alt Hacker News> I don't buy that chatGPT is actually doing these users any harm.
I have zero doubt that chatgpt is doing users harm. I even give chatgpt a pass on giving vulnerable people, including children, instructions and information about how to kill themselves. One place chatgpt goes over the line is actively encouraging them to go through with suicide.
I also don't doubt that it feeds into mania and psychosis. While almost anything can do the same, they've designed the service to be as addictive and engaging as possible in part by turning up the ass-kissing sycophancy to 11 with total disregard for the fact that there are times when it's very dangerous to encourage and support everything someone says no matter how obviously sick they are. They also want to whore themselves out as a virtual therapist while being unfit and unqualified for the job and that's just one of many roles the chatbot isn't fit for but they're happy to let you try anyway.
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If it wasn’t ChatGPT but a fiction book, would you feel the author is “doing harm”? Or is the reader doing it to themselves?
Another software engineer friend of mine recently shared with me some details of the crazy situation that he's involved in now.
Someone who he is friends with, has worked with across multiple jobs for nearly a decade and briefly was roommates with had some mild psychological issues that he knew about. Within a few months of working daily with AI agents at their current job, this person has gone into full blown AI psychosis.
They had a complete explosive meltdown at work. Cops were called. Stalking behavior followed -- restraining orders had to be obtained. Then this person used AI tools to bombard all of his former coworkers with multiple pro-se lawsuits they all have to deal with.
I've dealt with insane, destructive/abusive coworkers before but in the past they only had so much free time to cause massive disruptions to their targets. LLMs have turned that up significantly. Because of ADA, I don't even know what employers can do about this.