Thanks to OpenAI for voluntarily sharing these important and valuable statistics. I think these ought to be mandatory government statistics, but until they are or it becomes an industry standard, I will not criticize the first company to helpfully share them, on the basis of what they shared. Incentives.
OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly
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Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly
#152We'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…
You don't need to withdraw from humanity, you only need to withdraw from Big Tech platforms. I'm continually amazed at the difference between the actual human race and the version of the human race that's presented to me online.
The first one is basically great, everywhere I go, when I interact with them they're some mix of pleasant, friendly, hapless, busy, helpful, annoyed, basically just the whole range of things that a person might be, with almost none of them being really awful.
Then I get online and look at Reddit or X or something like that and they're dominated by negativity, anger, bigotry, indignation, victimization, depression, anxiety, really anything awful that's hard to look away from, has been bubbled up to the top and oh yes next to it there are some cat videos.
I don't believe we are seeing some shadow side of all society that people can only show online, the secret darkness of humanity made manifest or something like that. Because I can go read random blogs or hop into some eclectic community like SDF and people in those places are basically pleasant and decent too.
I think it's just a handful of companies who used really toxic algorithms to get fantastically rich and then do a bunch of exclusivity deals and acquire all their competition, and spread ever more filth.
You can just walk away from the "communities" these crime barons have set up. Delete your accounts and don't return to their sites. Everything will immediately start improving in your life and most of the people you deal with outside of them (obviously not all!) turn out to be pretty decent.
The principal survival skill in this strange modern world is meeting new people regularly, being social, enjoying the rich life and multitude of benefits which arise from that, but also disconnecting with extreme rapidity and prejudice if you meet someone who's showing signs of toxic social media brain rot. Fortunately many of those people rarely go outside.
Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly
#153We'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
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Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly
#154Surprised it's so low. There are 800 million users and the typical developed country has around 5±3% of the population[1] reporting at least one notable instance of suicidal feelings per year. . [1] Anybody concerned by such figures (as one justifiably should be without further context) should note that suicidality in the population is typically the result of their best approximation of the rational mind attempting t…
> best approximation of the rational mind attempting to figure out an escape from a consistently negative situation under conditions of very limited information about alternatives I dislike this phrasing, because it implies things can always get better if only the suicidal person were a bit less ignorant. The reality is there are countless situations from which the entire rest of your life is 99.9999% guaranteed to c…
Thank you for this comment, it highlights something that I've felt that needed to be said but is often suppressed because people don't like the ultimate conclusion that occurs if you try to reason about it.
A person considering suicide is often just in a terrible situation that can't be improved. While disease etc. are factors that are outside of humanity's control, other situations like being saddled with debt, unjust accusations that people feel that they cannot be recused of (e.g. Aaron Swartz) are systemic issues that one person cannot fight alone. You would see that people are very willing to say that "help is available" or some such when said person speaks about contemplating suicide, but very few people would be willing to solve someones debt issues or providing legal help, as the case may be that is the factor behind one's suicidal thoughts. At best, all you might get is a pep talk about being hopeful and how better days might come along magically.
In such cases, from the perspective of the individual, it is not entirely unreasonable to want to end it. However, once it comes to that, walking back the reasoning chain leads to the fact that people and society has failed them, and therefore it is just better to apply a label on that person that they were "mental ill" or "arrogant" and could not see a better way.
Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly
#155We'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…
>now we're making life so stressful people literally want to kill themselves
Is this actually the case? Working conditions and health during industrial revolution times doesn't seem that much better. There is a perception that people now are more stressed/tired/miserable than before, but I am not sure that is the case.
In fact I think it's the opposite, we have enough leisure time to reflect upon the misery and just enough agency to see that this doesn't have to be a fact of life, but not enough agency to meaningfully change it. This would also match how birth rates keep declining as countries become more developed.
Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure ChatGPT is the solution? It just sounds like another "savior complex" sell spin from tech. 1. Social media -> connection 2. AGI -> erotica 3. Suicide -> prevention All these for engagement (i.e. addiction). It seems like the tech industry is the root cause itself trying to masquerade the problem by brainwashing the population. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45026886
You actually need to add a loop in there between the suicide and erotica steps.
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Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly
#157Contrarian opinion.
OpenAI gets a lot of hate these days, but on this subject it's quite possible that ChatGPT helped a lot of people choose a less drastic path. There could have been unfortunate incidents, but the number of people who were convinced to not take extreme steps would have been of a few orders of magnitude more (guessing).
I use it to help improve mental health, and with good prompting skills it's not bad. YMMV. OpenAI and others deserve credit here.
Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly
#158I have long believed that if you are the editor of a blog, you incur obligations by right of publishing other people's statements. You may not like this, but it's what I believe. In some economies, the law even said it. You can incur legal obligations. I now begin to believe if you put a ChatGPT online, and observe people are using it like this, you have incurred obligations. And, in due course the law will clarify w…
Out of curiosity, are you the type of person who believes that someone like Joe Rogan has an obligation to argue with his guests if they stray from “expert consensus”, or for every guest that has a controversial opinion, feature someone with the opposite view to maintain balance?
Nope. This isn't my line of reasoning. But Joe should be liable for content he hosts, if the content defames people or is illegal. As should Facebook and even ycombinator. Or truth social.
Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly
#159> It is estimated that more than one in five U.S. adults live with a mental illness (59.3 million in 2022; 23.1% of the U.S. adult population). https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/mental-illness Most people don't understand just how mentally unwell the US population is. Of course there are one million talking to ChatGPT about suicide weekly. This is not a surprising stat at all. It's just a question of what to…
~11% of the US population is on antidepressants. I'm not, but I personally know the biggest detriment to my mental health is just how infrequently I'm in social situations. I see my friends perhaps once every few months. We almost all have kids. I'm perfectly willing and able to set aside more time than that to hang out, but my kids are both very young still and we're aren't drowning in sports/activities yet (hopefully never...). For the rest it's like pulling teeth to get them to do anything, especially anything sent via group message. It's incredibly rare we even play a game online.
Anyways, I doubt I'm alone. I certainly know my wife laments the fact she rarely gets to hang out with her friends too, but she at least has one that she walks with once a week.
Re: OpenAI says over a million people talk to ChatGPT about suicide weekly
#160Most people would really benefit from going to the gym. I'm not trying to downplay serious mental illness as its absolutely real. For many though just going to the gym several times a week or another form of serious physical exertion can make a world of difference. Since I started taking the gym seriously again I feel like a new man. Any negative thoughts are simply gone. (The testosterone helps as well) This is comi…
> give it a try
If you have mental issues that is not as simple as you let it sound. I'm not arguing the results of exercise but I am arguing the ease of starting with a task which requires continuous effort and behavioural changes.