OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly • Hacker News Board

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#121

Post by rustystump » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:17 AM UTC

brainless wrote: post #79

This is not suprising at all. Having gone through therapy a few years back, I would have had a chat with LLMs if I was in a poor mental health situation. There is no other system that is available at scale, 24x7 on my phone. A chat like this is not a solution though, it is an indicator that our societies have issues is large parts of our population that we are unable to deal with. We are not helping enough people. To…

If you look at the number of weekly open ai users, this is just the law of big numbers at play.

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#122

Post by mbac32768 » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:18 AM UTC

pasteldream wrote: post #93

jalapenos wrote: post #50

Is the news-worthy surprise that so many people find life so horrible that they are contemplating ending it? I really don't see that as surprising. The world and life aren't particularly pleasant things. What would be more interesting is how effective ChatGPT is being in guiding them towards other ideas. Most suicide prevention notices are a joke - pretending that "call this hotline" means you've done your job and th…

If you accept that “the world and life aren’t particularly pleasant things”, why do you want to prevent suicide?

That implies there's some deep truth about reality in that statement rather than what it is, a completely arbitrary framing.

An equally arbitrary frame is "the world and life are wonderful".

The reason you may believe one instead of the other is not because one is more fundamentally true than the other, but because of a stochastic process that changed your mind state to one of those.

Once you accept that both states of mind are arbitrary and not a revealed truth, you can give yourself permission to try to change your thinking to the good framing.

And you can find the moral impetus to prevent suicide.

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#123

Post by sherinjosephroy » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:18 AM UTC

[flagged]

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#124

Post by Doohickey-d » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:20 AM UTC

mysterypie wrote: post #105

> ChatGPT has more than 800 million weekly active users 0 to 800,000,000 in 3 years? The fastest adoption of a product or service in human history?

Yes: https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-faste...

> making it the fastest-growing consumer application in history, according to a UBS study on Wednesday.

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#125

Post by karlgkk » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:21 AM UTC

rich_sasha wrote: post #81

We've refined the human experience to extinction. In pursuit of that extra 0.1% of growth and extra 0.15 EPS, we've optimised and reoptimised until there isn't really space for being human. We're losing the ability to interact with each other socially, to flirt, now we're making life so stressful people literally want to kill themselves. All in a world (bubble) or abundance, where so much food is made, we literally d…

> We're losing the ability to interact with each other socially, to flirt,

Speak for yourself. I live in a city. I talk to my neighbors. I met my ex at a cafe. It’s great

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#126

Post by siva7 » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:21 AM UTC

Alright, so we got the confirmation sama reads all our chats.

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#127

Post by Anduia » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:22 AM UTC

mysterypie wrote: post #105

> ChatGPT has more than 800 million weekly active users 0 to 800,000,000 in 3 years? The fastest adoption of a product or service in human history?

Not at all, look at Tiktok

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#128

Post by aryehof » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:22 AM UTC

My first reaction is how do they know? Are these all people sharing their chats (willingly) with OpenAI, or is opting out of “helping improve the model” for privacy a farce?

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#129

Post by EZ-E » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:24 AM UTC

unglaublich wrote: post #95

rich_sasha wrote: post #81

We've refined the human experience to extinction. In pursuit of that extra 0.1% of growth and extra 0.15 EPS, we've optimised and reoptimised until there isn't really space for being human. We're losing the ability to interact with each other socially, to flirt, now we're making life so stressful people literally want to kill themselves. All in a world (bubble) or abundance, where so much food is made, we literally d…

The romantic fallback plan of being a farmer or shepherd. I wonder, do farmers and shepherds also romantize about becoming programmers or accountants when they feel down?

Humans always fantasize about having a different situationship whenever they are unhappy or anxious.

Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly

#130

Post by windows_hater_7 » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 5:25 AM UTC

I think there are a good number of false positives. I asked ChatGPT something about Git commits, and it told me “I was going through a lot” and needed to get some support.