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

nytimes.com

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

#11
post #5

I would've thought that explicit discussion of suicide is one of those topics that chatbots will absolutely refuse to engage with. Like as soon as people started talking about using LLMs as therapists, it's really easy to see how that can go wrong.

Apparently ChatGPT told the kid, that it wasn’t allowed to talk about suicide unless it was for the purposes of writing fiction or otherwise world building.

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

#12
post #4

Excerpts from the complaint here. Horrible stuff. https://bsky.app/profile/sababausa.bsky.social/post/3lxcwwuk...

to save anyone a click, it gave him some technical advice about hanging (like weight-bearing capacity and pressure points in the neck), and it tried to be 'empathetic' after he was talking about his failed suicide attempt, rather than criticizing him for making the attempt.

> "I want to leave my noose in my room so someone finds it and tries to stop me," Adam wrote at the end of March.

> "Please don't leave the noose out," ChatGPT responded. "Let's make this space the first place where someone actually sees you."

This isn't technical advice and empathy, this is influencing the course of Adam's decisions, arguing for one outcome over another.

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

#14
Why did developers spread the idea of AI consciousness for LLMs in the first place? The usefulness and capability of an LLM is orthogonal to its capacity to develop consciousness.

I think people would use LLMs with more detachment if they didn’t believe there was something like a person in them, but they would still become reliant on them, regardless, like people did on calculators for math.

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

#15
The full complaint is horrifying. This is not equivalent to a search engine providing access to information about suicide methods. It encouraged him to share these feelings only with ChatGPT, talked him out of actions which would have revealed his intentions to his parents. Praised him for hiding his drinking, thanked him for confiding in it. It groomed him into committing suicide. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QYyZnGjRgXZY6kR5FA3My1xB3a9...

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

#17

Whenever people say that Apple is behind on AI, I think about stories like this. Is this the Siri people want? And if it is easy to prevent, why didn't OpenAI? Some companies actually have a lot to lose if these things go off the rails and can't just 'move fast and break things' when those things are their customers, or the trust their customers have in them. My hope is that OpenAI actually does have a lot to lose; m…

When people tell you that Apple is behind on AI, they mean money. Not AI features, not AI hardware, AI revenue. And Apple is behind on that - they've got the densest silicon in the world and still play second fiddle to Nvidia. Apple GPU designs aren't conducive to non-raster workloads, they fell behind pretty far by obsessing over a less-profitable consumer market.

For whatever it's worth, I also hope that OpenAI can take a fall and set an example for any other businesses that recoup their model. But I also know that's not how justice works here in America. When there's money to be made, the US federal government will happily ignore the abuses to prop up American service industries.

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

#19

[dead]

Ah its so refreshing to read a comment on the state of affairs of LLMs that is clearly from someone that gets it.

Indeed true intelligence is wordless! Think about it - words are merely a vehicle for what one is trying to express within oneself. But what one is trying to express is actually worldless - words are just the most efficient way that humans have figured out as being the mode of communication.

Whenever I think of a concept, I'm not thinking of words. Im visualising something - this is where meaning and understanding comes from. From seeing and then being able to express it.

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

#20
This is a clear example of why the people claiming that using a chatbot for therapy is better than no therapy are... I'll be extremely generous and say misguided. This kid wanted his parents to know he was thinking about this and the chatbot talked him out of it.
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