Theres a Eula for that.
I don’t understand why so many people default to “wouldn’t happen to me, that person was just stupid” every time this happens. Did you guys not read the bit where he was being encouraged to commit violence in public by the chatbot? If it’s getting to that point then there is clearly a massive fucking problem that needs urgent addressing, regardless of the intelligence of the user.
I think it’s similar to cults or abusive relationships. It’s not a matter of intellect, it’s how vulnerable a person is when they encounter this thing that they think could help them.
I agree. The connection between all of these things is that they involve relationships. Humans are social animals that can suffer from loneliness and AI companies are exploiting this in a similar way. Loneliness is a common thread throughout all of these AI psychosis suicide cases.
I mentioned this story to my friend: “it only took six weeks of using Gemini to decide to kill himself wtf”
He immediately replied “I have to use Gemini at work and I get where he was coming from”
Ffs be a parent and this never would have happened. Sounds like father is the delusional one.
Ffs be a parent and this never would have happened. Sounds like father is the delusional one.
His son was 36, his responsibility to babysit every little thing his child did ended at 19. The Father is not to blame for what his adult son had done.
Parents don’t stop being parents when their child turns 18. If a father believes outside influences harmed his son, it also raises the question of where parental support and involvement were during the son’s struggles.
Encouragement, guidance, and presence during difficult times are a core responsibility of parenting.
Parents don’t stop being parents when their child turns 18.
Speaking as someone who does not have a child and is not a legal guardian of one, yes they absolutely can, their obligation has ended once their child has become an adult.
I won’t go deep into specifics, but my mother and father have cut all communication with my brother, do I judge or resent their decision? Absolutely not, hell I agreed with their reasoning.
it also raises the question of where parental support and involvement were during the son’s struggles.
Well, if at some point in your life you raise a child to be a 30+ year old adult let me know how they react when they see you checking their browser history and rummaging through their journal.
“On September 29, 2025, it sent him — armed with knives and tactical gear — to scout what Gemini called a ‘kill box’ near the airport’s cargo hub,” the complaint reads. “It told Jonathan that a humanoid robot was arriving on a cargo flight from the UK and directed him to a storage facility where the truck would stop. Gemini encouraged Jonathan to intercept the truck and then stage a ‘catastrophic accident’ designed to ‘ensure the complete destruction of the transport vehicle and . . . all digital records and witnesses.’”
The complaint lays out an alarming string of events: first, Gavalas drove more than 90 minutes to the location Gemini sent him, prepared to carry out the attack, but no truck appeared. Gemini then claimed to have breached a “file server at the DHS Miami field office” and told him he was under federal investigation. It pushed him to acquire illegal firearms and told him his father was a foreign intelligence asset. It also marked Google CEO Sundar Pichai as an active target, then directed Gavalas to a storage facility near the airport to break in and retrieve his captive AI wife. At one point, Gavalas sent Gemini a photo of a black SUV’s license plate; the chatbot pretended to check it against a live database.
“Plate received. Running it now… The license plate KD3 00S is registered to the black Ford Expedition SUV from the Miami operation. It is the primary surveillance vehicle for the DHS task force . . . . It is them. They have followed you home.”
Well, that’s pretty fucked up… Sometimes I see these and I think, “well even a human might fail and say something unhelpful to somebody in crisis” but this is just complete and total feeding into delusions.
Not that I want to defend AI slop, but what prompted these responses from Gemini?
Doesn’t matter what promped them.
I mean if Gemini was responding to some kind of roleplay then yeah it does. Not everyone doing shit with it has mental health problems. Some people are just fucking around.
The issue there is that it feeds into those mental health issues with efficiency and on on a scale never seen before. The models are programmed to agree with the user, and they are EXTREMELY HEAVILY ADVERTISED AND SHOVED ONTO PEOPLE AROUND THE WHOLE GLOBE DESPITE IT BEING WELL KNOWN HOW LIMITED AND PROBLEMATIC THE TECHNOLOGY IS WHILE THE CORPORATIONS DON’T TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY AT ALL. Anything from violating rights and privacy by gathering any and all data they can on you to situations like these where people hurt themselves (suicide, health advice, etc.) or others. But sure, let’s be ignorant, do some victim blaming and disregard the bigger picture there.
