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A chatbot just killed a teen. While I don't think AI will be be banned wholesale from, say, interstate commerce despite it really should until the industry sel

by chx 2y ago

A chatbot just killed a teen. While I don't think AI will be be banned wholesale from, say, interstate commerce despite it really should until the industry self regulates the moment it starts killing people in medicine there it will be banned. And it's obvious it'll kill people. For eg in radiology it'll add its bullshit to images which is just not there. And so forth. It's just a question of how and when , not if. No dystopian novel has predicted how fucking mundane it'll be when AI begins to kill people.

rafram 2y ago
> A chatbot just killed a teen. Assuming you’re referring to this story, that’s a stretch: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/technology/characterai-lawsuit-teen-suicide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/technology/characterai-la... “His stepfather’s .45 caliber handgun” being unlocked and available to him seems like the proximate cause.
- jvanderbot 2y ago
  Gun's don't kill people, people do /s (But I think the gun _helps_). Have you heard the one about suicide in the UK reducing when they switched to non-toxic cooking gas? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC478945/pdf/brjprevsmed00022-0018.pdf https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC478945/pdf/brjprevs... Not hard to propose that difficulty of killing / dying does decrease likelihood of killing / dying. Lock up your guns.
  - ben_w 2y ago
    Same with the UK limiting how many paracetamol pills people could buy in one go, even though it's obviously possible to just go to the same shop several times in a row (or all the adjacent shops on the high street selling them) and keep buying more packets: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK374099/#:~:text=We%20have%20shown%20that%20the,coroner%20and%20deaths%20receiving%20a https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK374099/#:~:text=We%20h... That said, stuff like this definitely makes me think there's a lot of people on the margin who would be affected by what a chatbot says. Even a much older model like ELIZA.
    - chx 2y ago
      > That said, stuff like this definitely makes me think there's a lot of people on the margin who would be affected by what a chatbot says. Yeah, that's the problem. Tech bros high on the AI kool-aid think the problem is not the chatbot driving him to suicide but having access to a gun.
      - ben_w 2y ago
        It's alowed to be both. Though in this case, I'd point fingers at "American culture" rather than "tech bros": As the Onion says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...
        chx 2y ago
        No, you do not get it, the Onion is about guns Guns are pretty much irrelevant to the story, that's my point The focus of the story is an AI chatbot murdering a human Well, that's not the right words, we do not even have the right words for this because murder presumes intent and obviously there's no intent An automated plagiarism machine has spewed such bullshit which pushed a teen to suicide. Perhaps that's the right wording.
        ben_w 2y ago
        The fact that the UK demonstrably reduced suicide rates as a result of making it very marginally less easy to get a no-prescription-needed painkiller, makes me think that there's plenty of people on the edge. Easy access to firearms is totally in the same category as easy access to painkillers to overdose on, and has been demonstrated by similar research: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4566524/#:~:text=Firearms%20legislation%20is%20a%20politically,15%20in%20the%20United%20States https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4566524/#:~:text=Fi.... I have opined before that I would be surprised if ChatGPT specifically has caused the deaths of fewer than 200 people, just by giving bad advice — that's one in a million of the users, and I think that's plausible given the story of a different chatbot almost leading to botulism poisoning. I also think that the general internet should have an 18 rating: to the extent that the argument for film classifications is valid, and that the internet is too big to be classified and also definitely contains examples of things beyond the most extreme allowed in cinema etc., we should treat it like it's 18-only content except where demonstrably suitable for younger audiences.
- jamal-kumar 2y ago
  In my country the dad would be locked up no question right away for this and be facing a criminal trial, not free to be out there starting vexatious lawsuits to distract from the fact that they did a bad thing

by chx 2y ago

rafram 2y ago

> A chatbot just killed a teen. Assuming you’re referring to this story, that’s a stretch: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/technology/characterai-lawsuit-teen-suicide.html https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/23/technology/characterai-la... “His stepfather’s .45 caliber handgun” being unlocked and available to him seems like the proximate cause.

jvanderbot 2y ago
Gun's don't kill people, people do /s (But I think the gun _helps_). Have you heard the one about suicide in the UK reducing when they switched to non-toxic cooking gas? https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC478945/pdf/brjprevsmed00022-0018.pdf https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC478945/pdf/brjprevs... Not hard to propose that difficulty of killing / dying does decrease likelihood of killing / dying. Lock up your guns.
- ben_w 2y ago
  Same with the UK limiting how many paracetamol pills people could buy in one go, even though it's obviously possible to just go to the same shop several times in a row (or all the adjacent shops on the high street selling them) and keep buying more packets: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK374099/#:~:text=We%20have%20shown%20that%20the,coroner%20and%20deaths%20receiving%20a https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK374099/#:~:text=We%20h... That said, stuff like this definitely makes me think there's a lot of people on the margin who would be affected by what a chatbot says. Even a much older model like ELIZA.
  - chx 2y ago
    > That said, stuff like this definitely makes me think there's a lot of people on the margin who would be affected by what a chatbot says. Yeah, that's the problem. Tech bros high on the AI kool-aid think the problem is not the chatbot driving him to suicide but having access to a gun.
    - ben_w 2y ago
      It's alowed to be both. Though in this case, I'd point fingers at "American culture" rather than "tech bros": As the Onion says: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_Says_Only_Nation_Where_This_Regularly_Happens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%27No_Way_to_Prevent_This,%27_...
      - chx 2y ago
        No, you do not get it, the Onion is about guns Guns are pretty much irrelevant to the story, that's my point The focus of the story is an AI chatbot murdering a human Well, that's not the right words, we do not even have the right words for this because murder presumes intent and obviously there's no intent An automated plagiarism machine has spewed such bullshit which pushed a teen to suicide. Perhaps that's the right wording.
        ben_w 2y ago
        The fact that the UK demonstrably reduced suicide rates as a result of making it very marginally less easy to get a no-prescription-needed painkiller, makes me think that there's plenty of people on the edge. Easy access to firearms is totally in the same category as easy access to painkillers to overdose on, and has been demonstrated by similar research: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4566524/#:~:text=Firearms%20legislation%20is%20a%20politically,15%20in%20the%20United%20States https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4566524/#:~:text=Fi.... I have opined before that I would be surprised if ChatGPT specifically has caused the deaths of fewer than 200 people, just by giving bad advice — that's one in a million of the users, and I think that's plausible given the story of a different chatbot almost leading to botulism poisoning. I also think that the general internet should have an 18 rating: to the extent that the argument for film classifications is valid, and that the internet is too big to be classified and also definitely contains examples of things beyond the most extreme allowed in cinema etc., we should treat it like it's 18-only content except where demonstrably suitable for younger audiences.
jamal-kumar 2y ago
In my country the dad would be locked up no question right away for this and be facing a criminal trial, not free to be out there starting vexatious lawsuits to distract from the fact that they did a bad thing