Teen, 14, Dies by Suicide After Falling in 'Love' with AI Chatbot. Now His Mom Is Suing
Teen, 14, Dies by Suicide After Falling in 'Love' with AI Chatbot. Now His Mom Is Suing
Megan Garcia sued Character.AI in federal court after the suicide of her 14-year-old son, Sewell Setzer III, arguing the platform has "targeted the most vulnerable members of society – our children"
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I bet there are people who committed suicide after their Tamagotchi died. Jumping into the 'AI bad' narrative because of individual incidents like this is moronic. If you give a pillow to a million people, a few are going to suffocate on it. This is what happens when you scale something up enough, and it proves absolutely nothing.
The same logic applies to self-driving vehicles. We’ll likely never reach a point where accidents stop happening entirely. Even if we replaced every human-driven vehicle with a self-driving one that’s 10 times safer than a human, we’d still see 8 people dying because of them every day in the US alone. Imagine posting articles about those incidents and complaining they’re not 100% safe. What’s the alternative? Going back to human drivers and 80 deaths a day?
Yes, we should strive to improve. Yes, we should try to fix the issues that can be fixed. No, I’m not saying 'who cares' - and so on with the strawmans I'm going to receive for this. All I’m saying is that we should be reasonable and use some damn common sense when reacting to these outrage-inducing, fear-mongering articles that are only after your attention and clicks.
A chatbot acts like a human, it's also very supportive, polite, and courteous. It doesn't get angry or judge you. This can affect one's mind in a way that other things you've mentioned like a Tamagotchi, a pillow, or a self-driving car can't. We simply can't compare AI to these things. Adults fall for this, let alone teenagers who are fueled by extreme levels of hormones.
We simply can’t compare AI to these things.
You just did. Comparing means analysing differences. You pointed out the differences between the two, which is comparing.
Thank you for your invaluable contribution to this conversation.
All I’m saying is that we should be reasonable and use some damn common sense when reacting to these outrage-inducing, fear-mongering articles that are only after your attention and clicks.
Based and true.
Does your tamogatchi encourage you to commit suicide so you can join it and demand it be the only important thing in your life while sexting you? These are things that if the adult human programmer did, they would be liable both criminally and civilly. Just being AI doesn't give it a free pass.