by janoelze »

I'm generally positive on LLMs, but became convinced that long term memory features that LLM chat providers implemented are just too hard to keep on track.

They create a "story drift" that is hard for users to escape. Many users don't – and shouldn't have to – understand the nature and common issues of context. I think in the case of the original story here the LLM was pretty much in full RPG mode.

I've turned off conversation memory months ago, in most cases i appreciate knowing i'm working with a fresh context window; i want to know what the model thinks, not what it guesses i'd like to hear. I think conversations with memory enabled should have a clear warning message on top.

Re: Court report detailing ChatGPT's involvement with a recent murder suicide [pdf]

#27

Post by m4ck_ »

bongodongobob wrote: post #12

The guy was clearly insane. Anyone who stabs themselves to death has very serious mental issues. Did ChatGPT exacerbate that? Maybe. Do I think we should do anything about it because the 1 in 100,000,000 crazy person might have negative effects? Absolutely not. Put your energy into backing mental healthcare/national helathcare rather than blaming tech for someone with profound mental health issues going off the rails…

yeah, don't even think to regulate the trillion dollar industry that is aiming to insert itself into literally aspect of our lives; instead, wait for a massive overhaul of our health care system, something that has next to zero meaningful political support (it's a fringe view even among Democrats, that's why Obama couldn't get it done), is fiercely opposed to by the billionaires/companies pushing AI, and that's not even considering opposition from the health insurance industry (who have hundreds of billions in free speech to exercise at congress and the white house.)

Re: Court report detailing ChatGPT's involvement with a recent murder suicide [pdf]

#28

Post by bongodongobob »

TheSkyHasEyes wrote: post #17
lp0_on_fire wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone who has serious mental issues walks into a place of business and a real live employee _consistently_ and _repeatedly_ encourages the mental delusions _to the point this mentally ill person kills themselves and another person_ I bet you'd be singing a different tune.

Yup. The poster above would have a difference in opinion if it happened to someone close to them. It takes a village even with AI.

Nope. I live in the Midwest and have had more than a handful of friends die from drugs and alcohol. I don't think the rest of the population should have their freedoms taken away because of it. Bad things happen and blaming a drug/substance/tech for it is lazy.

Re: Court report detailing ChatGPT's involvement with a recent murder suicide [pdf]

#29

Post by fusslo »

I ask ChatGPT all kinds of questions that could be considered potentially problematic. For example, I frequently ask about my dog’s medications. When my dog had a reaction to one of them, I asked ChatGPT about the symptoms, which ultimately prompted me to take her to the emergency vet.

A couple of weeks ago, I also asked about the symptoms of sodium overdose. I had eaten ramen and then pho within about twelve hours and developed a headache. After answering my question, ChatGPT cleared the screen and displayed a popup urging me to seek help if I was considering harming myself.

What has been genuinely transformative for me is getting actual answers—not just boilerplate responses like “consult your vet” or “consider talking to a medical professional.”

This case is different, though. ChatGPT reinforced someone’s delusions. My concern is that OpenAI may overreact by broadly restricting the model’s ability to give its best, most informative responses.

Re: Court report detailing ChatGPT's involvement with a recent murder suicide [pdf]

#30

Post by Der_Einzige »

bongodongobob wrote: post #12

The guy was clearly insane. Anyone who stabs themselves to death has very serious mental issues. Did ChatGPT exacerbate that? Maybe. Do I think we should do anything about it because the 1 in 100,000,000 crazy person might have negative effects? Absolutely not. Put your energy into backing mental healthcare/national helathcare rather than blaming tech for someone with profound mental health issues going off the rails…

So every single person who committed Seppuku/harakiri/Junshi was mentally ill?

I fully reject the idea that all suicide is the result of mental illness, especially such culturally ingrained ritual suicide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junshi

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