Finding is one of most direct statements from the tech company on how AI can exacerbate mental health issues
More than a million ChatGPT users each week send messages that include “explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent”, according to a blogpost published by OpenAI on Monday. The finding, part of an update on how the chatbot handles sensitive conversations, is one of the most direct statements from the artificial intelligence giant on the scale of how AI can exacerbate mental health issues.
In addition to its estimates on suicidal ideations and related interactions, OpenAI also said that about 0.07 of users active in a given week – about 560,000 of its touted 800m weekly users – show “possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania”. The post cautioned that these conversations were difficult to detect or measure, and that this was an initial analysis.
Exactly. It’s like concluding that therapists are exacerbating suicidal ideation, psychosis, or mania just because their patients talk about those things during sessions. ChatGPT has 800 million weekly users - of course some of them are going to bring up topics like that.
It’s fine to be skeptical about the long-term effects of chatbots on mental health, but it’s just as unhealthy to be so strongly anti-anything that one throws critical thinking out the window and accept anything that merely feels like it supports what they already want believe as further evidence that it must be so.