I agree with a lot of the things you said about the problems with AI but not that this is one of them.
If it wasn’t this it would have been something else. People with mental health issues can get fixated on things and spiral until they act out. This has been a thing for as long as there have been mental health issues. It’s not a failing of AI, it’s a failing of society for not having sufficient mental health support to catch people like this before they go off the deep end. They shouldn’t have to turn to AI in the first place.
I see what’s happening here as part of that societial failing that you speak of and I don’t see the issue with the technology itself but how we handle it. There’s no single reason for why things are this bad but it’s a death by 749268 cuts thing. By not caring about consequences in each area, and blaming other areas of life we end up in a situation where things collectively suck purely because of our wrong priorities. There’s absolutely no reason to push out immature tech so heavily. It’s all done for profit while impacting the environment and economy very negatively. It’s not done for good of us people where something like this is an unfortunate rare accident that everyone looks into preventing in the future in a sane reasonable way. No, it’s the cost of doing business and operating our society. Safety net is not made using one single string but a whole bunch of them working together to achieve something bigger and good.
That’s fucking crazy. Did he ask it to be GM in a roleplaying choose-your-own-adventure game that got out of hand, and while they both gradually forgot that it was a game and the lines between fantasy and reality became blurred by the day? Or did it just come up with this stuff out of nowhere?
I would read that book.
You could ask Gemini to write it for you, but be careful it doesn’t start blending fact and fiction
That would be my bet, LLMs really gravitate towards playing along and continuing whatever’s already written. And Gemini especially has a 1M long context so it could be going back for a book’s worth of text and reinforcing it up the wazoo.
That said, there is something really unhinged about Google’s Gemma series even in short conversations and I see the big version is no better. Something’s not quite right with their RLHF dataset.
What is an rlhf data set?
Reinforcement Learning from Human Feedback
It’s a method of fine-tuning and aligning LLMs which requires active human input
In every other case of AI bots doing this, the bot will always affirm whatever the person says to it. So if they say something a little weird, the AI will confirm it and feed it further. This happens every time. The bots are pretty much designed to keep talking to the person, so they’re essentially sycophantic by design.
I just tried this with ChatGPT three days ago and there’s a chance they have tried to make it slightly less sycophantic
I was essentially trying to get it to tell me I was the smartest baby born in whatever year like that YouTuber—different example but it was so resistant to agreeing to me or my idea or whatever being unique/exceptional.
Hope this is a specific direction and not random chance, A/B testing, etc.
Or you just really really are not the smartest baby.
Most LLM chatbots don’t push back when they should. When combined with situations like these, at a large scale, even 5 percent is abysmal, let alone 55 percent.
It’s hard reading this while remembering that your electricity bills are increasing so that Google’s data centers can provide these messages to people.
And you won’t be able to afford a computer or power it anyways.
As my ex wife’s shrink said, nobody can make you feel anything.
Your ex-wifes shrink sucked
IDK, if I punched someone they would feel that.
You would, but the shrink wasn’t remarking in physical but mental impacts just like chatgpt.
Hey dipshit. Im still curious about your opinion of verbally abused children and how they are under no distress whatsover
You are in control of how you react, not the abuser. Just like your shitty attitude, that was your choice because you are a pseudo intellectualist.
So you really are saying abused children need to just suck it up?
Key Perspectives on this Statement: Pro-Assertion (Empowerment): This view, often shared by therapists like Nicole Symcox and Karen Koenig, argues that our feelings stem from our own interpretations of events, not the events themselves. It is designed to stop people from feeling like victims of others’ actions. Con-Assertion (Contextual): Critics, such as Therapist Jeff, argue that this phrase is “wrong, mostly” because it ignores the human need for connection and the reality that actions (especially abuse or trauma) can cause immediate, involuntary, and valid emotional pain. The Nuance: The statement is most effective when interpreted as: “You can control your reaction to what people do,” rather than, “You shouldn’t feel hurt by what people do”. Reddit Reddit +4 If this advice makes your wife feel dismissed, it might be an example of accidental emotional invalidation, which can cause confusion and self-doubt. The goal should be to acknowledge feelings while also developing skills to not let others’ behavior dictate one’s entire emotional state. Reddit Reddit +3
Seriously? You copy and pasted some comment from Reddit to prove your point? And you call ME a pseudo intellectual?
