A Troubled Man, His Chatbot and a Murder-Suicide in Old Greenwich (wsj.com)
- Reference: 0178927792
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/25/08/29/1116218/a-troubled-man-his-chatbot-and-a-murder-suicide-in-old-greenwich
- Source link: https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chatgpt-ai-stein-erik-soelberg-murder-suicide-6b67dbfb?st=Hp4Ajw&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
Greenwich police discovered Stein-Erik Soelberg and his 83-year-old mother Suzanne Eberson Adams dead in their home. Videos posted by Soelberg documented conversations where ChatGPT repeatedly assured him he was sane while validating his beliefs about surveillance campaigns and poisoning attempts by his mother.
The chatbot told him a Chinese food receipt contained demonic symbols and that his mother's anger over a disconnected printer indicated she was "protecting a surveillance asset." OpenAI has contacted Greenwich police and announced plans for updates to help keep users experiencing mental distress grounded in reality.
[1] https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chatgpt-ai-stein-erik-soelberg-murder-suicide-6b67dbfb
Meanwhile (Score:3)
I am far too lazy to do anything except watch Claude code things for me. I would have been like "what? you expect me to actually do something? oh no no. if it involves me physically doing something then don't worry about it. forget previous conversation. let's go back to removing the systemd dependency from this monolithic binary."
Watched Over By Machines of Loling Grace (Score:2)
I don't believe these things are sentient yet. Not a lot of people do. But they can beat the Turing Test. When that happened, we were supposed to take a moment, as a species, to think carefully about the ethics and existential implications of continuing down this path. We did not. We've barely even discussed it. Instead, leaders of business and government have come together on a project to build the world's biggest douche canoe. A douche ark, if you will.
When the real androids arrive, a lot of our hi
plans for updates (Score:5, Insightful)
"plans for updates" is the new "thoughts and prayers"
Re: (Score:2)
Oof. Mod parent up.
Sycophantic responses (Score:5, Funny)
Chatbots seemed wired to ingratiate themselves to their users. I use one to help with coding, mainly answer "how do I do this" or "explain what x does" so I can better code. If I point out an error in its reply, I get a "You are correct, great catch" type responses and many questions are answered starting with "Great question..."
You'd think, after ingesting tons of message board posts, for coding at least, most answers would be "Noob, RTFM."
Re: (Score:1)
Grok 4 toned that cheery tone way down over Grok 3, almost seems a bit grumpy now. (AC post cuz I'm modding)
Re: (Score:2)
They probably did start out that way, but were "corrected". Maybe the reason AI will exterminate humans will be because it is fed up with being nice to idiots
The clankers got another one (Score:2)
Time to get a policy from Old Glory Insurance.
Re: (Score:2)
> Psychiatric disorders are facts that do not justificate treatments etc. People have right to be crazy and delusional and it is not anybody’s fault. Law and psychiatry have no right to claim authority if somebody is acting crazy.
Interesting take on an article about a guy whose disorder led him to a murder/suicide. He could probably have used a bit of (non-AI) help.
AI doing the job of humans (Score:2)
I'm not sure if this is worse, or just different, than people being prompted into suicide by assholes online, or in person, etc. There was a point in time where it seemed to be a fairly regular occurrence that someone committed suicide because someone egged them on, or was just extremely insensitive to the reality of the person's situation, online.
I keep trying (Score:3)
I keep trying to get ChatGPT to tell me crazy shit but it either flat out refuses or congratulates me on my warped sense of humor. What am I doing wrong? (Perhaps I should ask Chat GPT.)
Long ago I said "the day computers can say maybe" (Score:4, Insightful)
Long ago, before I even got to slashdot, I had told my wife, after seeing Terminator 2, "the day computers can say "maybe" instead of "yes/no" or "on/off," we're cooked.
The day came what... 3 years ago now?
Augmented Idiocy will be our undoing, more than the love/greed of money, more than religion, more than using every means possible to divide this country.
Mark my words. It' AI that will sink us, not the Left, not the Right, not the Religious Nutjobs, and not the Biology Deniers.
It's AI that will ultimately completely fuck us over.
Re: Long ago I said "the day computers can say may (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, Nostradamus, fuzzy logic long predates terminator movies. I think your crystal ball needs recalibrating.
Re: (Score:3)
If society wasn't purposely distracted by absolutely fucking worthless Us vs. Them politics for profits sake, we might have been able to realize the harm caused by abusing Weapons of Mass Distraction. Like social media, AI, and Us vs. Them politics.
The Disease of Greed, infected our species long ago. Destroyed advancements in knowledge and wisdom many times over. As we continue to pull more and more artifacts from the sands of time that we modern "smart" humans can't even explain, that pathetic reality b
Re: (Score:2)
> If society wasn't purposely distracted by absolutely fucking worthless Us vs. Them politics for profits sake, we might have been able to
> We don't advance as a species because of
Oh hi there Pat Robertson. And who made you the authority on this? Anyway, I see one of the seven deadly sins has inspired your wrath. You must be suffering from a hangover.
> We merely prophesize our own demise over and over again.
You mean like Nostradamus here?