this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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So someone who already has an underlying mental health condition diagnosed or not is at fault for their own death even if being coerced into doing it?
Without the AI these people most likely wouldn’t have gotten to the point of committing the act of suicide. I believe the accusations are valid and that AI can be bad for mental health.
There is evidence throughout history of cults that commit mass suicides. If a human can convince another human to do this why can’t a robot trained to act and speak like a human do it too? It’s not unreasonable to think an AI could push someone to suicide under the right circumstances.
In 1980, John Lennon was shot by a mentally ill man who was convinced to kill Lennon by reading Catcher in the Rye. If he had never read Catcher in the Rye, he most likely wouldn't have killed John Lennon.
But it is not the fault of Catcher in the Rye. We don't ban the book, or call the author irresponsible for writing it, because we recognize that the fault lies in the mental illness of the shooter, and that anything could have set him off.
The people who kill themselves because an AI Chatbot told them to are mentally ill. It is their mental illness that killed them, not the chatbot. You can make the claim that if it wasn't for the chatbot, they wouldn't have gone through with it, but again, you can say the same thing about Catcher in the Rye. Getting rid of the trigger does not remove the mental illness.
That's a terrible argument. We dont blame the book because Catcher in the Rye didn't have a conversation with him and tell him to kill John Lennon. That's the difference.
"We don't blame the book because Catcher in the Rye didn’t have a conversation with him and tell him to kill John Lennon. That’s the difference."
Speak for yourself, please.
Oh, you're a dumbass huh?