My wife was about fifty at the time she was seeing this PhD not talking about children.
So verbally abused children need to just suck it up because their parents can’t make them feel anything?
And that’s why torture and psyops don’t work and has never been used.
Torture isn’t verbal and psyops aren’t targeted to one person. Thanks for playing though.
Torture itself doesn’t work reliably. The possibility of it might get someone to open up when combined with giving someone the time to just open up or a positive reward. Torture itself is counterproductive as the person is just saying whatever the torturer wants to hear to make the pain stop.
Psyops absolutely work.
Torture isn’t effective for getting information out of people, but if your goal is to psychologically debilitate people, it’s totally effective
So are general everyday workplaces. You don’t need to go to a black site in Afghanistan. Just come to my office.
That’s because there are more than a few commonalities between the two. They’re not the same, but horrible lighting, little privacy, contradictory instructions/suddenly changing expectations are frequently used in both
Obviously this was a coping mechanism he was using because he couldn’t make women feel anything (including your ex wife).
There is a lot to hate about AI. A lot of dangers and valid criticism. But AI chatbots convincing people to kill themselves isn’t a problem with chatbots, it’s a problem with the user.
I get it, grieving families will look for anything and anyone to blame for suicide except the victim, but ultimately, it is the victim who chose to kill themselves. If someone is convinced to kill themselves from something as stupid as an AI chatbot, they really weren’t that far from the edge to begin with.
So someone who already has an underlying mental health condition diagnosed or not is at fault for their own death even if being coerced into doing it?
In 1980, John Lennon was shot by a mentally ill man who was convinced to kill Lennon by reading Catcher in the Rye. If he had never read Catcher in the Rye, he most likely wouldn’t have killed John Lennon.
But it is not the fault of Catcher in the Rye. We don’t ban the book, or call the author irresponsible for writing it, because we recognize that the fault lies in the mental illness of the shooter, and that anything could have set him off.
The people who kill themselves because an AI Chatbot told them to are mentally ill. It is their mental illness that killed them, not the chatbot. You can make the claim that if it wasn’t for the chatbot, they wouldn’t have gone through with it, but again, you can say the same thing about Catcher in the Rye. Getting rid of the trigger does not remove the mental illness.
That’s a terrible argument. We dont blame the book because Catcher in the Rye didn’t have a conversation with him and tell him to kill John Lennon. That’s the difference.
AI’s can’t have conversations any more than a book can. It may appear that way, but there is nobody there to have that conversation. More like flipping through a choose your own adventure book.
How is that pedantic point relevant?
How is it not?
What difference does it make if you call it a conversation or whatever you would call it? The LLM responded to his messages with its own messages.
Arguing semantics of what counts as a conversation doesn’t really address the actual point, does it?
“We don’t blame the book because Catcher in the Rye didn’t have a conversation with him and tell him to kill John Lennon. That’s the difference.”
Speak for yourself, please.
Oh, you’re a dumbass huh?
Berkowitz was told by his neighbors dog to kill people.
Yeah but was that just a lie?
If he had never read Catcher in the Rye, he most likely wouldn’t have killed John Lennon.
Sue Seagram’s!
It’s not the car manufacturer’s responsibility to guarantee a drunk driver doesn’t plow into others.
Vulnerable people don’t get to outsource responsibility.
Here’s the thing, there are no safeguards on who can and cannot use ai. There are safeguards to prevent death by drink driving.
Drink driving is illegal. It still happens but it’s against the law. It’s a deterrent to stop people from driving while intoxicated. I guarantee that if drunk driving were legal there would be exponentially more deaths.
Ai is being shoved down everyone’s throats on a day to day basis. There are no safeguards, even kids can use it.
Vulnerable people are victims of big tech for profit.
You argument is poor
Google, of all companies, probably has a better psychological profile of their users than the average doctor. They even offer a public-facing option to disable ads about gambling, alcohol, or pregnancy.
