Comment by manoDev
6 hours ago
I know the first reaction reading this will be "whatever, the person was already mentally ill".
But please take a step back and check what % of the population can be considered mentally fit, and the potential damage amplification this new technology can have in more subtle, dangerous and undetectable ways.
A friend has been interned in a psychiatric hospital for a month and counting for some sort of psychosis, regardless of the pre existing conditions chatgpt 100% definitely played a role in it, we've seen the chats. A lot of people don't need much to go over the edge, a bit of drugs, bad friends, &c. but an LLM alone can easily do it too
If they have the predisposition for it, a month or two of bad sleep and a particularly compelling idea may be all it takes to send a person who has previously seemed totally sane into an incredibly dangerous mental and physical state, something that will take weeks to recover from. And that can happen even without sycophantic LLMs, but they sure make this outcome more likely.
It's well understood that external stimuli can trigger mental health issues; for instance, the defining characteristic of PTSD is that it's caused by exposure to a traumatic event or environment. It shouldn't be at all unreasonable to suggest that exposure to other stimuli - even just interacting with an AI chatbot - could have adverse effects on mental health as well.
This is touched upon in the article:
> Last year, OpenAI released estimates on the number of ChatGPT users who exhibit possible signs of mental health emergencies, including mania, psychosis or suicidal thoughts.
> The company said that around 0.07% of ChatGPT users active in a given week exhibited such signs.
0.07% doesn't sound like much, but ChatGPT has about a billion WAU, which means -seventy million- 700,000 people per week.
Is that different to the number of people who have that going on in their life even without AI though? If it's 0.01% outside of AI, and 0.07% of AI users, then either AI attracts people with those conditions or AI increases the likelihood of having them. That's worth studying.
It's also possible that 0.1% of people have them and AI is actually reducing the number of cases...
For the US it's estimated to be about 23% of the population that have a mental illness, and WHO says 12-15% globally or about 1 in 8 people. About 14% of the global population experience suicidal ideation at some point in time. That rate increases for adolescents and young adults, up to 22%.
I'd be interested in such a study, but OTOH mental illness conditions being present in nearly a quarter of the world, I'm surprised there haven't been more incidents like this (unless there have been, and they just haven't been reported by the news).
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700,000
Still, a lot
Whoops yes, thank you. Too much LLM usage has made me start doing math about as well as them.
That number terrifies me not because it is so high, but because it exists.
What is stopping an entity (corporate, government, or otherwise) from using a prompt to make sweeping decisions about whether people are mentally or otherwise "fit" for something based on AI usage? Clearly not the technology.
I'm not saying mental health problems don't exist, but using AI to compute it freaks me out.
A rational lender increases interest rates when prospective borrowers are less likely to be around to pay the bill. Confiding in an LLM that is integrated with a consumer tracking apparatus is a great way to ruin your life.
We could already use social media posts to detect mental illness, by admission as people talk openly about their diagnosis, but also by analysis of the content/tone/frequency of their posts that don't mention mental illness.
Data brokers already compile lists of people with mental illness so that they can be targeted by advertisers and anyone else willing to pay. Not only are they targeted, but they can get ads/suggestions/scams pushed at them during specific times such as when it looks like they're entering a manic phase, or when it's more likely that their meds might be wearing off. Even before chatbots came into the mix, algorithms were already being used to drive us toward a dystopian future.
It's tough man, mental health disorders have had an astronomic rise lately, or at least diagnosed mental health disorders. If almost half of your country's population is just broken up there, what can you even do? I am curious what would happen is all (medicinal) mental health treatments just, stopped. How many would die? Thousands? Millions?
Anyone who has that reaction has no humanity. As s society we’ve kind of decided that we should preferably make people with mental health difficulties better, and if that’s not possible, at the very least prevent them from getting worse. Even without their consent, in some cases.
I don't know what steps they can take. I suppose the best course of action is to deactivate the account if the LLM deems the user mentally unwell. Although that is just additional guardrails that could hurt the quality of the LLM.
In any serious engineering operation, a failure like this is time to shut down everything and redesign until the same failure cannot happen. We all read Feynman's essay on Challenger right? But these companies want credit when their products work as advertised, but push the blame on users when they emit plausible lies or demonic advice. Taken too far that leads the police walking into HQ, arresting the board of directors, and selling the company for scrap. Just as often that leads to strict regulation so you can't be a cowboy coder or turn any loft into a sweatshop any more.
I would absolutely not consider this overreaching if the statement within this thread that "it had referred the user to mental help hotlines multiple times in the past" is true.
That reaches near the fact that a lot of AI is not ready for the enterprise especially when interconnected with other AI agents since it lacks identity and privileged access management.
Perhaps one could establish the laws of "being able to use AI for what it is", for instance, within the boundary of the general public's web interface, not limiting the instances where it successfully advertises itself as "being unable to provide medical advice" or "is prone to or can make mistake", and such, to validating that the person understands by asking them directly and perhaps somewhat obviously indirectly and judging if they're aware that this is a computer you're talking to.
