Comment by john_strinlai
7 hours ago
is it still "roleplaying" when the only human involved doesnt know it is "roleplaying", and actually believes it is real and then kills themselves?
there is a conversation to be had. no one is making the argument that "roleplay and fantasy fiction" should be banned.
> the only human involved doesnt know it is "roleplaying"
That is 100% unattested. We don't know the context of the interaction. But the fact that the AI was reportedly offering help lines argues strongly in the direction of "this was a fantasy exercise".
But in any case, again, exactly the same argument was made about RPGs back in the day, that people couldn't tell the difference between fantasy and reality and these strange new games/tools/whatever were too dangerous to allow and must be banned.
It was wrong then and is wrong now. TSR and Google didn't invent mental illness, and suicides have had weird foci since the days when we thought it was all demons (the demons thing was wrong too, btw). Not all tragedies need to produce public policy, no matter how strongly they confirm your ill-founded priors.
>That is 100% unattested. We don't know the context of the interaction.
the fact that he killed himself would suggest he did not believe it was a fun little roleplay session
>were too dangerous to allow and must be banned.
is anyone here saying ai should be banned? im not.
>your ill-founded priors
"encouraging suicide is bad" is not an ill-founded prior.
> the fact that he killed himself would suggest he did not believe it was a fun little roleplay session
I'm not sure that's true. I wouldn't be surprised, in fact, if it suggested the opposite, it seems possibly even likely that someone who is suicidal is much, much more likely to seek out fantasies that would make their suicide into something more like this person may have.
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> But the fact that the AI was reportedly offering help lines argues strongly in the direction of "this was a fantasy exercise".
You know what I've never had a DM do in a fantasy campaign? Suggest that my half-elf call the suicide hotline. That's not something you'd usually offer to somebody in a roleplaying scenario and strongly suggests that they weren't playing a game.
That logic seems strained to the point of breaking. Surely you agree that we would all want the DM of an unwell player to seek help, right? And that, if such a DM made such a suggestion, we'd think they were trying to help. Right? And we certainly wouldn't blame the DM or the game for the subsequent suicide. Right?
So why are you trying to blame the AI here, except because it reinforces your priors about the technology (I think more likely given that this is after all HN) its manufacturer?
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