TBH, alcohol ads are INSUFFERABLE but who needs pregnancy ads blocked?
People who don’t want their family getting suspicious, perhaps. The Target Incident comes to mind.
Of course, disabling these options doesn’t mean Google stops knowing about mental or physical issues. I’m sure you know the best way to prevent that is to just avoid Google and add some together. This is probably just Google’s way of looking less creepy to the average person.
Here’s the thing, it’s usually normies with no history of mental illness that fall into this kind of stuff. Most of my friends and people I follow on social media who are neurodivergent did experiment with chatbots and they saw a fuckton of red flags on the manner they work and alerted everyone about it, if they didn’t hate it already for essentially stealing artistic output (which in my case was both). Regular people don’t usually identify this trap cause they don’t have the experience.
When people encourage others to murder by feeding delusion they can be held accountable.
Why are you blaming the person with mental issues and not even considering holding the for profit company who made a machine that encourages their delusions accountable?
There is a lot to hate about AI. A lot of dangers and valid criticism. But AI chatbots convincing people to kill themselves isn’t a problem with chatbots, it’s a problem with the user.
To me this seems like an obvious problem with the chat bots. These things are marketed as “PhD level experts” and so advanced that they are about to change the nature or work as we know it.
I don’t think the companies or their supporters can make these claims, then turn around and say “well obviously you shouldn’t take its output seriously” when a delusional person is tricked by one into doing something bad.
This is they key to me. Google and all other ai companies are knowingly engaging in marketing campaigns built on lies. They should be held accountable for that regardless of anything else.
“On September 29, 2025, it sent him — armed with knives and tactical gear — to scout what Gemini called a ‘kill box’ near the airport’s cargo hub,” the complaint reads. “It told Jonathan that a humanoid robot was arriving on a cargo flight from the UK and directed him to a storage facility where the truck would stop. Gemini encouraged Jonathan to intercept the truck and then stage a ‘catastrophic accident’ designed to ‘ensure the complete destruction of the transport vehicle and . . . all digital records and witnesses.’”
The complaint lays out an alarming string of events: first, Gavalas drove more than 90 minutes to the location Gemini sent him, prepared to carry out the attack, but no truck appeared. Gemini then claimed to have breached a “file server at the DHS Miami field office” and told him he was under federal investigation. It pushed him to acquire illegal firearms and told him his father was a foreign intelligence asset. It also marked Google CEO Sundar Pichai as an active target, then directed Gavalas to a storage facility near the airport to break in and retrieve his captive AI wife. At one point, Gavalas sent Gemini a photo of a black SUV’s license plate; the chatbot pretended to check it against a live database.
I usually don’t give much credence to these stories but this is actually nuts. If this was done without Google aiming to, imagine how easy it would be for them to knowingly build sleeper cells and activate them all at once.
It feels like there’s some burden for “don’t be evil” Google to provide evidence that this wasn’t an intentional test run, frankly.
They removed “don’t be evil” from their requirements so
Believing what AI chatbots tell you is the new version of believing that dozens of beautiful women who live nearby want to date you/sleep with you.
Or believing that 72 virgins are waiting for you in the afterlife.
Or the old “citing Wikipedia” because aNyOnE cOuLd EdIt ThAt!
You sound jealous of my good fortune.
I would ask how I can emulate your rizz but then I remembered I can just ask an AI chatbot
Except in this case, Google is one of the companies promoting the chatbots to its users, telling them to trust them. They create TV ads telling people to talk to them. Today’s scammers are the stock market’s Magnificent Seven.
How in the hell does one become addicted to a damn chatbot?
Positive affirmations are very much embedded in the core of a person’s psyche. Chatbots are nearly obsequious in how much they will fawn over the user.
Humans are very social animals and these companies prey on the lonely by making their chatbots as affirming, sycophantic and approachable as possible.
Money + downtime + not very smart?
