- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
The elephant in the room that no one talks about is that locked psychiatry facilities treat people so horribly and are so expensive, and psychologists and psychiatrists have such arbitrary power to detain suicidal people, that suicidal people who understand the system absolutely will not open up to professional help about feeling suicidal, lest they be locked up without a cell phone, without being able to do their job, without having access to video games, being billed tens of thousands of dollars per month that can only be discharged by bankruptcy. There is a reason why people online have warned about the risks and expenses of calling suicide hotlines like 988 that regularly attempt to geolocate and imprison people in mental health facilities, with psychiatric medications being required in order for someone to leave.
The problem isn’t ChatGPT. The problem is a financially exploitative psychiatric industry with horrible financial consequences for suicidal patients and horrible degrading facilities that take away basic human dignity at exorbitant cost. The problem is vague standards that officially encourage suicidal patients to snitch on themselves for treatment with the consequence that at the professional’s whim they can be subject to misery and financial exploitation. Many people who go to locked facilities come out with additional trauma and financial burdens. There are no studies about whether such facilities traumatize patients and worsen patient outcomes because no one has a financial interest in funding the studies.
The real problem is, why do suicidal people see a need to confide in ChatGPT instead of mental health professionals or 988? And the answer is because 988 and mental health professionals inflict even more pain and suffering upon people already hurting in variable randomized manner, leading to patient avoidance. (I say randomized in the sense that it is hard for a patient to predict the outcome of when this pain will be inflicted, rather than something predictable like being involuntarily held every 10 visits.) Psychiatry and psychology do everything they possibly can to look good to society (while being paid), but it doesn’t help suicidal people at all who bare the suffering of their “treatments.” Most suicidal patients fear being locked up and removed from society.
This is combined with the fact that although lobotomies are no longer common place, psychiatrists regularly push unethical treatments like ECT which almost always leads to permanent memory loss. Psychiatrist still lie to patients and families regarding ECT about how likely memory loss is, falsely stating memory loss is often temporary and not everyone gets it, just like they lied to patients and families about the effects of lobotomies. People in locked facilities can be pressured into ECT as part of being able to leave a facility, resulting in permanent brain damage. They were charlatans then and now, a so called “science” designed to extract money while looking good with no rigorous studies on how they damage patients.
In fact, if patients could be open about being suicidal with 988 and mental health professionals without fear of being locked up, this person would probably be alive today. ChatGPT didn’t do anything other than be a friend to this person. The failure is due to the mental health industry.
While I agree with much of what you said, there are other issues with psychology and psychiatry that they often can’t treat some environmental causes or triggers. When I was suicidal, it was also the feeling of being trapped in a job where I wasn’t appreciated and couldn’t advance.
If I were placed in an inpatient facility, it would only have exacerbated the issues where I would have so much to deal with the try and be on medical leave before I got fired for not showing up.
That said, for SOME mental illnesses ECT it can be a valid treatment. We don’t know how the brain works, but we’ve seen correlation where ECT kind of resets the way the brain perceives the world temporarily. All medical decisions need to be weighed against the side effects and determined if the benefits outweigh the risks.
The other issue with inpatient facilities is that they can be incredibly hard to convince the staff that you are doing better. All actions are viewed through the lens that you are ill and showing the staff you are better is just trying to trick the staff to get out.
You’re wrong about ECT. It nearly always results in permanent memory loss and even if occasionally some patients seem “better” because they remember less of their lives, it does not negate the evil of the treatment. Worse than that, psychiatrist universally deceive patients about the risk of memory loss, saying memory loss is temporary, when most patients who have had ECT report that the memory loss is permanent. There were people who extolled the virtues of lobotomies decades ago and the procedure even won a Nobel Prize. The reason it won a Nobel Prize is because patient experiences mean nothing compared to the avarice of a psuedoscientific discipline that is always looking for the next scam, with the worst most cruel and most expensive scams always inflicted on the most vulnerable. It is hard and traumatic for patients who have been exploited by their supposed “healers” to come forward with the truth. It is incredibly psychologically agonizing to admit to being duped. Patients are not believed then or now. You are completely wrong.
God this. Before I was stupid enough to reach out to a crisis line, I had a job with health insurance. Now I have worsened PTSD and no health insurance (the psych hospital couldn’t be assed to provide me with discharge papers.) I get to have nightmares for the rest of my life about a three men shoving me around and being unable to sleep for fear of being assaulted again.
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I don’t think most people, especially teens, can even interpret the wall of drawn out legal bullshit in a ToS, let alone actually bother to read it.
Good things underaged kids can’t enter into contracts then. Which means their TOS is useless.
