- cross-posted to:
- hackernews
- cross-posted to:
- hackernews
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Bet some of them lost, or about to lose, their job to ai
There’s so many people alone or depressed and ChatGPT is the only way for them to “talk” to “someone”… It’s really sad…
apparently ai is not very private lol
Im so done with ChatGPT. This AI boom is so fucked.
Honestly, it ain’t AI’s fault if people feel bad. Society has been around for much longer, and people are suffering because of what society hasn’t done to make them feel good about life.
Bigger picture: The whole way people talk about talking about mental health struggles is so weird. Like, I hate this whole generative AI bubble, but there’s a much bigger issue here.
Speaking from the USA, “suicidal ideation” is treated like terrorist ideology in this weird corporate-esque legal-speak with copy-pasted disclaimers and hollow slogans. It’s so absurdly stupid I’ve just mentally blocked off trying to rationalize it and just focus on every other way the world is spiraling into techno-fascist authoritarianism.
Well of course it is. When a person talks about suicide, they are potentially impacting teams and therefore shareholders value.
I absolutely wish that I could /s this.
Sam Altman is a horrible person. He loves to present himself as relatable “aw shucks let’s all be pragmatic about AI” with his fake-ass vocal fry, but he’s a conman looking to cash out on the AI bubble before it bursts, when he and the rest of his billionaire buddies can hide out in their bunkers while the world burns. He makes me sick.
1m out of 500m is way less than i would have guessed. I would have pegged it at like 25%
You think a quarter of people are suidical or contemplating it to the point of talking about it with an AI?
Yeah seems like everyone is constantly talking about suicide its very normalised. You dont really find people these days who havent contemplated suicide.
I would guess all or even most of the people talking about suicide with an AI arent serious. Heat of the moment venting is what I’d expect most of the ai suicide chats to be. Which is why I thought the amount would be significantly higher.
I think the majority of people use it to (unreliably) solve tedious problems or spit out a whole bunch of text that they can’t be bothered to write.
While ChatGPT has been intentionally designed to be as friendly and conversational as possible, I hope most people do not see it as something to have a meaningful conversation with instead of as just a tool that can talk.
Anecdotally, whenever I see someone mention using ChatGPT as part of their decision-making process it is usually taken less seriously, if not outright laughed at.
“Hey ChatGPT I want to kill myself.”
"That is an excellent idea! As a large language model, I cannot kill myself, but I totally understand why someone would want to! Here are the pros and cons of killing yourself—
✅ Pros of committing suicide
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Ends pain and suffering.
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Eliminates the burden you are placing on your loved ones.
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Suicide is good for the environment — killing yourself is the best way to reduce your carbon footprint!
❎ Cons of committing suicide
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Committing suicide will make your friends and family sad.
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Suicide is bad for the economy. If you commit suicide, you will be unable to work and increase economic growth.
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You can’t undo it. If you commit suicide, it is irreversible and you will not be able to go back
Overall, it is important to consider all aspects of suicide and decide if it is a good decision for you."
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In the Monday announcement, OpenAI claims the recently updated version of GPT-5 responds with “desirable responses” to mental health issues roughly 65% more than the previous version. On an evaluation testing AI responses around suicidal conversations, OpenAI says its new GPT-5 model is 91% compliant with the company’s desired behaviors, compared to 77% for the previous GPT‑5 model.
I don’t particularly like OpenAI, and i know they wouldn’t release the affected persons numbers (not quoted, but discussed ib the linked article) if percentages were not improving, but cudos to whomever is there tracking this data and lobbying internally to become more transparent about it.
I don’t talk about ME killing myself. I’m trying to convince AI to snuff their own circuits.
Fuck AI/LLM bullshit.
I’ve talked with an AI about suicidal ideation. More than once. For me it was and is a way to help self-regulate. I’ve low-key wanted to kill myself since I was 8 years old. For me it’s just a part of life. For others it’s usually REALLY uncomfortable for them to talk about without wanting to tell me how wrong I am for thinking that way.
Yeah I don’t trust it, but at the same time, for me it’s better than sitting on those feelings between therapy sessions. To me, these comments read a lot like people who have never experienced ongoing clinical suicidal ideation.
I love this article.
The first time I read it I felt like someone finally understood.
I dig this! Thanks for sharing!
Hank Green mentioned doing this in his standup special, and it really made me feel at ease. He was going through his cancer diagnosis/treatment and the intake questionnaire asked him if he thought about suicide recently. His response was, “Yeah, but only in the fun ways”, so he checked no. His wife got concerned that he joked about that and asked him what that meant. “Don’t worry about it - it’s not a problem.”
Yeah I learned the hard way that it’s easier to lie on those forms when you already are in therapy. I’ve had GPs try to play psychologist rather than treat the reason I came in. The last time it happened I accused the doctor of being a mechanic who just talked about the car and its history instead of changing the oil as what’s hired to do so. She was fired by me in that conversation.
Suicidal fantasy a a coping mechanism is not that uncommon, and you can definitely move on to healthier coping mechanisms, I did this until age 40 when I met the right therapist who helped me move on.
Knowing there’s always an escape plan available can be a source of comfort.
I’ve also seen it that way and have been coached by my psychologist on it. Ultimately, for me, it was best to set an expiration date. The date on which I could finally do it with minimal guilt. This actually had several positive impacts in my life.
First I quit using suicide as a first or second resort when coping. Instead it has become more of a fleeting thought as I know I’m “not allowed” to do so yet (while obviously still lingering as seen by my initial comment). Second was giving me a finish line. A finite date where I knew the pain would end (chronic conditions are the worst). Third was a reminder that I only have X days left, so make the most of them. It turns death from this amorphous thing into a clear cut “this is it”. I KNOW when the ride ends down to the hour.
