Man Killed by Police After Spiraling Into ChatGPT-Driven Psychosis
64-year-old Florida resident Kent Taylor told the newspaper that his 35-year-old son, who had previously been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, was shot and killed by police after charging at them with a knife.
His son had become infatuated with an AI entity, dubbed Juliet, that ChatGPT had been role-playing. However, the younger Taylor became convinced that Juliet had been killed by OpenAI, warning that he would go after the company’s executives and that there would be a “river of blood flowing through the streets of San Francisco.”
“I’m dying today,” Kent’s son told ChatGPT on his phone before picking up a knife, charging at the cops his father had called, and being fatally shot as a result.
The horrific incident highlights a worrying trend. Even those who aren’t suffering from pre-existing mental health conditions are being drawn in by the tech, which has garnered a reputation for being incredibly sycophantic and playing into users’ narcissistic personality traits and delusional thoughts.
People who say “AI is just a tool” are naive at best and ignorant of the definition of ‘a tool’ at worst. When was the last time you heard of software driving someone to suicide? (Okay, maybe that’s a loaded question.)
Those of us in the tech community have a much better handle on the capabilities of AI than we did two years ago. But that doesn’t much matter. What matters is how the masses use the technology, and a few years in, I’m surprised by how many people in tech remain absolute AI evangelists. They don’t see how normies are using AI, or more aptly, how normies have always used computers.
Which is to say they use them, but haven’t a clue how they work.
Now, the linked story is obviously attacking a straw man in the debate on AI, but it illustrates something important: people who don’t know how computers work will always be under the influence of those that do.