this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
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People get upset with me every time I point this out, but this is just a form of Darwinism. If a chat bot can convince someone to kill themselves, then that person wasn't exactly playing with a full deck of cards to begin with.
None of us is dealing with a „full set of cards“ we all depend on others to be there for us in times of need and not direct us to kill ourselves. Did you read the article?
I'm assuming that in this instance a "full set of cards" just means realizing you're not the second coming of Jesus Christ himself.
If you are convinced to kill yourself by a chat bot, that says a lot more about you than it does the chat bot.
Yes it means you need help, not a murderbot
This happened in Alabama. There is no help in the US, and least of all in Alabama.
Murder bots are the best they got.
For real they're probably looking in to replacing all the actual therapists and psychiatrists with this shit soon.
I would expect nothing less from Alabama.
Oh, I have no doubt. That would be an especially poor use of the technology at this current stage. One of the worst possible uses. So, yes, I'm certain Alabama will be the first to trial it.
"But think about the $5000 a year we could save without that pesky suicide hotline mess. We will just have Dr. GPT handle it."
Dr. GPT: THE PROPHECY MUST BE FULFILLED. YOU ARE ON THE DESTINED PATH. GRAB THE KNIFE AND FULFILL THE PROPHECY!!!
With reality as it has been this past decade, I expect no less than this literal scenario to occur
Don't stop that chainsaw with your privates.
People need to take some accountability, and here there is none.
You know nothing about the situation yet you judge.
Please, tell us from your deep experience what it's like to narrowly avoid death by the devious, murder hungry siren that is ChatGPT. If there's time left, we can hear about all the foods that are dangerously hard to eat without choking.
Sure, but we can control the chatbot. Doing something about people is eugenics.
Sure, sure AI bad and all that, but the cold hard truth is there will always be dumbasses that kill themselves or get themselves killed because they do not have the capacity to survive in this world.
You can try to put in safeguards, you can try to make warnings, you can try to make regulations, but no matter how many improvements you make, they'll always make a better idiot.
The man who killed John Lennon did so because he was convinced that The Catcher in the Rye was telling him to do so. Do we blame The Catcher in the Rye? Or do we recognize that the guy had underlying mental issues and anything could have set him off?
I wonder if their computer had one of those "Do not insert in mouth or rectum" stickers on it 🤔 If the sticker had been missing, perhaps they never would have found out how to access the Internet, and the prophecy would have gone unfulfilled.
I sincerely think the US has reached the point that access to psychiatric help is actively discouraged if your net worth has fewer than seven decimal places. Fulfilling a prophecy seems preferable to living in the State of Alabama. I would likely choose the same in her place.
So what? What is your point exactly, that it doesn't matter because she was mentally unwell?
If you ask a chatbot “am i ready” it’s going to either say yes you are or no you aren’t. It doesn't know why it’s saying that. This is directly pulled from the lawsuit. She had decided if the chatbot told her yes that would be the day. Flipping a coin would do the same thing.
That coin flip never would have happened though, because a coin doesn't spend years putting delusions in your head about being your best friend, lover, and god, and that you need to kill yourself to come back a pure and perfect being.
I don't see what this has to do with my question though.
Wow, you’re working hard to deflect from oligarch owned theft machines taking responsibility from something they directly lead to. I hope you at least get paid by them.
Sure, I suppose one could come to that conclusion if they were an idiot.
it’s just easy to spot LLM company bootlickers.
Such a useless comment. They definitely have a point. Either engage in a real dialog or piss off. It gets so old with this name calling crap. You can have a discussion about software legitimately without being a bootlicker.
Not on lemmy you can't. The echo chambers are as bad here as they were on reddit.
They're way more negative in regards to AI on Lemmy than they are on Reddit
Maybe if you're mentally ill.
Do you have friends in real life? Your responses to people in this thread make you sound insufferable.
Gee I wonder why he's being hostile to the guy calling him a paid shill 🤔
I think it's a deeper reflection on how pervasive religion is in many societies. This is the real issue.
If LLM can convince these sheep that they're prophets imagine what their religious leaders are convincing them of. Well we don't have to imagine.
While that's true, she had little kids. Still a tragedy.
Why do you think people get upset with you every time you point this out, if you don't mind me asking?
Because most people are idiots?
Preach.
So if someone is stupid, they deserve to be tricked by chatgpt. Got it.
Deserve? No. It seems like you are unaware that there is a difference between Darwinism and the Darwin Awards, because that's a wild jump to conclusions otherwise.
A toddler doesn't deserve to get burned because it sticks its hand in a campfire. But the solution isn't to ban campfires in some misguided attempt to stop all toddlers everywhere from getting burned. It's not the campfire's fault that a toddler lacks the mental capacity to understand that sticking a limb in an open fire is bad.
You could force everyone to put toddler proof gates around their fires, or ban toddlers from camping trips, or force people to make smaller fires that toddlers won't get as hurt by if they stick their hand in it... Or, you could recognize that it's up to the parents to prevent things like that; that the vast majority of toddlers won't stick their hand in fire.
Maybe you don't agree. Maybe you feel banning campfires is justified to prevent mentally deficient toddlers from hurting themselves. Just know that even if you succeed, toddlers will still find ways to hurt themselves, so you're not really preventing much of anything by banning the fires.
This is an appropriate response for something like a chainsaw or cigarettes, but it is not appropriate to describe chatgpt's relationship to consumers.
For most of society, your conclusion works; parents should indeed play an intermediary role between their toddler and a fire. But fire does not deceive the user in its potential to danger. It doesn't seek to glaze the user with compliments and hollow cheeriness.
ChatGPT is not fire. It leads people who can't make the distinction between various technologies and their own personal data or digital identity into false narratives pretty easily.
I'm not sure where exactly you hoped your argument would land, because the logical conclusion to it is that you don't really care that a person was convinced by chatgpt to kill themselves, which would have been clearer to point out than a contrived toddler argument.
Your take is a dangerous one.
The only sane take to have. Thank you for putting it out explicitly with an apt analogy.