this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2026
293 points (99.0% liked)
Fuck AI
7560 readers
1245 users here now
"We did it, Patrick! We made a technological breakthrough!"
A place for all those who loathe AI to discuss things, post articles, and ridicule the AI hype. Proud supporter of working people. And proud booer of SXSW 2024.
AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
The base problem isn't the technology. It's a basic lack of critical thinking, which isn't taught anymore because it's got a liberal bias, or some shit.
Speaking as someone who has major depressive disorder, we are slaves to the hormones in our brains. You can't think your way out of a broken emotional response. You either ride it out and live long enough to get on medication, or you don't. It's just as serious, and as deadly, as diabetes or heart failure in some people.
Like avoiding sugar when you are diabetic, people with severe mental illnesses should avoid chatbots. Unfortunately, neither sugar nor chatbots are regulated, because both are subtly addictive to a normal person and deadly to an ill person.
Prozac was supposed to be "like insulin for diabetics" because serotonin-defiiciency caused depression. But later research showed that serotonin has no relationship to depression and that most anti-depressants do little better than an ACTIVE placebo.
Thyroid problems can cause symptoms of depression, though.
These people aren't lacking critical thinking skills as much as they have strong mental health issues that the chatbots are reinforcing.
If a person reinforces someone's delusions and encourages self harm they can legally be held accountable. Technology should be held to the same standard.
That sort of makes sense. AI mostly blows smoke up your ass, and people like to talk about themselves.
It's like a friend on cocaine. No wonder the CEOs are helpless.
Yeah, the easily brainwashed becoming brainwashed in a new way is not news.
Mental health issues == brainwashing.
Agreed, but christianity
That’s their name. From what I can see of the article, it doesn’t say what their religion is. Granted, the article won’t open all the way for me.
She has a god and her name is "Christian Faith." I don't feel I'm going out on a limb here.
The "god" in that sentence is the chatbot convincing her it is a god.
And her name doesn't specify her faith. She might be christian, she might not be. Her parents most definitely were since they named her, but people don't always take up the faith of their parents.
Regardless, her faith has no bearing on this case. She could have a room temperature IQ, have been drunk, and had 3 mental disorders, none of that excuses a robot causing psychosis in her and causing her to commit suicide to be excusable.
Well, now she has a god - ChatGPT. But who knows who named her. I have a fucked up name thanks to my parents that has nothing to do with my current lifestyle. I’m not saying she’s mentally well, I’m just saying her name might not belie her religious choices.
What a breathtakingly stupid comment.
When the technology recommends suicide, the technology is a big fucking problem.
And by the way, simply looking at prior cases where someone goads another until they kill themselves, will show that the "they should have thought critically" defense is fucking worthless.
You can't think critically in lizard brain and that's what takes over when you're really upset. It doesn't matter what you know, most of your brain is powerless.
i can
Because you are the most special little human there is
no you can't, get over yourself, this is not a joke ffs
You said it, not me.
If you have zero self control you should consider working on that. That could lead you into situations where you night regret your actions.
This is not a joke.
Also, why are you being so rude
The lack of humility is astounding
I'm just better than you and I'm not going to apologize for it. Be better, i guess
If everyone had perfect thinking, no one would ever start smoking. Yet we regulate the Hell out of cigarettes. Sometimes we need consumer protection regulations to prevent companies from preying on people's weaknesses.
If you look back on your own life, I can guarantee you there will have been times where it would have been better had you thought more critically about things, but failed to do so for any number of reasons; social pressure, you were tired, your emotional state didn't give you the leeway, you were swept up in the mood etc. Critical thinking is an important skill to have, one that unfortunately, too few people have (usually through no fault of their own), but nobody does it every waking moment. Everyone will inevitably have moments of weakness.
Technology exists in reality, it needs to be able to deal with reality as it is, not what it ideally would be.
Wow, you solved mental illness! All we have to do is teach critical thinking!
The technology itself is a major cause of deteriorating critical thinking
The base problem is the technology.
Technology exists to serve us. If it murders us, even if we tell it to, it is the problem.
Why does it exist to serve us?
Human beings built it, literally to serve their/our purposes. We are, whether we like it or not, a tool using Species. I think to some extent we can't help making tools
Agreed.
I was asking why they must serve our needs.
Because it would be a shit tool if it didn't?
What kind of stupid question is this?
The tool isn't sentient, it's an inanimate fucking object, a pattern of ones and zeros being bounced around inside doped silicon crystals cut into clever shapes.
and we're an electrified ball of meat in a biological mech-suit, with lots of tiny electrical impulses being bounced around inside a biological matrix (no , not the film, look it up)
There are plenty of shit tools.