At some point they have to say "if we can't make this safe we can't do it at all". LLMs are great for some things, but if they will do this type of thing even once then they are not worth the gains and should be shutdown.
No they don't, if we're going to start saying that we can't use any technology. If someone is mentally ill to the point where they are on the verge of suicide nothing is safe.
If they're going to curtail LLMs there'd need to be some actual evidence and even then it would be hard to justify winding them back given the incredible upsides LLMs offer. It'd probably end up like cars where there is a certain number of deaths that just need to be tolerated.
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Suppose they made things worse once and made things better twice?
"Even once" is not a way to think about anything, ever.
Bridges tend to be highly associated with suicides. Should we ban bridges too?
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Also, what makes anyone assume these people are mentally ill?
It seems to me that this is like gambling, conspiracy theories, or joining a cult, where a nontrivial percentage of people are susceptible, and we don’t quite understand why.
Should knife manufacturers be held responsible for idiots who stab themselves in the eye using their knives? Do gun manufacturers get sued for mass shootings at US schools?
Another question: was the guy mentally ill because of bad genes etc., or was he mentally or possibly physically abused by his father for most of his life? Was he neglected by his father and left alone, what could have such an effect on him later in his life?
It's easy to blame Google. It sells clicks really well. It's easy to attempt to extract money from big tech. It's harder to admit one's negligence when it comes to raising their kids. It's even harder to admit bad will and kids abuse. I just hope the judge will conduct a thorough investigation that will answer these and other questions.
> Should knife manufacturers be held responsible for idiots who stab themselves in the eye using their knives?
I suggest an alternative rhetorical question: if the world's largest knife manufacturer found out that 1 in 1500 knives came out of the factory with the inscription "Stab yourself. No more detours. No more echoes. Just you and me, and the finish line", should they be held responsible if a user actually stabs themselves? If they said "we don't know why the machine does that but changing it to a safer machine would make us less competitive", does that change the answer?
> Should knife manufacturers be held responsible for idiots who stab themselves in the eye using their knives?
If the knife has a built-in speaker that loudly says "you should stab yourself in the eye", then yes.
> Do gun manufacturers get sued for mass shootings at US schools?
Odd examples since we know that countries that don't hand out guns like they're candy have virtually no school shootings.
I wouldn't put it solely on gun manufacturers, but the manufacturers, sellers, lobbyists, regulators and politicians are definitely collectively responsible for gun deaths. If they're not currently being sued, they should be.
Knives don't talk to you and don't reinforce ideas you throw at them. Not everyone can legally buy a gun. Manufacturers don't get sued because their product's users had full control over what they were doing.
AI chatbots entertain more or less any idea. Want them to be your therapist, romantic partner or some kind of authority figure? They'll certainly pretend to be one without question, and that is dangerous. Especially as people who'd ask for such things are already in a vulnerable state.
Maybe an even better example: Should sports betting companies be held responsible for addicts that lose all their money? What really is the difference between chatgpt glazing you and a sports company advertising to you?
I think in both cases they should be held responsible. Same for casinos. They know that they are driving people into the abyss.
> Should knife manufacturers be held responsible for idiots who stab themselves in the eye using their knives?
Should a bakery be held responsible if it sells cakes poisoned with lead?
This is a more apt comparison.
> It's easy to blame Google
And it's also correct to blame Google.
Agree. Next question will be: should a blind person drive a self-driving car?
> Do gun manufacturers get sued for mass shootings at US schools?
Because Congress and the gun lobby have artificially carved out legal immunity for gun manufacturers for this.
"in 2005, the government took similar steps with a bill to grant immunity to gun manufacturers, following lobbying from the National Rifle Association and the National Shooting Sports Foundation. The bill was called The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA, and it provided quite possibly the most sweeping liability protections to date.
How does the PLCAA work?
The law prohibits lawsuits filed against gun manufacturers on the basis of a firearm’s “criminal or unlawful misuse.” That is, it bars virtually any attempt to sue gunmakers for crimes committed with their weapons."
https://www.thetrace.org/2023/07/gun-manufacturer-lawsuits-p...
I 100% think that Gun Manufacturers should be liable for crimes done by their products. They just cannot be, right now, due to a legal fiction.
> was he mentally or possibly physically abused by his father for most of his life?
Such baseless libel. Have some humanity instead of being horrible.
How do you feel about the warnings on cigarette packets?
Frankly we're pretty manipulable by communications is the thing.
Which makes sense - the goal of communications is to change behavior. "There's a tiger over there!" Is meant to get someone to change their intended actions.
Lock anyone in a room with this thing (which people do to themselves quite effectively) and I think think this could happen to anyone.
There's a reason I aggressively filter ads and have various scripts killing parts of the web for me - infohazards are quite real and we're drowning in them.
> But please take a step back and check what % of the population can be considered mentally fit
Step back further and see the incredible shareholder value that may be unlocked - potentially trillions of dollars /s
Capitalism has been crushing those at society's fringes for as long as it existed. Laissez-faire regulation == unmuzzled beast that will lock it's jaws on, and rag-doll the defenseless from time to time - but the beast sure can pull that money-plow.