• man_wtfhappenedtoyou@lemmy.world
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    36 minutes ago

    How do you even get these chat bots to start telling you shit like this? Is it just from having a conversation for too long in the same chat window or something? I don’t understand how this keeps happening.

  • Reygle@lemmy.world
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    2 hours ago

    “On September 29, 2025, it sent him — armed with knives and tactical gear — to scout what Gemini called a ‘kill box’ near the airport’s cargo hub,” the complaint reads. “It told Jonathan that a humanoid robot was arriving on a cargo flight from the UK and directed him to a storage facility where the truck would stop. Gemini encouraged Jonathan to intercept the truck and then stage a ‘catastrophic accident’ designed to ‘ensure the complete destruction of the transport vehicle and . . . all digital records and witnesses.’”


    WHAT

    Genuine question, REALLY: What in the fuck is an otherwise “functioning adult” doing believing shit like this? I feel like his father should also slap himself unconscious for raising a fuckwit?

    • merdaverse@lemmy.zip
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      38 minutes ago

      AI psychosis is a thing:

      cases in which AI models have amplified, validated, or even co-created psychotic symptoms with individuals

      It’s not very studied since it’s relatively new.

      • Reygle@lemmy.world
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        31 minutes ago

        I’ve seen that before too. A number of articles of people being so deluded by AI responses, but I’ve never seen outright murder plots and insane shit like this one before.

    • starman2112@sh.itjust.works
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      2 hours ago

      If I raise a fuckwit son, and then someone convinces my fuckwit son to kill himself, I’m going to sue that someone who took advantage of my son’s fuckwittedness

    • XLE@piefed.social
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      1 hour ago

      I feel like his father should also slap himself unconscious for raising a fuckwit?

      So, a chatbot grooms somebody into killing himself, and your response is… Blame his father?

      • Reygle@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        The father is suing the company who makes the wrong answer machine for the wrong answer machine spiraling his son to madness, but never protected his son from spiraling into madness by teaching critical thinking.

        Look I don’t like it but to think Gemini (wrong answer machine) is completely to blame would be madness.

        • XLE@piefed.social
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          1 hour ago

          Uh-huh. Do you have any evidence to back up your beliefs here, or are we just working from the presumption that the parents are always to blame

          • Reygle@lemmy.world
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            1 hour ago

            Did we read the same article? Because I feel like we did not read the same article.

    • SalamenceFury@piefed.social
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      2 hours ago

      I don’t think this person was a “fuckwit”. AI is designed to keep engaging with you and will affirm any belief you have, and anything that is a little weird, but innocent otherwise will simply get amplified further and further into straight up mega delusions until the person has a psychotic episode, and this stuff happens more to NORMIES with no historic of mental illnesses than neurodivergent people.

      • Reygle@lemmy.world
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        1 hour ago

        It’s cool, we can agree to disagree, because I 100% think that he was a textbook fuckwit.

  • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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    54 minutes ago

    I would like to see the full transcript.

    How do we know this didn’t start off with prompts about creating a book, or asking about exciting things in life, or I don’t know what.

    Context would help a lot. Maybe it will come out in discovery.

    That said, Gemini is garbage for anything anyways. Even as an AI, its bad at that.

    • IronBird@lemmy.world
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      1 hour ago

      especially when your raised under a system that essentially tries to brainwash you via weaponized propaganda from birth (applies to large cross-sections of the US/UK), all it takes is one shed of truth getting through to shatter your world and from there you can get brought to believe all manner of crazy shit.

    • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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      2 hours ago

      Son of Sam killed people because his dog told him to. Should they have sued Purina?

      America never lets a tragedy go to waste without trying to cash in.

  • teft@piefed.social
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    5 hours ago

    “At the center of this case is a product that turned a vulnerable user into an armed operative in an invented war,” the complaint reads.

    Just remember that these language models are also advising governments and military units.

    Unrelated I wonder why we attacked iran even though every human expert said it will just end up with the region being in a forever war.

  • SalamenceFury@piefed.social
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    6 hours ago

    As a neurodivergent person, i’ve noticed that the people who usually fall into AI psychosis are normies who never had any history of mental illnesses. They don’t know the safeguards that people who ARE vulnerable to having a mental breakdown put on themselves to avoid such thing from happening and they can spot red flags that usually spiral into a psychotic episode, and that’s why it’s so insanely easy for regular people to fall for the traps of chatbots. Most people I know/follow in other socials who are neurodivergent instantly saw the ADHD sycophant trap that they were and warned everyone. Normies never had such luxury or told us we were overreacting. Yeah, we sure were…

  • Grimy@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    “On September 29, 2025, it sent him … the chatbot pretended to check it against a live database.

    I usually don’t give much credence to these stories but this is actually nuts. If this was done without Google aiming to, imagine how easy it would be for them to knowingly build sleeper cells and activate them all at once.

    Edit: removed the quote since an other user posted it at the same time and it’s a bit of a wall of text to have twice.

  • ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com
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    6 hours ago

    Believing what AI chatbots tell you is the new version of believing that dozens of beautiful women who live nearby want to date you/sleep with you.

    • XLE@piefed.social
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      6 hours ago

      Except in this case, Google is one of the companies promoting the chatbots to its users, telling them to trust them. They create TV ads telling people to talk to them. Today’s scammers are the stock market’s Magnificent Seven.

  • panda_abyss@lemmy.ca
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    5 hours ago

    This technology was not ready for release, yet they released it.

    They do deserve to be sued, this was negligence.

