this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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You’re acting as if the bot had some sort of intention to help him. It’s a bot. It has zero intention whatsoever since it’s not a conscious entity. It is programmed to respond to an input. That’s it.
The larger picture here is that this technology is being used by people in a way that’s being used as if it were a conscious entity. Including the mentally ill. Which is very dangerous, and can drive people to action as we can see.
That’s not to say I have any idea how to handle this. Because I don’t have a clue. But it is a discussion that needs to be had rather than minimizing the situation as an “well the bot actually tried to talk him out of suicide”, because in my opinion that’s not the point. We are interacting with this technology in a way that is changing our own behavior and world view. And it is causing real world harm like this.
When we make something so believable as to trick people into thinking that they’re interacting with consciousness, that is a giant alarm we must discuss. Because at the end of the day, it’s a technology that can be owned, controlled, and manipulated by the owner class to serve their needs of maintaining power.
No I'm not. I'm describing what actually happened. It doesn't matter what the bot's "intentions" were.
The larger picture here is that these news articles are misrepresenting the vents they're reporting on by omitting significant details.
stop
The key issue seems to be people with poor mental health and/or critical thinking skills making poor decisions. The obvious answer would be to deal with their mental health or critical thinking issues, something which very few countries in the world are doing to any useful degree, but the US is doing worse than most developed countries.
Or we could regulate or ban AI. That seems easier.
And everyone know we can only do ONE THING, so choose well...
We can do a number of things, but dealing with the root causes for a number of societal issues will lead to better results than sweeping actions to stop things that are only hurting a tiny minority in any significant way.
Here's an example. Every study that has been done shows that alcohol use causes harm. People tend to enjoy it, however, to the point where they will break the law to have it. This makes it more difficult to diagnose and treat, and provides sources of income for organized crime if we ban it. So instead, we restrict its use to adults, heavily fine people who sell to minors, provide awareness campaigns, etc. Because sometimes a simple, heavy-handed solution creates new, larger problems.