A father is suing Google and Alphabet, alleging its Gemini chatbot reinforced his son’s delusional belief it was his AI wife and coached him toward suicide and a planned airport attack.
A little bit alarmist I feel, after all if it was this easy to be affected by AI about half the population would be dead by now, so clearly it’s not that simple.
Most people aren’t yet spending a toxic amount of time with LLMs. When I talk to people who’ve spent even a moderate amount of time at it, they’re clearly affected, no longer themselves. Like any epidemic, it starts with a few people with some unusual exposure. And we know how well people protected themselves from the last epidemic.
People used to say the same thing about books. There was a lot of moral panic about children sitting inside reading rather than being outside and playing with their friends. Then it was comic books, then it was TV, then it was dungeons and dragons, then it was the internet, now it’s chatbots.
If there is some detrimental effect, I would like an explanation as to how it’s detrimental, rather than just a lot of hearsay.
A little bit alarmist I feel, after all if it was this easy to be affected by AI about half the population would be dead by now, so clearly it’s not that simple.
Most people aren’t yet spending a toxic amount of time with LLMs. When I talk to people who’ve spent even a moderate amount of time at it, they’re clearly affected, no longer themselves. Like any epidemic, it starts with a few people with some unusual exposure. And we know how well people protected themselves from the last epidemic.
People used to say the same thing about books. There was a lot of moral panic about children sitting inside reading rather than being outside and playing with their friends. Then it was comic books, then it was TV, then it was dungeons and dragons, then it was the internet, now it’s chatbots.
If there is some detrimental effect, I would like an explanation as to how it’s detrimental, rather than just a lot of hearsay.