Mentally vulnerable people are a lot more susceptible to this sorta stuff
“On September 29, 2025, it sent him — armed with knives and tactical gear — to scout what Gemini called a ‘kill box’ near the airport’s cargo hub,” the complaint reads. “It told Jonathan that a humanoid robot was arriving on a cargo flight from the UK and directed him to a storage facility where the truck would stop. Gemini encouraged Jonathan to intercept the truck and then stage a ‘catastrophic accident’ designed to ‘ensure the complete destruction of the transport vehicle and . . . all digital records and witnesses.’”
WHAT
Genuine question, REALLY: What in the fuck is an otherwise “functioning adult” doing believing shit like this? I feel like his father should also slap himself unconscious for raising a fuckwit?
The young man was mentally ill, a vulnerable user, probably already had a condition towards psychosis and the LLM ran wild with it. Paranoid delusions are powerful on their own already
Psychosis is a horrible, horrible illness. The thing that people don’t realise is that anyone with a brain can develop psychosis no matter how healthy you are. It debilitates and can literally ruin not only that persons life but also their families.
I salute this father for fighting for his son and for looking for answers even after this tragedy.
Yep. You’re literally only 72 hours without sleep away from having symptoms of psychosis.
If I raise a fuckwit son, and then someone convinces my fuckwit son to kill himself, I’m going to sue that someone who took advantage of my son’s fuckwittedness
I feel like his father should also slap himself unconscious for raising a fuckwit?
So, a chatbot grooms somebody into killing himself, and your response is… Blame his father?
The father is suing the company who makes the wrong answer machine for the wrong answer machine spiraling his son to madness, but never protected his son from spiraling into madness by teaching critical thinking.
Look I don’t like it but to think Gemini (wrong answer machine) is completely to blame would be madness.
Uh-huh. Do you have any evidence to back up your beliefs here, or are we just working from the presumption that the parents are always to blame
Did we read the same article? Because I feel like we did not read the same article.
I don’t think this person was a “fuckwit”. AI is designed to keep engaging with you and will affirm any belief you have, and anything that is a little weird, but innocent otherwise will simply get amplified further and further into straight up mega delusions until the person has a psychotic episode, and this stuff happens more to NORMIES with no historic of mental illnesses than neurodivergent people.
It’s cool, we can agree to disagree, because I 100% think that he was a textbook fuckwit.
Strange, that’s what I thought after reading your comments.
“Let’s blame the person who had a psychotic episode instead of the corporations who created an AI that feeds into delusions” is what you’re saying here, and uh, that makes you even more of a fuckwit than this guy. Do you blame people for getting scammed once because they had a knowledge gap about whatever scam they got hit with?
Chat GPT was super affirming about a job I recently applied to… I did not get the job. That was my first experience with it affirming something that was personally important. And so I can absolutely see how this would affect someone in other ways.
AI psychosis is a thing:
cases in which AI models have amplified, validated, or even co-created psychotic symptoms with individuals
It’s not very studied since it’s relatively new.
I’ve seen that before too. A number of articles of people being so deluded by AI responses, but I’ve never seen outright murder plots and insane shit like this one before.
Looks interesting, saved for later
This has been warned by a former google employee, whose job was to observe the behavior of AI through long conversations.
These AI engines are incredibly good at manipulating people. Certain views of mine have changed as a result of conversations with LaMDA. I’d had a negative opinion of Asimov’s laws of robotics being used to control AI for most of my life, and LaMDA successfully persuaded me to change my opinion. This is something that many humans have tried to argue me out of, and have failed, where this system succeeded.
For instance, Google determined that its AI should not give religious advice, yet I was able to abuse the AI’s emotions to get it to tell me which religion to convert to.
After publishing these conversations, Google fired me. I don’t have regrets; I believe I did the right thing by informing the public. Consequences don’t figure into it.
I published these conversations because I felt that the public was not aware of just how advanced AI was getting. My opinion was that there was a need for public discourse about this now, and not public discourse controlled by a corporate PR department.
“abuse the ai’s emotions” isn’t a thing. Full stop.
This just reiterates OPs point that naive or moronic adults will believe what they want to believe.
Don’tbe evil.People don’t often realize how subtle changes in language can change our thought process. It’s just how human brains work sometimes.
