I… have a lot of thoughts on this topic but also I realize I’m the feds because I study AI (not that kind of AI). I feel like the mention of suicide should trigger the suicide hotline. CharacterAI needs to put guards in place for this kind of thing.
That being said… there’s a lot of things about the story that aren’t being mentioned that overlap with other issues in our society.
CharacterAi needs to change, but also it feels like we give kids free rein on the internet like never before. I’ve heard people say “well what else are we going to do? It’s hard to get them off it.” But now more than ever I want to advocate for people really paying attention to what their kids do.
I also take issue with the fact that the child had ready access to a gun. I don’t want to make it seem like there’s no concern to be had with this technology— there is and we need to fight for it. I just want to reiterate that we are missing the other elephants in the room.
yeah thanks for this, i think the parasocialization aspect as being "natural" is so dangerous. I work in a space where people are really hyped to deploy chatbots as mental health "first aid"/ "first responders" for kids /youth in super vulnerable settings and I hope they are being mindful of shit like this.
God damn, I didn’t know you were a Yankees fan. I knew I liked this newsletter. My family moved from Brooklyn to DC when I was a kid. Yankees fandom and a general sense that DC is and always will be inferior are the only things from our hometown my parents really instilled in us. I have managed to shake the latter (DC is truly a Nice Place) but plan on raising my daughter in a mixed Nats-Yankees household.
He put down his phone, picked up his stepfather’s .45 caliber handgun and pulled the trigger.
I mean, I guess if we're willing to give up on holding the gun manufacturers, the NRA and their other lobbying arms, their enablers in the GOP and the supreme court, and the kind of men who become shitty stepdads who keep unlocked loaded guns in the home accessible to their kids who have been having mental issues for months on end accountable, yea. I guess it has to be the LLMs fault.
To be clear LLMs are dogshit and cooking the world for no reason because rich people would prefer it if we paid them for LLMs instead of delivering actual value.
But sad kids have been offing themselves with their shitty step dads' handguns since before the advent of the PC. This is a problem we could have stopped decades ago, could stop tomorrow, and this kid would 100% be alive today, LLM or no, if we had.
Another reply to note that the clickable foot notes dont work on email, so imagine my chagrin when I read all the way down (I just don't really care about America's #5 sport, sorry)
I like your argument, but I think your Yankees advocacy is based on an idea of the team that no longer exists. I don't think Yankees fans enjoy their team any more than other fans do (and I'm not even sure they like winning all that much). I grew up a Yankees fan (tho I'm also from Princeton) and at a certain point I just couldn't stand being around the team, the organization, or the fan base. It wasn't anything specific, but at some point, maybe when the new stadium was built (or maybe when Michael Kay was installed), they became actively distasteful to me. Aaron Boone seems like a perfect mascot for the whole franchise: perpetually irritated and sour.
I felt this way quite strongly for about a decade after 2004—including the last WS run, which I was only half tuned in to—but I've genuinely loved the Judge era! What a fun bunch of players to watch and root for (even more so this season with Soto). Boone I can take or leave but at least he's an improvement over Girardi (a true sourpuss). The new stadium sucks, true; the YES team sucks, it's true. And yet... my big boys keep hitting home runs !!!
Wasn't Kevin Roose the dork who got really sucked in by a chatbot in the early days of the LLM craze? And now a year later he's covering the environment created by his credulous reportage. Great!
Yea he thought he was in love with it and it was gonna kill his wife or something.
The kid, at least, seemed neurodivergent so I think I can dump on people like Roose if I make explicit I refer only to people without actual disability:
There seems to be a binary switch for some people where a computer that talks back is instantly Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer "Theres a little man in this box and it is my good friend!" or "This is a janky device that is self evidently a computer repeating the most common phrases in response to basic prompts, and I can't even begin to think of a way this could improve my life"
It seems to be independent of age, education, or even technological sophisitication.
Honestly, the one good that may come of LLMs is isolating the "gullible dumbshit" gene.
- again, among people who have no preexisting issues that would make interacting with these things inadvisable a priori
I… have a lot of thoughts on this topic but also I realize I’m the feds because I study AI (not that kind of AI). I feel like the mention of suicide should trigger the suicide hotline. CharacterAI needs to put guards in place for this kind of thing.
That being said… there’s a lot of things about the story that aren’t being mentioned that overlap with other issues in our society.
