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Yes. ChatGPT "safely" helped[1] my friend's daughter write a suicide note. [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/18/opinion/chat-gpt-mental-health-suicide.html?u

• lbeckman314 8mo ago
  https://archive.is/fuJCe https://archive.is/fuJCe (Apologies if this archive link isn't helpful, the unlocked_article_code in the URL still resulted in a paywall on my side...)
  • fghorow 8mo ago
    Thank you. And shame on the NYT.
  • LeoPanthera 8mo ago
    We probably shouldn't be using the "archive" site that hijacks your browser into DDOSing other people. I'm actually surprised HN hasn't banned it.
    • lbeckman314 8mo ago
      Oof TIL, thanks for the heads up that's a shame! https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/417269/archive-today-started-including-malicious-ddos-code-on-its-site-what-should-we https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/417269/archive-toda... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment/Archive.is_RFC_5 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Requests_for_comment... https://gyrovague.com/2026/02/01/archive-today-is-directing-a-ddos-attack-against-my-blog/ https://gyrovague.com/2026/02/01/archive-today-is-directing-...
      • deleted 8mo ago
        [deleted]
    • edm0nd 8mo ago
      eh, both ArchiveToday and gyrovague are shit humans. Its really just a conflict in between two nerds not "other people". They need to just hug it out and stop doxing each other lol
    • observationist 8mo ago
      Some of us have, and some of us still use it. The functionality and the need for an archive not subject to the same constraints as the wayback machine and other institutions outweighs the blackhat hijinks and bickering between a blogger and the archive.is person/team. My own ethical calculus is that they shouldn't be ddos attacking, but on the other hand, it's the internet equivalent of a house egging, and not that big a deal in the grand scheme of things. It probably got gyrovague far more attention than they'd have gotten otherwise, so maybe they can cash in on that and thumb their nose at the archive.is people. Regardless - maybe "we" shouldn't be telling people what sites to use or not use -if you want to talk morals and ethics, then you better stop using gmail, amazon, ebay, Apple, Microsoft, any frontier AI, and hell, your ISP has probably done more evil things since last tuesday than the average person gets up to in a lifetime, so no internet, either. And totally forget about cellular service. What about the state you live in, or the country? Are they appropriately pure and ethical, or are you going to start telling people they need to defect to some bastion of ethics and nobility? Real life is messy. Purity tests are stupid. Use archive.is for what it is, and the value it provides which you can't get elsewhere, for as long as you can, because once they're unmasked, that sort of thing is gone from the internet, and that'd be a damn shame.
      • sonofhans 8mo ago
        My guess is that you’ve not had your house egged, or have some poverty of imagination about it. I grew up in the midwest where this did happen. A house egging would take hours to clean up, and likely cause permanent damage to paint and finishes. Or perhaps you think it’s no big deal to damage someone else’s property, as long as you only do it a little.
        • Jon_Lowtek 8mo ago
          they just wrote a paragraph about evil being easy, convenient and providing value, how the evilness of others legitimizes their own, how the inability to achieve absolute moral purity means that one small evil deed is indistinguishable from being evil all the time, discredited trying to avoid evil as stupid, claimed that only those who have unachievable moral purity should be allowed to lecture about ethics in favor of good, and literally gave a shout out to hell. I don't think property damage is what we need to worry about. Walk away slowly and do not accept any deals or whatabouts.
    • armchairhacker 8mo ago
      I’d be happy if people stop linking to paywalled sites in the first place. There’s usually a small blog on the same topic and ironically the small blogs poster here are better quality. But otherwise, without an alternative, the entire thread becomes useless. We’d have even more RTFA, degrading the site even for people who pay for the articles. I much prefer keeping archive.today to that.
    • zahlman 8mo ago
      I can't find the claimed JS in the page source as of now, and also it displays just fine with JS disabled.
• wetpaws 8mo ago
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• optimalsolver 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  • andrewflnr 8mo ago
    They're in an impossible situation they created themselves and inflict on the rest of us. Forgive us if we don't shed any tears for them.