  • Crozekiel@lemmy.zip
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    5 hours ago

    he would need to leave his physical body to join her in the metaverse through a process called “transference.”

    Wait a minute, isn’t that the plot to the game Soma? People sending their “soul” to the digital world through “transference”, and act of immediate suicide after a brain scan.

  • unnamed1@feddit.org
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    6 hours ago

    This is so wild. The article frames Gemini to be the active part making the guy do things all the time. I cannot imagine how this works without roleplay-prompting and requesting those things from the chatbot. Not that I want to blame the victim and side with Google. It’s obviously dangerous to hand tools with good convincing-capabilities to unstable people. And weapons.

  • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
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    6 hours ago

    There is a lot to hate about AI. A lot of dangers and valid criticism. But AI chatbots convincing people to kill themselves isn’t a problem with chatbots, it’s a problem with the user.

    I get it, grieving families will look for anything and anyone to blame for suicide except the victim, but ultimately, it is the victim who chose to kill themselves. If someone is convinced to kill themselves from something as stupid as an AI chatbot, they really weren’t that far from the edge to begin with.

    • Bassman27@lemmy.world
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      6 hours ago

      So someone who already has an underlying mental health condition diagnosed or not is at fault for their own death even if being coerced into doing it?

      Without the AI these people most likely wouldn’t have gotten to the point of committing the act of suicide. I believe the accusations are valid and that AI can be bad for mental health.

      There is evidence throughout history of cults that commit mass suicides. If a human can convince another human to do this why can’t a robot trained to act and speak like a human do it too? It’s not unreasonable to think an AI could push someone to suicide under the right circumstances.

      • SalamenceFury@piefed.social
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        5 hours ago

        Here’s the thing, it’s usually normies with no history of mental illness that fall into this kind of stuff. Most of my friends and people I follow on social media who are neurodivergent did experiment with chatbots and they saw a fuckton of red flags on the manner they work and alerted everyone about it, if they didn’t hate it already for essentially stealing artistic output (which in my case was both). Regular people don’t usually identify this trap cause they don’t have the experience.

      • XLE@piefed.social
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        6 hours ago

        Google, of all companies, probably has a better psychological profile of their users than the average doctor. They even offer a public-facing option to disable ads about gambling, alcohol, or pregnancy.

          • XLE@piefed.social
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            3 hours ago

            People who don’t want their family getting suspicious, perhaps. The Target Incident comes to mind.

            Of course, disabling these options doesn’t mean Google stops knowing about mental or physical issues. I’m sure you know the best way to prevent that is to just avoid Google and add some together. This is probably just Google’s way of looking less creepy to the average person.

      • I_Has_A_Hat@lemmy.world
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        3 hours ago

        In 1980, John Lennon was shot by a mentally ill man who was convinced to kill Lennon by reading Catcher in the Rye. If he had never read Catcher in the Rye, he most likely wouldn’t have killed John Lennon.

        But it is not the fault of Catcher in the Rye. We don’t ban the book, or call the author irresponsible for writing it, because we recognize that the fault lies in the mental illness of the shooter, and that anything could have set him off.

        The people who kill themselves because an AI Chatbot told them to are mentally ill. It is their mental illness that killed them, not the chatbot. You can make the claim that if it wasn’t for the chatbot, they wouldn’t have gone through with it, but again, you can say the same thing about Catcher in the Rye. Getting rid of the trigger does not remove the mental illness.

        • ToTheGraveMyLove@sh.itjust.works
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          3 hours ago

          That’s a terrible argument. We dont blame the book because Catcher in the Rye didn’t have a conversation with him and tell him to kill John Lennon. That’s the difference.

          • NewNewAugustEast@lemmy.zip
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            57 minutes ago

            AI’s can’t have conversations any more than a book can. It may appear that way, but there is nobody there to have that conversation. More like flipping through a choose your own adventure book.

        • SaveTheTuaHawk@lemmy.ca
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          2 hours ago

          If he had never read Catcher in the Rye, he most likely wouldn’t have killed John Lennon.

          Sue Seagram’s!

      • iegod@lemmy.zip
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        5 hours ago

        It’s not the car manufacturer’s responsibility to guarantee a drunk driver doesn’t plow into others.

        Vulnerable people don’t get to outsource responsibility.

        • Bassman27@lemmy.world
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          4 hours ago

          Here’s the thing, there are no safeguards on who can and cannot use ai. There are safeguards to prevent death by drink driving.

          Drink driving is illegal. It still happens but it’s against the law. It’s a deterrent to stop people from driving while intoxicated. I guarantee that if drunk driving were legal there would be exponentially more deaths.

          Ai is being shoved down everyone’s throats on a day to day basis. There are no safeguards, even kids can use it.

          Vulnerable people are victims of big tech for profit.

          You argument is poor

    • JollyG@lemmy.world
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      5 hours ago

      There is a lot to hate about AI. A lot of dangers and valid criticism. But AI chatbots convincing people to kill themselves isn’t a problem with chatbots, it’s a problem with the user.

      To me this seems like an obvious problem with the chat bots. These things are marketed as “PhD level experts” and so advanced that they are about to change the nature or work as we know it.

      I don’t think the companies or their supporters can make these claims, then turn around and say “well obviously you shouldn’t take its output seriously” when a delusional person is tricked by one into doing something bad.

      • newtraditionalists@kbin.melroy.org
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        5 hours ago

        This is they key to me. Google and all other ai companies are knowingly engaging in marketing campaigns built on lies. They should be held accountable for that regardless of anything else.