It’s already doing a piss-poor job dealing with suicidal teenagers.
Is there any reason to believe AI will be any better than social media when it comes to mental health?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/12/27/chatgpt...
Is there any reason to believe AI will be any better than social media when it comes to mental health?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/12/27/chatgpt...
We simply don’t know the scale of either side of the equation at this point.
From what I can gather, a lot of ML people are utilitarians, for better or worse. Which is why you're seeing this discussed at all, if we all agreed on the ethics it would have been a no-brainer.
And I don't think any utilitarian would be against "something with some harm but mostly good can be made to do even less harm".
But the person I initially replied to, obviously doesn't see it as "some harm VS much good" (which we could argue if it's true or not), and would say that any harm + any good is still worth considering if the harm is worth it, besides the good it could do.
That's certainly the impression you gave with your response. You didn't engage with the clear example of harmful behavior or debate what various numbers on either side of the equation would mean. Your approach was to circumvent OP's direct question to talk philosophy. That suggests you think there are some philosophical outlooks that could similarly sidestep the question of a therapist pushing people to kill themselves, which is a rather simple and unambiguous example of harm that could be reduced.
Sounds more like the plot line of a 60s sci-fi novel or old Star Trek episode. What would the prime directive say? Haha
Like all tools we regulate heroin and we should regulate AI in a way they attempts to maximize the utility that it provides to society.
Additionally with things like state lottery systems we decide that we should regulate certain things in such a way that the profits are distributed to society, rather then letting a few rent seekers take advantage of intrinsic addictive nature of the human mind to the detriment of all of society.
We should consider these things when developing regulations around technology like AI.
Look at how much is being invested in this garbage then look at the excuses when they tell us we can't have universal medicare, free school lunches, or universal childcare.
I'm not even a utilitarian, but if there are many many people with stories like her, at some point you have to consider it. Some people use cars to kill themselves, but cars help and enrich the lives of 99.99% of people who use them.
They are mostly useful, but occasionally can kill someone who indulges in them too much.
Then the question becomes more if we're fine with some people dying because some other people aren't.
But AFAIK, we don't know (and probably can never know) the exact ratio of people AI has helped still be alive today VS helped contribute to that these people aren't alive today, which makes the whole thing a bit moot.
In fact, targeted research with this data could help do more research on how to convince more people to stay alive, right?
Concerned that AI companies, like social media companies, exist in an unregulated state that is likely to be detrimental to most minors and many adults? Absolutely.
They predict what the most likely next word is.
With that said, like most technology, it seems to come with a ton of drawbacks, and some benefits, while most people focus on the benefits, we're surely about to find out all the drawbacks shortly. Better than social media or not, its being deployed on a wide-scale, so it's less about what each person believes, and more about what we're ready to deal with and how we want to deal with it.
There is/are currently no realistic ways to temper or enforce public safety on these companies. They are in full regulatory capture. Any kind of call for public safety will be set aside, and if its not someone will pay the exec to give them an exception.
There is, general strikes usually does the trick if the government stops listening to the people. Of course, this doesn't apply to some countries that spent decades making unions, syndicates and other movements handicapped, but for the modern countries that still pride themselves on democracy, it is possible, given enough people care to do something about it.
It doesn't matter what government is in control: LLMs cannot be made safe from the problems that plague them. They are fundamental to their basic makeup.
Even when unemployment rises to ~15%
The "if" is very much on the table at this stage of the political discussion. Companies are trying to railroad everybody past this decision stage by moving too fast. However, this is a momemt where we need to slow down instead and have a good long ponderous moment hinjing about whether we should allow it at all. And as the peoples of our respective countries, we can force that.
Besides general strikes, there isn't much one can do to stop, pause or otherwise hold back companies and individuals from deploying legal technology any way they see fit, for better or worse.
Right now, companies are working extremely hard to give the impression that AI technology is essential. But that is a purposefully manufactured illusion. It's a set of ideas planted in people's heads. Marketing in those megacompanies that introduce new technologies like LLMs and AR glasses to end users is very much focused on reshaping society around their product. They think BIG. We need more awareness that this is happening so that we can push back in a coordinated and meaningful way. And then we can support politicians that implement that agenda.
Name a single technology that was invented, people figured out the drawbacks where bigger than the benefits, and then humanity just stopped caring about it altogether? Not even the technology with the biggest drawback we've created so far (literally make the earth inhospitable if deployed at scale) apparently been important enough to do so with, so I'm eager to hear what specific cats have been put back in what hats, if you'd entertain me.
With nuclear weapons, human cloning, chemical weapons, and ozone destruction.
All of these are highly centralized, controlled via big government-scale operations.
How do you propose doing this with GPT LLM tech that has been open sourced/weights and decentralized?