    • bigyabai 8mo ago
      Sure - so is Google Chrome for abetting them with a browser, and Microsoft for not using their Windows spyware to call suicide hotline. I don't empathize with any of these companies, but I don't trust them to solve mental health either.
      • sonofhans 8mo ago
        False equivalence; a hammer and a chatbot are not the same. Browsers and operating systems are tools designed to facilitate actions, not to give mental health opinions on free-text inquiries. Once it starts writing suicide notes you don’t get to pretend it’s a hammer anymore.
        • andrewflnr 8mo ago
          I think the distinction is a bit more subtle than "designed to facilitate actions", which you could argue also applies to an LLM. But a browser is a conduit for ideas from elsewhere or from its user. An LLM... well, kind of breaks the categorization of conduit vs originator, but that's sufficient to show the equivalence is false.
  • sumeno 8mo ago
    The leaders of these LLM companies should be held criminally liable for their products in the same way that regular people would be if they did the same thing. We've got to stop throwing up our hands and shrugging when giant corporations are evil
• deleted 8mo ago
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• wiseowise 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  • fghorow 8mo ago
    May you never need to be in a bereaved parent's shoes.
    • wiseowise 8mo ago
      [flagged]
      • weakfish 8mo ago
        This comment doesn’t belong on this forum, even aside from the horrible lack of empathy
        • wiseowise 8mo ago
          Why? Because you can’t guilt trip me into submission I need to be removed? And because I don’t buy media’s blatant abuse of the situation I lack empathy?
    • bigyabai 8mo ago
      Many of us aren't, and it's why it's hard to blame the businesses like OpenAI for doing nothing. The parent's jokey tone is unwarranted, but their overall point is sound. The more blame we assign to inanimate systems like ChatGPT, the more consent we furnish for inhumane surveillance.
• OutOfHere 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  • plorg 8mo ago
    You surely understand that this is not what GP is describing.
• overgard 8mo ago
  I have mixed feelings on this (besides obviously being sad about the loss of a good person). I think one of the useful things about AI chat is that you can talk about things that are difficult to talk to another human about, whether it's an embarrassing question or just things you don't want people to know about you. So it strikes me that trying to add a guard rail for all the things that reflect poorly on a chat agent seems like it'd reduce the utility of it. I think people have trouble talking about suicidal thoughts to real therapists because AFAIK therapists have a duty to report self harm, which makes people less likely to talk about it. One thing that I think is dangerous with the current LLM models though is the sycophancy problem. Like, all the time chatGPT is like "Great question!". Honestly, most my questions are not "great", nor are my insights "sharp", but flattery will get you a lot of places.. I just worry that these things attempting to be agreeable lets people walk down paths where a human would be like "ok, no"
  • magicalhippo 8mo ago
    > Like, all the time chatGPT is like "Great question!". I've been trying out Gemini for a little while, and quickly got annoyed by that pattern. They're overly trained to agree maximally. However, in the Gemini web app you can add instructions that are inserted in each conversation. I've added that it shouldn't assume my suggestions as good per default, but offer critique where appropriate. And so every now and then it adds a critique section, where it states why it thinks what I'm suggesting is a really bad idea or similar. It's overall doing a good job, and I feel it's something it should have had by default in a similar fashion.
    • wolvoleo 8mo ago
      You can insert a custom default prompt on pretty much every AI under the sun these days, not just Gemini
      • magicalhippo 8mo ago
        I assume so, just haven't tried the others yet. Main point was rather that the model can behave differently if the provider wanted, without any additional training.
• NedF 8mo ago
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• zer00eyz 8mo ago
  Do I feel bad for the above person. I do. Deeply. But having lived through the 80's and 90's, the satanic panic I gotta say this is dangerous ground to tread. If this was a forum user, rather than a LLM, who had done all the same things, and not reached out, it would have been a tragedy but the story would just have been one among many. The only reason we're talking about this is because anything related to AI gets eyeballs right now. And our youth suicides epidemic outweighs other issues that get lots more attention and money at the moment.