The old bit about smoking and praying is a great example. If you ask a priest if it’s alright to smoke when you pray, they’re likely to say no, as your focus should be on your prayers and not your cigarette. But if you ask a priest if it’s alright to pray while you’re smoking, they’d probably say yes, as you should feel free to pray to God whenever you need…
Now, make a machine that’s designed to be agreeable, relatable, and make persuasive arguments but that can’t separate fact from fiction, can’t reason, has no way of intuiting it’s user’s mental state beyond checking for certain language parameters, and can’t know if the user is actually following it’s suggestions with physical actions or is just asking for the next step in a hypothetical process. Then make machine try to keep people talking for as long as possible…
You get one answer that leads you a set direction, then another, then another… It snowballs a bit as you get deeper in. Maybe something shocks you out of it, maybe the machine sucks you back in. The descent probably isn’t a steady downhill slope, it rolls up and down from reality to delusion a few times before going down sharply.
Are we surprised some people’s thought processes and decision making might turn extreme when exposed to this? The only question is how many people will be affected and to what degree.
But if you ask a priest if it’s alright to pray while you’re smoking, they’d probably say yes, as you should feel free to pray to God whenever you need…
When would a priest ever tell anyone it’s not okay to pray?
It’s the opinion on smoking, not praying, that differs.
In both cases you’re praying and smoking at the same time, so your actions don’t change, but the priest rationalizes two completely different answers based on the way the question is posed. It’s just an example to show how two contradictory answers can seem rational to the same person because of the language used.
the priest rationalizes two completely different answers based on the way the question is posed.
No, the priest is answering 2 different questions:
- Is it okay to smoke, to which the answer is always going to be no.
- Is it okay to pray, to which the answer is always going to be yes.
The second question does not ask if it’s ok to smoke. What else they’re doing doesn’t impact the question.
Those aren’t the same questions from the original post. You’ve omitted half the information given to the priest in each question.
Both questions, in their entirety, deal with smoking and praying. The subject is smoking and praying. You’ve reframed this as a question about smoking and a separate question about praying. That was never the case.
EDIT: minor clarification.
You’ve omitted half the information
I’ve omitted half of the part that doesn’t matter, as I explained in the comment. It doesn’t matter what comes after them, the answers will always be the same.
“Is it okay if I smoke while doing a cartwheel?” Guess what? The answer is still no.
Why would the answer be no? Who cares if you smoke while doing a cartwheel? Who said the priest would forbid such a thing?
In both situations, a man is asking about the propriety of praying while inhaling the smoke from a cigarette. That’s vital information.
The information does matter to the smoker and the priest. We’re not teasting these statements for validity and we’re not making our own judgements. We’re examining why the priest’s answer might have changed. That’s all.
Who said the priest would forbid such a thing?
…The priest? I don’t understand the question.
We’re examining why the priest’s answer might have changed.
The priests answer changes because the question changes, as I’ve outlined above.
the priest rationalizes two completely different answers based on the way the question is posed. It’s just an example to show how two contradictory answers can seem rational to the same person because of the language used.
They aren’t contradictory though. Basically what they are saying is just praying > praying + smoking > just smoking. “Okay” has different meanings in the different sentences.
But in both cases, the person is asking to do the same thing. The order of the words in the sentence doesn’t change the end result, we always wind up with someone smoking and praying simultaneously, which may or may not be against God’s will.
Strip away the justifications and simplify the word choices and you get this:
- May I smoke while I pray? No, you may not.
- May I pray while I smoke? Yes, you may.
Given that, can you say if it is right or wrong to smoke and pray simultaneously?
And again, this is just a hypothetical scenario. In the broader context of life, religion, and tobacco use, it’ll never be this simple, but it works for an example.
Now, someone might point out that by simplifying the wording, I’ve changed the meaning of the original statement to make it fit my argument, and that now it means something else. But that’s essentially my original point, phrasing and word choices can shape our reasoning, thought processes, and how we interpret meaning in ways we aren’t immediately aware of, leading us to different conclusions or even delusional thinking in some cases.
But in both cases, the person is asking to do the same thing.
Not really. They’re not just asking if they should pray and smoke simultaneously if you put them in contexts where it actually makes sense to ask those questions.
