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I searched in vain for a correlation between suicide rates by country and gun ownership rates by country. Nothing... Yours is an argument of the form: "He was

I searched in vain for a correlation between suicide rates by country and gun ownership rates by country. Nothing... Yours is an argument of the form: "He was stabbed by a knife. Do let's not talk about why, let's just make it harder to get a knife, since that is how he died." Maybe gun access should be harder, maybe it should not. That is not relevant. The issue is that an impressionable youth was talked into suicide by an LLM and nobody stopped it! Not LLM vendors making money on the interaction, not governments who keep jabbering about protecting youth online, not parents who should have cared enough to take an interest. Even if you took away guns, knives, and letter openers, people would kill themselves (see those stats i mentioned). And from now on, we also have to worry that LLMs will keep talking them into it, unless the actual issue is fixed.

grayhatter 2y ago
> He was stabbed by a knife. Do let's not talk about why, let's just make it harder to get a knife, since that is how he died. > [The] issue is that an impressionable youth was talked into suicide by an LLM and nobody stopped it. Right, that is the issue. Except, I disagree there's enough evidence for a reasonable person to conclude that the chatbot talked him into shooting himself. Where as there is plenty of evidence that a child with symptoms of depression had uncontrolled access to a loaded firearm. But to the strawman representation of my argument, let's talk about both? Unless the chatbot suggested he should kill himself, I don't think the chatbot is the problem in this example. Did it? or did it just repeat a banal agreement to some non-violent fantasy? Then, if my assumption is correct, that the chatbot didn't try to talk him into it. What other steps are there that could have prevented this suicide?
- dmitrygr 2y ago
  > What other steps are there that could have prevented this suicide? Parenting and bans on all girlfriend/boyfriend like LLMs for under-18s, like we control access to other dangerous and mind altering substances and objects.
  - grayhatter 2y ago
    I don't think I'm ever going to agree to the argument that access to information should be banned. But hypothetically is this ban just for people under 18? What about the other risks? The vast majority of phishing targets are old generations? Would you say we should also ban access to LLMs to people over 55 as well? If someone could talked into suicide, they could probably also be talked into into drinking, shouldn't that ban on LLMs extend to 21?
    - dmitrygr 2y ago
      We allow adults agency and that should stay IMHO
mindslight 2y ago
As a parent, my job is to make it hard to get ahold of guns, knives, and what's traditionally in the medicine cabinet, believe it or not. As a gun owner, the original criticism is quite valid as a contributing cause. Firearms have been socialized by mass media as being complete toys, and the idea that it's reasonable to just have them sitting around your house where your kids can access them in their own developing child context is just nuts. And it's not really sustainable to be reflexively against the idea of every type of regulation, especially ones for setting responsible normative behavior.
wruza 2y ago
The issue is that an impressionable youth was talked into suicide by an LLM and nobody stopped it! We don’t know how much an LLM was actually involved. You can’t just talk someone normal into it, you have to drag their neck to that cliff. Talking only works for those already on the edge. It could be yet another rejection or fall or a dead cat on the road. But it was an LLM chat. Oh, easy, that’s the culprit! Why a person was on the edge in the first place interests no one. It’s a wicked game, we ignore them walking onto it, but when it comes to jumping, we are like nooo, wait, don’t. Put a fence and pat ourselves on the back - saved a life today. As if eternal suffering on the edge was the ultimate goal of life saving.

grayhatter 2y ago

> He was stabbed by a knife. Do let's not talk about why, let's just make it harder to get a knife, since that is how he died. > [The] issue is that an impressionable youth was talked into suicide by an LLM and nobody stopped it. Right, that is the issue. Except, I disagree there's enough evidence for a reasonable person to conclude that the chatbot talked him into shooting himself. Where as there is plenty of evidence that a child with symptoms of depression had uncontrolled access to a loaded firearm. But to the strawman representation of my argument, let's talk about both? Unless the chatbot suggested he should kill himself, I don't think the chatbot is the problem in this example. Did it? or did it just repeat a banal agreement to some non-violent fantasy? Then, if my assumption is correct, that the chatbot didn't try to talk him into it. What other steps are there that could have prevented this suicide?

dmitrygr 2y ago
> What other steps are there that could have prevented this suicide? Parenting and bans on all girlfriend/boyfriend like LLMs for under-18s, like we control access to other dangerous and mind altering substances and objects.
- grayhatter 2y ago
  I don't think I'm ever going to agree to the argument that access to information should be banned. But hypothetically is this ban just for people under 18? What about the other risks? The vast majority of phishing targets are old generations? Would you say we should also ban access to LLMs to people over 55 as well? If someone could talked into suicide, they could probably also be talked into into drinking, shouldn't that ban on LLMs extend to 21?
  - dmitrygr 2y ago
    We allow adults agency and that should stay IMHO

mindslight 2y ago

As a parent, my job is to make it hard to get ahold of guns, knives, and what's traditionally in the medicine cabinet, believe it or not. As a gun owner, the original criticism is quite valid as a contributing cause. Firearms have been socialized by mass media as being complete toys, and the idea that it's reasonable to just have them sitting around your house where your kids can access them in their own developing child context is just nuts. And it's not really sustainable to be reflexively against the idea of every type of regulation, especially ones for setting responsible normative behavior.

wruza 2y ago

The issue is that an impressionable youth was talked into suicide by an LLM and nobody stopped it! We don’t know how much an LLM was actually involved. You can’t just talk someone normal into it, you have to drag their neck to that cliff. Talking only works for those already on the edge. It could be yet another rejection or fall or a dead cat on the road. But it was an LLM chat. Oh, easy, that’s the culprit! Why a person was on the edge in the first place interests no one. It’s a wicked game, we ignore them walking onto it, but when it comes to jumping, we are like nooo, wait, don’t. Put a fence and pat ourselves on the back - saved a life today. As if eternal suffering on the edge was the ultimate goal of life saving.