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Comment by bongodongobob | Hacker News Reader

The guy was clearly insane. Anyone who stabs themselves to death has very serious mental issues. Did ChatGPT exacerbate that? Maybe. Do I think we should do anything about it because the 1 in 100,000,000 crazy person might have negative effects? Absolutely not. Put your energy into backing mental healthcare/national helathcare rather than blaming tech for someone with profound mental health issues going off the rails.

Edit: Good grief. This isn't even a remotely uncommon opinion. Wanting to outlaw things because some people can't handle their shit is as old as society.

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So every single person who committed Seppuku/harakiri/Junshi was mentally ill?

I fully reject the idea that all suicide is the result of mental illness, especially such culturally ingrained ritual suicide.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seppuku

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junshi

Yeah, that's crazy. Just because it's wrapped in some kind of religious moral code doesn't make it ok.

yeah, don't even think to regulate the trillion dollar industry that is aiming to insert itself into literally aspect of our lives; instead, wait for a massive overhaul of our health care system, something that has next to zero meaningful political support (it's a fringe view even among Democrats, that's why Obama couldn't get it done), is fiercely opposed to by the billionaires/companies pushing AI, and that's not even considering opposition from the health insurance industry (who have hundreds of billions in free speech to exercise at congress and the white house.)

Ok let's make soda and McDonalds illegal then.

Neither soda or McDonald’s are advertising themselves as healthy options suitable as general replacements for a balanced diet. Whereas the AI companies have a plainly stated goal of being able to accomplish virtually any task a human could.

And before you say it: there’s a massive difference between the legalese they put in fine print in their user agreements and mutter under their breath in sales presentations versus what is being shouted from the rooftops every single second of every single day by their collective marketing departments.

Both of these things are products people can either choose to consume or not.

It would be interesting to see the whole transcript rather than cherry picked examples. The first inputs would be the most interesting.

> regulation

How would you regulate this tool? I have used ChatGPT as well to brainstorm a story for a text adventure, which was leaned on Steins;Gate: a guy who has paranoia, and becomes convinced that small inconsistencies in his life are evidence of a reality divergence.

I would not like to see these kind of capabilities to be removed. Rather, just don't give access to insane people? But that is impossible too. Got any better ideas to regulate this?

I'm sure the between the money and the talent, they can find a solution? I mean these LLM's are already capable of shutting down anything politically sensitive, borderline grey area, and outright illegal, right? So it's no so farfetched that they can figure out how to talk fewer people into psychosis / homicide / suicide.

I'm not going to pretend I"m smart enough to walk into OpenAI's offices and implement a solution today.. but completely dismissing the idea of regulating them seems insane. I'm sure the industrialists ~100 years ago thought they wouldn't be able to survive without child labor, paying workers in scrip, 100 hour work weeks, locking workers in tinder boxes, etc. but, survive they did despite the safety and labor regulations that were forced on them. OpenAI and co are no different, they'll figure it out and they'll survive. and if they don't, it's not because they had to stop and consider the impact of their product.

These AI companies are throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at _single developers_. There is the wherewithal but there is no will.

A girl that was my friend some years ago was having a psychotic episode once, and I told her that no one is following her, no one is monitoring her phone and she probably went schizo probably because of drug abuse. She told me I'm lying ans from the KGB; she went completely mad. I realize that this is actually dangerous for me and completely cut ties, although I sometimes browse one of her online profiles to see what she posts.

I don't think OpenAI should be liable for insane behavior of insane people.

If someone who has serious mental issues walks into a place of business and a real live employee _consistently_ and _repeatedly_ encourages the mental delusions _to the point this mentally ill person kills themselves and another person_ I bet you'd be singing a different tune.

Yup. The poster above would have a difference in opinion if it happened to someone close to them. It takes a village even with AI.

Don’t take away my coding machine away from me please.

Nope. I live in the Midwest and have had more than a handful of friends die from drugs and alcohol. I don't think the rest of the population should have their freedoms taken away because of it. Bad things happen and blaming a drug/substance/tech for it is lazy.

You are making the exact argument the tobacco companies made when they were called to account for their nonsense which essentially boiled down to “It’s not our fault people choose to smoke”. This was after they spent decades hiding adverse effects and telling people it was _actually good for them.

To be clear, I am not blaming the tech. I am blaming the people designing it who are well aware of the flaws/dangers but are doing little to nothing to mitigate that because it would affect their bottom line.

And I want those people held accountable for their reckless negligence.

Yeah, I know. And I disagree with you. Tobacco companies should be allowed to advertise. Cocaine shouldn't put you in jail.

I think there's a difference between a single individual causing another harm and a product which also provides massive benefits causing harm.

It seems similar to Waymo which has a fairly consistent track record of improved safety over human drivers. If it ever causes a fatality in the future I'm not sure it would be a fair comparison to say we should ban it even though I'd want to be fairly harsh for a single individual causing a fatality.

We should work to improve these products to minimize harm along with investigating to understand how widespread the harm is, but immediately jumping to banning might also be causing more harm than good.

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