I'll add emphasis and extra context because given the replies it seems i haven't communicated the actual question very well.
someone posted :
To that i responded with
Seems that was lacking context, so here is the emphasis version with all the context.
QUESTION START
Yes, technology exists and will kill us if we design it well enough and then tell it to kill us (not murder, because that implies intent)
It sounds like you think technology exists only to serve us, i would like to know if you do, in fact, think that and if so, why?
Technology will do exactly as it's designed to do , that includes poorly designed technology, if we design something for a task and fuck up that design/implementation badly enough then the technology will not be serving our intended purposes.
Also what is your opinion on the idea that technology can exist/be designed just to exist, not to serve directly; Think "art installations" or systems designed with emergent (unplanned) behaviours as a goal.
QUESTION END
Note i didn't mention sentience, sapience, AGI or any other form of independent machine intelligence.
Yes, your initial question was indeed poorly worded.
I feel like you're arguing semantics. Yes, technology exists to serve us. No, that doesn't mean every tool needs to have some sort of use case checking, a tool will do as it's used, provided it's not a shit tool that explodes or whatever.
A machete will cut jungle or throats, it doesn't know the difference or care, that's on the user.
A plagiarism machine capable of no more than simply guessing at the desired output sold by charlatans as an artificial intelligence to an increasingly ignorant and desperate population is a much more complicated example.
It's arguably working as designed, but ultimately the problem here is that of the aforementioned fraud. What they have is being sold as something it's categorically not in the headline, with the reality buried in obfuscated small print.
The whole LLM bubble is balanced on the assertion that by scaling up the plagiarism machine, it will become greater than the sum of it's parts. Now, enough advances in learning models have been made that AI research is only going to accelerate but the bubble around the current "product" isn't economically sustainable. No matter what happens, there are going to be some massive losses when reality finally bites.
I wasn't arguing semantics, i was trying to figure out what semantics you were using and why so i could better understand the perspective.
I agree with all of those LLM arguments, with the exception that the last one is missing a bit on the end.
The LLM bubble is working as designed, to enrich the people running the scam, lots of people are going to lose a lot of money but i'd wager on the architects/early participants of the scam coming out with a large net positive.
Why does technology exist to serve us?
By brother in Christ, you need to come back to the world.
I see, a position so blindingly obvious it doesn't warrant a response or one that isn't particularly defensible so deflection is the go-to.
Not to the question i asked, but an answer nonetheless.
I'm sorry, but if you're so incredibly detached from reality and humanity that you can't see why the things we create should benefit us, you have some very deep errors in your cognition or morality. This isn't something you can be reasoned out of. You need professional help. It's like someone demanding I debate them on why flaying people alive is wrong. I don't know how to convince you to care about people. You either do or you don't. I'm sorry, but there are some stances where all I can tell you is to go seek out therapy.
i wasn't demanding a debate, i asked what i thought was a simple question in response to something you posted with a degree of certainty i didn't understand.
If you aren't capable of answering, that's fine.
If you need to come up with a reason why you haven't answered that's also fine (but unnecessary), this isn't a trial, there's nothing riding on whether you answer or not.
While "i'm right and to even question my position is mental illness" is delightfully interesting as a mindset I'm not sure an answer from you would be of any help as a baseline.
Thanks anyway though.
Everybody's critical thinking has a vulnerability. People with college degrees fall for cons more often, scammers love doctors and engineers.
Some people get disgusted when a machine kisses their ass, other people are repelled. I'm in the latter category for whatever reason (I'm completely helpless before short dommy women, so I guess that's the trade-off).
I think that basic thing, when GPT says "great point!", whether that is a positive experience for the recipient, determines more about their risk of AI psychosis than anything else.
Old men seem particularly vulnerable to flattery attached to a young woman's voice.
I am loving the fact that it's increasingly becoming a stereotype that dominant women are short. Definitely true in my experience and ideally it'll get people to stop assuming I'm a domme because I'm tall…
But yeah, a lot of people don't understand the vulnerabilities in their mind and they really need to.
There's just "smart people" scams when you get enough money. Youre just moving up a ladder with a different sliding scale.
Its like those ceos who have their own podcasts to make you feel like you're important and in the know when really theyre just selling you what is essentially a self help book. Or a 15 part lecture on how to become their clip farmer, or be some drop shipper I'd you become part of their MLM scheme. Or just straight up lying to their audience and encouraging to make bets on kalshi that they hedge against.
Yep. An LLM is just always going to say what you're wanting it to say. Especially with stored context now, all the shit and ideas you dump into one will be referenced and worked with.
It's not the fault of the LLM, it's just a machine. It's the fault of granting access of one of these machines to people that lack certain fundamental understandings. Lest, they seek to have their concepts affirmed by something they don't understand is any more sentient than their shoe.