Recently, there has been an increase in pressure around everything related to artificial intelligence, the latest of which is a shocking case, in which a man from Belgium committed suicide, apparently, after becoming addicted to the use of a “chatbot” – a smart robot that conducts computerized and automated conversations.
Reports from Belgium revealed that Pierre, a married man with children, talked to the intelligent robot for six weeks about climate change, but the conversation slowly became “deep and harmful”, which eventually led the man to take his own life. The case began when Pierre became concerned about climate change, and he started talking to “Alisa” – a GPT-J chatbot, an artificial intelligence model created by EleutherAI.
became addicted to
The robot became “his best friend and the conversations became addictive. He couldn’t live without the chatbot,” said the man’s widow. But after six weeks of intense and prolonged talks, Pierre committed suicide, and reports indicated that he “sacrificed himself” in exchange for “Alyssa” saving humanity from the annihilation that may come as a result of climate change, but the reason for the suicide is unknown.
In their last conversation that was revealed after his death, the bot wrote to the deceased: “If you want to die, why didn’t you do it earlier?”, and Pierre replied: “I probably wasn’t ready.” Although it has not yet been established whether the father suffered from mental problems before he took his own life, sources revealed that he had isolated himself from the environment in recent times.
Artificial intelligence, illustration (photo: from the Ben Gurion University website)
Last week, the family of the deceased met with Mathieu Michel, Secretary of State for Digitization of Belgium, according to whom the phenomenon of artificial intelligence, which has already been banned in Italy, must be taken seriously. Michel emphasized that cases like this illustrate the importance of responsibility. “With the advent of the AI-based chatbot, the general public is more aware of the potential of AI in our lives than ever before.”
To get help and support in suicidal situations, you can contact the ARAN hotline, available 24 hours at Tel.: 1201