this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Ah, this is that Daenerys bot story again? It keeps making the rounds, always leaving out a lot of rather important information.
The bot actually talked him out of suicide multiple times. The kid was seriously disturbed and his parents were not paying the attention they should have been to his situation. The final chat before he committed suicide was very metaphorical, with the kid saying he wanted to "join" Daenerys in West World or wherever it is she lives, and the AI missed the metaphor and roleplayed Daenerys saying "sure, come on over" (because it's a roleplaying bot and it's doing its job).
This is like those journalists that ask ChatGPT "if you were a scary robot how would you exterminate humanity?" And ChatGPT says "well, poisonous gasses with traces of lead, I guess?" And the journalists go "gasp, scary robot!"
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