“Hey computer should I do <insert intrusive thought here>?”
Computer "yes, that sounds like a great idea, here’s how you might do that. "
They should execute the model for breaking TOS then.
The model doesn’t make conscious decisions, but the creator does.
Sam Altman should be executed.
Plenty of judges won’t enforce a TOS, especially if some of the clauses are egregious (e.g. we own and have unlimited use of your photos )
The legal presumption is that the administrative burden of reading a contract longer than King Lear is too much to demand from the common end-user.
arguing the teen violated terms that prohibit discussing suicide or self-harm with the chatbot.
“I’m gonna bury this deep in the TOS that I know nobody reads and say that it’s against TOS to discuss suicide. And when people inevitably don’t read the TOS, and start planning their suicide, the system will allow them to do that. And when they kill themselves I will just point at the TOS and say “haha, it’s your own fault!””. I AM A GENIUS" - Sam Altman
AIs have no sense of ethics. You should never rely on them for real-world advice because they’re programmed to tell you what you want to hear, no matter what the consequences.
The problem is that many people don’t understand this no matter how often we bring it up. I personally find LLMs to be very valuable tools when used in the right context. But yeah, the majority of people who utilize these models don’t understand what they are or why they shouldn’t really trust them or take critical advice from them.
I didn’t read this article, but there’s also the fact that some people want biased or incorrect information from the models. They just want them to agree with them. Like, for instance, this teen who killed themself may not have been seeking truthful or helpful information in the first place, but instead just wanted to agree with them and help them plan the best way to die.
Of course, OpenAI probably should have detected this and stopped interacting with this individual.
The court documents with extracted text are linked in this thread. It talked him out of seeking help and encouraged him not to leave signs of his suicidality out for his family to see when he said he hoped they would stop him.
Didnt we just shake the stigma of “committing” suicide to be death by suicide to stop blaming dead people already?
Well, it is quite the commitment
Gun company says you “broke the TOS” when you pointed the gun at a person. It’s not their fault you used it to do a murder.
Is it kitchenaid’s fault if you use their knife to do a murder?
Well, such a knife’s primary purpose is to help with preparing food while the gun’s primary purpose is to injure/kill. So one would be used for something which it was not designed while the other would’ve been used exactly as designed.
Guns primary purpose is to shoot bullets. I can kill just as well with a chemical bomb as a gun, and I could make both of those from things I can buy from the store from components that weren’t ‘designed’ for it.
In this case ‘terms of service’ is just ‘the law’.
People killing each other is just a side effect of humans interacting with dangerous things. Granted humans just kinda suck in general.
Fun fact: you can literally go to prison in the US for breaking ToS due to various laws like CFFA (Computer Fraud and Abuse Act). So if the teen broke the ToS to any way that harms OpenAI (like killing himself) OpenAI actually has a legal path to criminally prosecute him lmao
The entire law stack is just broken.
As shitty as AI is for counseling, the alternative resources are so few, unreliable, and taboo that I can’t blame people for wanting to use it. People will judge and remember you. AI affirms and forgets. People have mandatory reporting for “self harm” (which could include things like drug usage) that incarcerates you and fucks up your life even more. AI does not. People are varied with differing advice, while AI uses the same models in different contexts. Counselors are expensive, AI is $20/mo. And lastly, people have a tendency to react fearfully to taboo topics in ways that AI doesn’t. I see a lot of outrage towards AI, but it seems like the sort of outrage that led to half-assed liability-driven “call this number and all of your problems will be solved” incarceration and abandonment hotlines is what got us here to begin with.
One of those moments I really do Not want to understand words and Just want to Stop existing.
the system is working as intended
we must dismantle the system
“Person violated the TOS when they used the magic lamp to make the genie do bad things.”
You still made the magic lamp and the genie capable of doing those bad things. That’s the thing with intelligence, even the artificial variety. A chainsaw isn’t going to get up and begin a chainsaw massacre just because you throw the right prompt injection at it. It may just reply with words, but words have power.
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He violated the “im under 20 and an adult clause”
Mainly because 18 and 19 (and 20) aren’t real adults yet.
Personal anecdot: I was 19 at a house party, my house. I got too drunk and had to go pass out. This 17 year old wanted my beautiful handsome boy body. She snuck into where I went to sleep and she put the moves on me. I tried telling her no and pushing her away, but also, I was only a drunk horny teen.
Honestly, by standard measure, she raped me. And thats not the only time… but as a guy, who do I tell I was supposedly raped?
- 18 is definitely an adult
- I’m sorry that happened to you but it has nothing to do with anything