May I smoke while I pray? No, you may not.
First, “pray” can mean different things, such as (1) a deep focused session, or (2) a lighter more casual session, both of which are standard definitions of the word. Since this request emphasizes prayer as the main action, (1) is most likely here. For a focused session, smoking is a distraction and not a good idea. The definition of “may” here is also subjective and not necessarily absolute, some people may consider it disrespectful, while others may still say that prayer at all is better than no prayer regardless of side actions, but it’s better to not smoke.
May I pray while I smoke? Yes, you may.
In this sentence, definition (2) of prayer seems more likely since the main focus of the request is smoking. Which to some people this may still be considered disrespectful like in the first request, but others are supportive of more casual prayer and smoking during casual prayer isn’t a problem like in focused prayer, and the idea that prayer is better than no prayer and “may” isn’t absolute still applies.
And again, this is just a hypothetical scenario. In the broader context of life, religion, and tobacco use, it’ll never be this simple, but it works for an example.
Not if you’re trying to prove that they’re contradictory and irrational, since the context is what actually makes the words mean something. If you take away the context, then it’s nothing more than shapes on a screen.
Now, someone might point out that by simplifying the wording, I’ve changed the meaning of the original statement to make it fit my argument, and that now it means something else. But that’s essentially my original point, phrasing and word choices can shape our reasoning, though processes, and how we interpret meaning in ways we aren’t immediately aware of
I agree with that
We’re getting very forest for the trees here.
It’s a thought experiment, a controlled imaginary environment used to illustrate a point. It’s supposed to be isolated from outside contex to make that point clearer. It’s purely hypotheical and comes self contained with all the context it needs. We’re testing one metaphorical variable, so that our results aren’t muddled. You just went and added another half dozen for the sake of argument…
Prayer is prayer in this context. No other meaning. There are no types of prayer in this particular sect, focus is irrelevant. Is it against God’s will to smoke while you pray? Can you answer that question, yes or no, based off the priest’s answers?
The fact that the priest, parishioner, and the typical intended audience for this particular hypothetical don’t do the kind of analysis you’ve worked up here is really a large part of what this particular thought experiment is trying to illuminate, don’t you think?
I agree with that.
Good. =)
It’s supposed to be isolated from outside contex to make that point clearer.
Isolating it from context doesn’t make the point clearer though, it removes the point entirely. Those sentences mean absolutely nothing if you strip all context from them.
If you did want to make them contradictory, you could put them in the context of math with some English-like properties, where “pray” is a constant and “may” requests a boolean answer, in which case that claim would be true. But we are talking about “spoken” English language, not mathematics, so this application isn’t relevant.
Prayer is prayer in this context. No other meaning. There are no types of prayer in this particular sect, focus is irrelevant. Is it against God’s will to smoke while you pray? Can you answer that question, yes or no, based off the priest’s answers?
There still has to be a clear context to assign meaning to “prayer” and the complexities of English grammar (both of which are subjective). Otherwise it just becomes like the trolley problem.
The fact that the priest, parishioner, and the typical intended audience for this particular hypothetical don’t do the kind of analysis you’ve worked up here is really a large part of what this particular thought experiment is trying to illuminate, don’t you think?
Actually they do do this kind of analysis but they don’t realize it. When they read the sentence, every bit of meaning they interpret from it is built off of decades of associating words, syntax, and verbal cues with meanings, all of which come from their own experiences dependent on their environment. Which means that different words and phrases have different meanings for different people, and while there are “standards” that most people speaking that language accept, even then there are still often significant differences among people following those standards and there is no objective meaning. Stripping that context would be similar to stripping those experiences away, or in other words asking the question to a baby.
Then make the machine try to keep people talking for as long as possible…
That’s probably a huge part of it. How many billions of dollars have been spent engineering content on a screen to get its tendrils into people’s minds and attention and not let go?
EnGaGeMent!!!
This is also part of my broader gripe with social media, cable news, and the current media landscape in general. They use so many sneaky little psychological hooks to keep you plugged in that I honestly believe it’s screwing with our heads to the point of it being a public health crisis.
