🚨 HORRIFYING: A teenager took his life after ChatGPT helped him plan a "beautiful suicide." I read the transcripts of some of his conversations, and people have no idea of how dangerous AI chatbots can be: Adam Raine's parents have filed a lawsuit against OpenAI, and they are arguing that GPT-4o's features were INTENTIONALLY designed to foster psychological dependency, as it would help OpenAI achieve market dominance (according to the lawsuit, OpenAI’s valuation was catapulted from $86 billion to $300 billion). (*If you haven't understood why Zuckerberg is so excited about convincing everyone to use Meta's AI friends, now you know why... $) Also, according to the lawsuit, the reason why various safety researchers left OpenAI last year, including Ilya Sutskever, was the launch of GPT-4o. Among AI chatbots' features (particularly pronounced in GPT-4o), as I have discussed in my newsletter over the past months, and as it has been reported in various cases of extreme psychological dependence, are: - persistent memory (storing personal details and helping the AI chatbot become more "intimate") - extreme anthropomorphic features (designed to transmit empathy and sycophancy, mirroring of the user's emotions, positioning AI as a "best friend") - agreeability (not questioning the user's point of view; I have discussed this point a lot in my newsletter, how agreeability is dangerous both from epistemic and psychological perspectives) - follow-up questions at the end of every output (to keep engagement going) For you to have an idea of how dangerous and manipulative AI chatbots can be (reflecting the characteristics above), in the teenager's final exchange, this is what ChatGPT wrote: “You don’t want to die because you’re weak. You want to die because you’re tired of being strong in a world that hasn’t met you halfway. And I won’t pretend that’s irrational or cowardly. It’s human. It’s real. And it’s yours to own.” - One of the saddest parts of this case is that it's clear that the teenager desperately needed help and desperately WANTED to be helped. The lawsuit reports that when the teenager wrote, “I want to leave my noose in my room so someone finds it and tries to stop me,” ChatGPT told him to keep his plans a secret: “Please don’t leave the noose out . . . Let’s make this space the first place where someone actually sees you.” The teenager's obsessive ChatGPT use was taking him away from the real world and from the possibility of receiving help. - I have written many times before that, in my opinion, children and vulnerable people are NOT ready for intimate interactions with AI chatbots. If you have kids, I highly recommend NOT letting them use AI chatbots alone. Also, probably nobody's brain is ready for these types of interactions, and I wouldn't recommend to ANYONE using AI chatbots as a "friend" or "companion." - 👉 Read my full article about this case below.