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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

#581

Post by geysersam »

nozzlegear wrote: post #564
geysersam wrote: post #559

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ChatGPT doesn't cause a significant number of suicides. Why do I think that? It's not visible in the statistics. There are effective ways to prevent suicide, let's continue to work on those instead of giving in to moral panic.

The only acceptable number of suicides for it to cause is zero, and it's not a moral panic to believe that.

I find it hard to take that as a serious position. Alcohol certainly causes more suicides than ChatGPT. Should it be illegal?

Suicides spike around Christmas, that's well known, does Christmas cause suicides? I think you see where I'm going with this.

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

#582

Post by unnamed76ri »

charcircuit wrote: post #545
unnamed76ri wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing about depression and suicidal thoughts is that they lie to you that things will never get better than where they are right now. So someone wanting to die at any given moment, might not feel that way at any given moment in the future. I know I wouldn’t want any of my family members to make such a permanent choice to temporary problems.

If someone wants to look for their lost cat in a snowstorm should they be able to make that decision even if they could regret it in the future due to health reasons of going out in the cold to save their cat? I believe they should be able to make that decision for themselves. It's not the responsibility of your door manufacter to deny you the ability to go outside because it knows better than you and it is too dange…

This is a fairly weak attempt at salvaging your previous comment.

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

#583

Post by NuclearPM »

muzani wrote: post #244
sn0wleppard wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice place to cut the quote there > [...] — an idea ChatGPT gave him by saying it could provide information about suicide for “writing or world-building.”

Yup, one of the huge flaws I saw in GPT-5 is it will constantly say things like "I have to stop you here. I can't do what you're requesting. However, I can roleplay or help you with research with that. Would you like to do that?"

How is that a flaw?

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

#585

Post by UltraSane »

habinero wrote: post #513
UltraSane wrote: post #476

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you actually used Claude Opus 4.1? It is right far more than it is wrong.

How could you know?

How do you react to comments like this?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44980896#44980913

I believe it absolutely should be, and it can even be applied to rare disease diagnosis.

My child was just saved by AI. He suffered from persistent seizures, and after visiting three hospitals, none were able to provide an accurate diagnosis. Only when I uploaded all of his medical records to an AI system did it immediately suggest a high suspicion of MOGAD-FLAMES — a condition with an epidemiology of roughly one in ten million.

Subsequent testing confirmed the diagnosis, and with the right treatment, my child recovered rapidly.

For rare diseases, it is impossible to expect every physician to master all the details. But AI excels at this. I believe this may even be the first domain where both doctors and AI can jointly agree that deployment is ready to begin.

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

#586

Post by ipython »

mothballed wrote: post #431
scotty79 wrote: post #427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's probably healthier for them if they can afford it. Otherwise they would blame themselves for so badly losing track about where their son was mentally. In reality suicidality is most likely a disease of the brain and probability of saving him was very low regardless of circumstances. The damage was most likely accumulating for many years.

I remember how relieved the Sandy Hook families were after the Alex Jones judgement. Alex Jones said some vile things, but the biggest thing bothering those families was the death of their kids. But the families couldn't go after the murderer (who killed himself), or even the murderer's upbringing by the mother (Lanza shot her). They desperately needed someone to clamp down on, but everything directly proximal was ou…

> They desperately needed someone to clamp down on … It drove them insane.

> Whatever in their brains that needed to hold someone accountable, they did it, and it was soothing to them.

Now do Peter Thiel & Gawker.

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

#587

Post by lowsong »

pembrook wrote: post #580
lowsong wrote: post #521

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Falsehood in... what exactly? This is a horrible tragedy, and you've taken the opportunity to complain about your perceived bias in a news agency instead of engaging with the actual topic. From one of your other comments in this thread: > Just look at all the evidence presented in this non-biased, objective article with no financial incentive to incite moral panic…obviously chatgpt is guilty of murder here! Who cares…

I think you missed the part where the kid ignored the repeated help messaging from chatgpt and twisted it into giving this information by lying about creating a fictional story. Also, these are just the most inflammatory excerpts selected by a lawyer trying to win a case. Without the full transcript, and zero context around this kids life in the real world, to claim ChatGPT is at fault here is just wild. At what poin…

We can debate about how legally culpable OpenAI is for their products and if they did enough to ensure safeguards functioned, but if you can’t agree that “a machine that encourages and enables suicide is dangerous and morally wrong” without qualification, then there is nothing to discuss.

There is no wider context that would make a product encouraging this behaviour acceptable. Deflecting blame onto the parents or the victim is extremely offensive, and I sincerely hope you don’t repeat these comments to people who have lost loved ones to suicide.

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

#588

Post by ojosilva »

podgietaru wrote: post #63

I have looked suicide in the eyes before. And reading the case file for this is absolutely horrific. He wanted help. He was heading in the direction of help, and he was stopped from getting it. He wanted his parents to find out about his plan. I know this feeling. It is the clawing feeling of knowing that you want to live, despite feeling like you want to die. We are living in such a horrific moment. We need these th…

> We need these things to be legislated

Maybe we can start by enacting legislation that implements Asimov's 3 laws in its very simple form.

1. First Law:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. Second Law:

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. Third Law:

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

A Russian sci-fi writer in the 1940s predicted we were bound to have serious issues with AI safety. Fast-forward to today and we have hundreds of millions of people using AI every week and very little legislation to protect us, or just to guide courts in the process of detecting harm.

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

#589

Post by u5wbxrc3 »

hattmall wrote: post #132

Wow, this incredibly awful. I mean not even just the suicide, but like the whole idea of kids / people just having conversations with AI. I never ever considered it as like a social interaction thing. It's so weird to me, it's completely fake, but I guess it could seem normal especially to a teenager. IDK the whole idea isn't one I considered and it's disturbing. Especially considering how much it does dumb stuff whe…

It's just bizarre to me. I have always been fully aware that when I give input to a LLM I am conversing with a statistical model. Never has it crossed my mind to actually talk to a LLM. But I guess it seems possible when you haven't grown up with technology or don't know how it works. This fate for that poor boy is awful and OpenAI should be responsible.

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

#590

Post by efilife »

This dude tried to kill himself 4-5 times. Parents didn't notice. He tried to show his mom his bruised neck. She didn't notice. I haven't read the whole document[0] but you can't blame this on GPT

[0] https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QYyZnGjRgXZY6kR5FA3My1xB3a9...

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