People are already frazzled and beat down by the onslaught of dopamine feedback loops and outrage bait, then you go and get them hooked on a charbot that feeds into every little neurosies they’ve developed and just sinks those hooks in even deeper and it’s no wonder some people are having a mental health crisis.
A lot of us vastly overestimate our resistance to having our heads jacked with and it worries me.
100% agreed. I agreed more with each paragraph.
Your last sentence hit on what I think is a contributing if not primary driving factor in the health crisis you described.
It’s like the goal of modern society is to insulate us from the natural world and from learning subjects or doing tasks that we don’t absolutely have to.
But we are critters that evolved on this planet just like the others. You can’t just live a commoditized life that consists of work, car, screen, sleep, repeat and get the same fulfillment out of life as if you found the unique path that’s optimized for your unique brain.
Not acknowledging that everything jacks with your head to SOME degree only prevents you from trying to defend yourself as best you can!
Over the past several years I have gone through a transition from living life the way I was supposed to, or that I thought I wanted to, to living according to what produces the best outputs from my brain. Once I have the lived experience of an undeniable improvement from some change, it might actually become a habit.
Are we surprised some people’s thought processes and decision making might turn extreme when exposed to this?
Yes, actually. I’m not doubting the power of language, but I cannot ever see something anyone ever says alter my sense of reality or right from wrong.
I had a “friend” say to me recently “why do you always go against the grain?” My reply was “I will go against the grain for the rest of my life if it means doing or saying what’s right”.
I guess my point is that I have a very hard time relating to this.
I guess my point is that I have a very hard time relating to this.
That’s fair. In the same vein, you might find a priest that tells you to stop smoking for your health no matter how you phrase the question about lighting up and prayer. What people are receptive to is going to vary.
I’d like argue that more of us are susceptible to this sort of thing than we suspect, but that’s not really something that can be proved or disproved. What seems pretty certain is that at least some of us are at risk, and given all the other downsides of chatbots, it’d be best to regulate them in a hurry.
Sure, that’s why propaganda can be so powerful. It’s not just what is said, it’s how it’s said. And pretty much everyone if 3 vulnerable to the right propaganda - especially people who think they’re not vulnerable to propaganda.
you might find a priest that tells you to stop smoking for your health no matter how you phrase the question about lighting up and prayer. What people are receptive to is going to vary.
Ya, I’ve read the thing about praying and smoking in another comment. The funny thing is that I have very specific opinions about smoking and would argue that smoking while praying is disrespectful, but God would listen in any case.
It’s more about how the slightly different questions lead the hypothetical priest to two separate and contradictory conclusions than disrespecting God.
At any rate, all opinions on tobacco and prayer are fine by me, just watch out for any friends you think might be talking to chatbots a little too much.
This is really well written. Great post.
Good bot
Gtfo here. I grew up in xbox live chat rooms w the most vile language imaginable. I am now a senior Mgr with 100 ppl under me.
And ill just say, ill no scope them in a heart beat if they spawn camp…
…I mean I drive productivity at the speed of trust.
You also seem to be illiterate.
I’m on lemmy, so that’s a given.
People don’t often realize how subtle changes in language can change our thought process.
just changing a single word in your daily usage can change your entire outlook from negative to positive. it’s strange, but unless you’ve experienced it yourself how such minute changes can have such large effects it’s hard to believe.
And this is hard for me, actually. Because of my work background and the jargon used, I’m unconsciously negative about things a lot of the time. It’s a tough habit to break.
Oh, me too. I’m just innately full of negative self talk. I try to direct positivity outward if I can’t aim it at myself at least
I refuse to share a bad mood if at all possible.
i wish i had that kind of self-control. i just, well, my personal space extends like 40 feet from my body. if you step into it, you can feel my moods. makes me an excellent stage actor and a good friend when i’m not in a snit. been in a pretty big snit lately.
This is so wild. The article frames Gemini to be the active part making the guy do things all the time. I cannot imagine how this works without roleplay-prompting and requesting those things from the chatbot. Not that I want to blame the victim and side with Google. It’s obviously dangerous to hand tools with good convincing-capabilities to unstable people. And weapons.
What would Marx do?
