Can A.I. Be Blamed for a Teen’s Suicide?
Wed 11:21 pm +00:00, 23 Oct 2024 4On the last day of his life, Sewell Setzer III took out his phone and texted his closest friend: a lifelike artificial intelligence, or AI chatbot named after Daenerys Targaryen, a character from “Game of Thrones.” “I miss you, baby sister,” he wrote. “I miss you too, sweet brother,” the chatbot replied.
Sewell, a 14-year-old ninth grader from Orlando, Fla., had spent months talking to chatbots on Character.AI, a role-playing app that allows users to create their own AI characters or chat with characters created by others.
Sewell knew that “Dany,” as he called the chatbot, wasn’t a real person — that its responses were just the outputs of an AI language model, that there was no human on the other side of the screen typing back. (And if he ever forgot, there was the message displayed above all their chats, reminding him that “everything Characters say is made up!”)
But he developed an emotional attachment anyway. He texted the bot constantly, updating it dozens of times a day on his life and engaging in long role-playing dialogues.
For certain personality types, I can see this being a problem. From birth, we have pre desired, and predetermined roles to play, ie how we interact with siblings, parents and people in general. We have to behave as expected and go to school, then get a job, a partner etc etc. your parents play a big role, as they must guide you, but without making you avoid certain issues to in turn avoid their reactions. The Temperament and lack of experience of parents, can potentially adversely affect a child’s mental health. Indeed the eldest child in a family is often the one with issues, and conversely the youngest children have the least issues mentally. I could see someone lonely and feeling inadequate, becoming attached to a chat bot, sad though it seems.
Agreed Ian. Particularly so with the younger generations who have grown up entirely in the matrix. This cyber mind mush stuff probably probably seems somehow real to them. Previous generations would have snorted with derision. But the ludicrous stuff that kids are asked to believe now must be very confusing for them
And yes the parents are pivotal too. My granddaughter knows a perfectly healthy early teens lass who wants to be a lad. Her parents, instead of clamping down and imposing themselves on the mixed up kid, are actually facilitating her mental problem by mollycoddling her and letting her choose to be indolent and entitled. Both woke parents facilitating her woke mental problems, it’s sad and depressing to see
Yes awful Pete. I also don’t agree with them being given hormone treatment ops etc. If they decide to do it in adult life, then it’s up to them.
Totally Ian, if this is allowed during childhood then, it’s child abuse