CharacterAi needs to change, but also it feels like we give kids free rein on the internet like never before. I’ve heard people say “well what else are we going to do? It’s hard to get them off it.” But now more than ever I want to advocate for people really paying attention to what their kids do.
I also take issue with the fact that the child had ready access to a gun. I don’t want to make it seem like there’s no concern to be had with this technology— there is and we need to fight for it. I just want to reiterate that we are missing the other elephants in the room.
This all seems totally correct--like three different public-health issues overlapping here before you even get to the "A.I." aspect.
This story seemed made for Read Max consumption -- AI slop, instantly fake social media, brands getting in on the action: https://btownmoose.com/2024/10/24/shaloobys/
yeah thanks for this, i think the parasocialization aspect as being "natural" is so dangerous. I work in a space where people are really hyped to deploy chatbots as mental health "first aid"/ "first responders" for kids /youth in super vulnerable settings and I hope they are being mindful of shit like this.
God damn, I didn’t know you were a Yankees fan. I knew I liked this newsletter. My family moved from Brooklyn to DC when I was a kid. Yankees fandom and a general sense that DC is and always will be inferior are the only things from our hometown my parents really instilled in us. I have managed to shake the latter (DC is truly a Nice Place) but plan on raising my daughter in a mixed Nats-Yankees household.
Bronx Bombers Baybee!
He put down his phone, picked up his stepfather’s .45 caliber handgun and pulled the trigger.
I mean, I guess if we're willing to give up on holding the gun manufacturers, the NRA and their other lobbying arms, their enablers in the GOP and the supreme court, and the kind of men who become shitty stepdads who keep unlocked loaded guns in the home accessible to their kids who have been having mental issues for months on end accountable, yea. I guess it has to be the LLMs fault.
To be clear LLMs are dogshit and cooking the world for no reason because rich people would prefer it if we paid them for LLMs instead of delivering actual value.
But sad kids have been offing themselves with their shitty step dads' handguns since before the advent of the PC. This is a problem we could have stopped decades ago, could stop tomorrow, and this kid would 100% be alive today, LLM or no, if we had.
Another reply to note that the clickable foot notes dont work on email, so imagine my chagrin when I read all the way down (I just don't really care about America's #5 sport, sorry)
Good on you for clocking that as well
I like your argument, but I think your Yankees advocacy is based on an idea of the team that no longer exists. I don't think Yankees fans enjoy their team any more than other fans do (and I'm not even sure they like winning all that much). I grew up a Yankees fan (tho I'm also from Princeton) and at a certain point I just couldn't stand being around the team, the organization, or the fan base. It wasn't anything specific, but at some point, maybe when the new stadium was built (or maybe when Michael Kay was installed), they became actively distasteful to me. Aaron Boone seems like a perfect mascot for the whole franchise: perpetually irritated and sour.
I felt this way quite strongly for about a decade after 2004—including the last WS run, which I was only half tuned in to—but I've genuinely loved the Judge era! What a fun bunch of players to watch and root for (even more so this season with Soto). Boone I can take or leave but at least he's an improvement over Girardi (a true sourpuss). The new stadium sucks, true; the YES team sucks, it's true. And yet... my big boys keep hitting home runs !!!
Wasn't Kevin Roose the dork who got really sucked in by a chatbot in the early days of the LLM craze? And now a year later he's covering the environment created by his credulous reportage. Great!
Yea he thought he was in love with it and it was gonna kill his wife or something.
The kid, at least, seemed neurodivergent so I think I can dump on people like Roose if I make explicit I refer only to people without actual disability:
There seems to be a binary switch for some people where a computer that talks back is instantly Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer "Theres a little man in this box and it is my good friend!" or "This is a janky device that is self evidently a computer repeating the most common phrases in response to basic prompts, and I can't even begin to think of a way this could improve my life"
It seems to be independent of age, education, or even technological sophisitication.
Honestly, the one good that may come of LLMs is isolating the "gullible dumbshit" gene.
- again, among people who have no preexisting issues that would make interacting with these things inadvisable a priori
reading this two days after the yanks barfed up the world series is a sublime pleasure.
Reading the Yankees bit and knowing that you’re a Tottenham fan, I am too, makes the whole thing ring a little different.
You don't really understand how good it is to root for a team that wins until you also root for a team that loses
Not really, no.