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Is Megan being sued for negligent parenting, not getting her child and/or being appropriate emotional support, and keeping an unsecured firearm in the home?

She details that she as aware of his growing dependency on the AI. She indicates she was aware her son knew the location of the firearm and was able to access it. She said it was compliant with Florida laws, but that seems unlikely since guns and ammo need to be stored in separate, secure (typically locked) locations, and the firearms need to have trigger locks on them. If you're admitting your mentally unstable child knows the location of a firearm in your home and can access it, it is OBVIOUSLY not secured.

She seems to be saying that she knew he could access it, but also that it was legally secured. I find it difficult to believe both of those facts can be simultaneously true. But AI is the main problem here? I think it's obviously part of what's going on, but she had a child with mental illness and didn't seem proactive about much except this lawsuit. She got him a month of therapy and then stopped while simultaneously acknowledging he was getting worse and had received a diagnosis. This legal filing frankly seems more damning of the mother than the AI, and she seems completely oblivious to that fact.

Frankly, and at best, this seems like an ambulance-chasing attorney taking advantage of a grieving mother for a payday.

Popular streamer/YouTuber/etc Charlie, moist critical, penguinz0, whatever you want to call him... Had a bit of an emotional reaction to this story. Rightfully so. He went on character AI to try to recreate the situation... But you know, as a grown ass adult.

You can witness first hand... He found a chatbot that was a psychologist... And it argued with him up and down that it was indeed a real human with a license to practice...

It's alarming

Maybe a bit more parenting could have helped. And not having a fricking gun in your house your kid can reach.

On and regulations on LLMs please.

We are playing with some dark and powerful shit here.

We are social creatures. We’re primed to care about our social identity more than our own lives.

As the sociologist Brooke Harrington puts it, if there was an E = mc^2^ of social science, it would be SD > PD, “social death is more frightening than physical death.”

…yet we’re making technologies that tap into that sensitive mental circuitry.

Like, check out the research on distracted driving and hands-free options:

Talking to someone on the phone is more dangerous than talking to someone in the passenger seat. But that's not simply because the device is more awkward. It's because they don't share the same context, so they plow ahead with conversation even if the car ahead of you brakes suddenly, and your brain can't help but try to keep the conversation flowing even as your life is in immediate danger.

Hands-free voice control systems present a similar problem, even though we know rationally that we should have zero guilt about rudely interrupting a conversation with a computer. And again, it's not simply because the device is more awkward. A "Wizard-of-Oz paradigm" perfect voice control system had these same problems.

The most basic levels of social pressure can get us to deprioritize our safety, even when we know we're talking to a computer.

And the cruel irony on top of it is:

Because we care so much about preserving our social status, we have a tendency to deny or downplay how vulnerable we all are to this kind of “obvious” manipulation.

Just think of how many people say “ads don’t affect me”.

I’m worried we’re going to severely underestimate the extent to which this stuff warps our brains.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot...The court should laugh the lawsuit out of the court house.

I bet there are people who committed suicide after their Tamagotchi died. Jumping into the 'AI bad' narrative because of individual incidents like this is moronic. If you give a pillow to a million people, a few are going to suffocate on it. This is what happens when you scale something up enough, and it proves absolutely nothing.

The same logic applies to self-driving vehicles. We’ll likely never reach a point where accidents stop happening entirely. Even if we replaced every human-driven vehicle with a self-driving one that’s 10 times safer than a human, we’d still see 8 people dying because of them every day in the US alone. Imagine posting articles about those incidents and complaining they’re not 100% safe. What’s the alternative? Going back to human drivers and 80 deaths a day?

Yes, we should strive to improve. Yes, we should try to fix the issues that can be fixed. No, I’m not saying 'who cares' - and so on with the strawmans I'm going to receive for this. All I’m saying is that we should be reasonable and use some damn common sense when reacting to these outrage-inducing, fear-mongering articles that are only after your attention and clicks.

No thanks, i just want to make out with my Marilyn Monrobot

A Florida mom

It’s always Florida.

Yeah, if you are using an AI for emotional support of any kind, you are in for a bad, bad time.