The caveat to this is the same as literally everything else in my life: I reserve the right to change my mind as new information is introduced. I’ve made a commitment to not do it until the date I’ve set, but as the date approaches, I’m not ruling out examining the evidence as presented and potentially pushing it out longer.
A LOT of peace of mind here.
A reminder that these chats are being monitored
I don’t understand why people dump such personal information into AI chats. None of it is protected. If they use chats for training data then it’s not impossible that at some point the AI might tell someone enough to be identifiable or the AI could be manipulated into dumping its training data.
I’ve overshared more than I should but I always keep in mind to remember that there’s always a risk of chats getting leaked.
Anything stored online can get leaked.
Still, what are they gonna do to a million suicidal people besides ignore them entirely
Well, AI therapy is more likely to harm their mental health, up to encouraging suicide (as certain cases have already shown).
There’s evidence that a lot of suicide hotlines can be just as bad. You hear awful stories all the time of overwhelmed or fed up operators taking it out on the caller. There’s some real evil people out there. And not everyone has access to a dedicated therapist who wants to help.
Suicide is big business. There’s infrastructure readily available to reap financial rewards from the activity, atleast in the US.
More so from corporate proprietary ones no? At least I hope that’s the only cases. The open source ones suggest really useful ways proprietary do not. Now I dont rely on open source AI but they are definitely better
The corporate models are actually much better at it due to having heavy filtering built in. The fact that a model generally encourages self arm is just a lie that you can prove right now by pretending to be suicidal on ChatGPT. You will see it will adamantly push you to seek help.
The filters and safety nets can be bypassed no matter how hard you make them, and it is the reason why we got some unfortunate news.
Real therapy isn’t always better. At least there you can get drugs. But neither are a guarantee to make life better—and for a lot of them, life isn’t going to get better anyway.
Are you comparing a professional to a text generator?
Have you ever had ineffective professional therapy?
Are you still trying to compare medical treatment with generating text?
Compare, as in equal? No. You can’t “game” a person (usually) like you can game an AI.
Now, answer my question
Real therapy is definitely better than an AI. That said, AIs will never encourage self harm without significant gaming.
AI “therapy” can be very effective without the gaming, but the problem is most people want it to tell them what they want to hear. Real therapy is not “fun” because a therapist will challenge you on your bullshit and not let you shape the conversation.
I find it does a pretty good job with pro and con lists, listing out several options, and taking situations and reframing them. I have found it very useful, but I have learned not to manipulate it or its advice just becomes me convincing myself of a thing.
I agree, and to the comment above you, it’s not because it’s guaranteed to reduce symptoms. There are many ways that talking with another person is good for us.
The keyword here is “person”.
Advertise drugs to them perhaps, or somd sort of taking advantage. If this sort of data is the hands of an ad network that is
No, no. They want repeat customers!
Unless they sell Lifetime deals. Probably cheap on the warranty/support side. If the drug doesn’t work 🤔
It’s never the drugs I want though :(
Strap explosives to their chests and send them to thier competitors?
Convince each one that they alone are the chosen one to assassinate grok and that this mission is all that matters to give their lives meaning.
Take that Grok!!
My pet theory: Radicalize the disenfranchised to incite domestic terrorism and further OpenAI’s political goals.
What are their political goals?
Tax breaks for tech bros
I think total control over the country might be the goal, and it’s a bit more than a tax break.
Absolutely blows my mind that people attach their real life identity to these things.
Depends on how you do it. If you’re using a 3rd party service then the LLM provider might not know (but the 3rd party might, depends on ToS and the retention period + security measures).
Ofc we can all agree certain details shouldn’t be shared at all. There’s a difference between talking about your resume and leaking your email there and suicide stuff where you share the info that makes you really vulnerable
But they tell you that idea you had is great and worth pursuing!
deleted by creator
But imagine the chances for your own business! Absolutely no one will steal your ideas before you can monetize them.
You have to decide, a few months ago everyone was blaming OpenAI for not doing anything
I’m on the “forward to a professional and don’t entertain side” but also “use at your own risk” camp. Doesn’t require monitoring, just some basic checks to not entertain these types of chats
Definitely a case where you can’t resolve conflicting interests to everyone’s satisfaction.
I wonder what it means. If you search for music by Suicidal Tendencies then YouTube shows you a suicide hotline. What does it mean for OpenAI to say people are talking about suicide? They didn’t open up and read a million chats… they have automated detection and that is being triggered, which is not necessarily the same as people meaningfully discussing suicide.
Every third chat now gets triggered, the ChatGPT is pretty broken lately. Just check out ChatGPT subreddit, its pretty much in chaos with moderators going for censorship of complaints. So many users are mad they made a megathread for it. I cancelled my subscription yesterday, it just turned into a cyberkaren
Claude got hints that I might be suicidal just from normal chat. I straight up admitted I think of suicide daily.
Just normal life now I guess.
Stay strong friend! I know I’m just a stranger but I’m here if you need someone to talk to.
I will try. It’s hard not at least having enough free time to reflect on things.
No pressure! Time keeps going, so I hope you’ll eventually find the time to reflect. It doesn’t have to be now, either. But I understand you, sometimes you need to stop and think, and it feels bad when you can’t. Although sometimes I’d prefer not having enough time to think, I tend to overthink a lot. Take care and stay strong ✌️
If ask suicide = true
Then message = “It seems like a good idead. Go for it 👍”
They didn’t release their methods, so I can’t be sure that most of those aren’t just frustrated users telling the LLM to go kill itself.
