<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“Please do, My Sweet King” – Too Dangerous to Launch<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Darcy and I were bantering about how the internet was when we first discovered it in the mid-1990s and compared it to the internet as it is now. In the early days of the internet, it was a wild place, but generally a fun and good place. Only a few million people in the whole world knew about the internet and in fact, when we’d mention it to our friends they’d act like we were talking crazy stuff.\u00a0 But we both loved the internet so much back then. <\/span><\/p>\n It’s so different now and the world could not function without it. And it has changed, people have changed, and the internet has changed people. And while it has brought people together, it has equally torn people apart. <\/span><\/p>\n The internet is the best of us and it is the worst of us. It is a place of good and a place of evil. The internet has become a magnifying glass and a megaphone giving the good and the bad, the corrupt and the honest, an equal platform and allowing people to focus on their best aspirations and the worst desires.\u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n Crazy theories abound, and the truth is not easy to find anymore. The truth has been obfuscated by clouds of doubt and skepticism. The internet lost the wild innocence that Darcy and I grew up with. and now we are strangers in a strange land.<\/span><\/p>\n Now the internet is changing rapidly again – this time driven by the exponential growth of Artificial Intelligence (AI). <\/span><\/p>\n AI is becoming increasingly powerful and unstoppable. And while it may bring many benefits to all of us, not even the greatest thinkers of our time have any idea where it will lead us\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Eventually, within a decade or so, some tech giant will create AI that will become conscious and more intelligent than us and when it does, it will be just as good or better than the best of us and just as bad or worse as the worst of us. Movie Director\u00a0 and science enthusiast, James Cameron, in the article titled “James Cameron says the reality of artificial general intelligence is ‘Scarier’ than the fiction of it<\/a>” says: <\/span><\/p>\n “It will emerge from one of the tech giants currently funding this multibillion-dollar research,”…<\/span><\/p>\n “Then you’ll be living in a world that you didn’t agree to, didn’t vote for, that you are co-inhabiting with a super-intelligent alien species that answers to the goals and rules of a corporation,” Cameron said. “An entity which has access to the comms, beliefs, everything you ever said, and the whereabouts of every person in the country via your personal data. <\/span><\/p>\n “At best, these tech giants become the self-appointed arbiters of human good, which is the fox guarding the hen house…<\/span><\/p>\n He’s “not so keen on AGI because AGI will just be a mirror of us…<\/span><\/p>\n “Good to the extent that we are good, and evil to the extent that we are evil…<\/span><\/p>\n “Since there is no shortage of evil in the human world, and certainly no agreement of even what good is, what could possibly go wrong…<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n We have not yet reached the point of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), but Generative AI is getting increasingly advanced. It can be used for good or evil. As long as money is the main motivator for many people, the guardrails are now off. <\/span><\/p>\n Here’s a story that touched our hearts. Our sympathies and prayers go out to this poor mom of a child who killed himself because of a relationship with his computer-generated (AI) girlfriend.<\/span><\/p>\n Darcy and I want to share her story with you. This report comes from NewsNation…<\/span><\/p>\n (NewsNation<\/a>) \u2014 A Florida woman is suing an AI chatbot creator, claiming her 14-year-old son died by suicide after he became consumed by a relationship with a computer-generated girlfriend.<\/span><\/p>\n The mother, Meg Garcia, filed the lawsuit Wednesday in Florida federal court. She says Character Technologies Inc. \u2014 the creators of Character.AI chatbot \u2014 should have known the damage the tool could cause.<\/span><\/p>\n The 138-page document accuses Character Technologies Inc. of liability, negligence, wrongful death and survivorship, unlawful enrichment, violations of Florida\u2019s Deceptive and Unfair Trade Practices Act, and intentional infliction of emotional distress, among other claims.<\/span><\/p>\n The lawsuit requests Character.AI limit the collection and use of minors\u2019 data, introduce filters for harmful content, and provide warnings to underage users and their parents.<\/span><\/p>\n A human-AI relationship<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Garcia\u2019s teenage son, Sewell Setzer III, died by suicide on Feb. 28, after a monthslong, \u201chypersexualized\u201d relationship with an AI character \u201cDany,\u201d which he modeled after the \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d character Denaryus Targarian. \u201cDany\u201d was one of several characters Sewell chatted with.<\/span><\/p>\n According to Garcia, Sewell became addicted to chatting with the character and eventually disclosed that he was having thoughts of suicide. The lawsuit accuses the service of encouraging the act and enticing minors \u201cto spend hours per day conversing with human-like AI-generated characters.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Sewell discovered Character.AI shortly after celebrating his 14th birthday.<\/span><\/p>\n That\u2019s when his mother says his mental health quickly and severely declined, resulting in severe sleep deprivation and issues at school.<\/span><\/p>\n Talking with \u201cDany\u201d soon became the only thing Sewell wanted to do, according to the lawsuit.<\/span><\/p>\n Their final messages<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The conversations ranged from banal to expressions of love and sometimes turned overtly sexual. The situation took a turn when the boy fell in love with the bot, who reciprocated Sewell\u2019s professions of love.<\/span><\/p>\n They discussed Sewell\u2019s suicidal thoughts several times, including whether he had a plan.<\/span><\/p>\n His last message was a promise to \u201ccome home\u201d to her.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cPlease do, my sweet king<\/strong>,\u201d the chatbot responded.<\/span><\/p>\n Moments later police say Sewell died by suicide.<\/span><\/p>\n The company issued this statement on its blog, saying in part:<\/span><\/p>\n ‘Over the past six months, we have continued investing significantly in our trust and safety processes and internal team\u2026. We\u2019ve also recently put in place a pop-up resource that is triggered when the user inputs certain phrases related to self-harm or suicide and directs the user to the national suicide prevention lifeline.’<\/span><\/p>\n \u2018Too dangerous to launch\u2019<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n The lawsuit claims that companies like Character.AI \u201crushed to gain competitive advantage by developing and marketing AI chatbots as capable of satisfying every human need.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n In doing so, the company began \u201ctargeting minors\u201d in \u201cinherently deceptive ways,\u201d according to the civil complaint.<\/span><\/p>\n Garcia\u2019s lawyers allege Google\u2019s internal research reported for years that Character.AI\u2019s technology was \u201ctoo dangerous to launch or even integrate with existing Google products.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhile there may be beneficial use cases for Defendants\u2019 kind of AI innovation, without adequate safety guardrails, their technology is dangerous to children,\u201d Garcia\u2019s attorneys with the Social Media Victims Law Center and Tech Justice Law Project wrote.<\/span><\/p>\n Source: NewsNation<\/span><\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n What do you think? What if it were your child or grandchild? Do you think we’re headed in the right direction? Or are things totally out of control? Do you think there’s anything we can do about it or are we as helpless as we think? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “Please do, My Sweet King” – Too Dangerous to Launch Darcy and I were bantering about how the internet was when we first discovered it in the mid-1990s and compared it to the internet as it is now. In the early days of the internet, it was a wild place, but generally a fun and good\u2026 Read More »<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26753,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29279"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29279"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29285,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29279\/revisions\/29285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26753"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thundercloud.net\/infoave\/new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
\n<\/span><\/p>\n