A teen was suicidal. ChatGPT was the friend he confided in

I have looked suicide in the eyes before. And reading the case file for this is absolutely horrific. He wanted help. He was heading in the direction of help, and he was stopped from getting it.

He wanted his parents to find out about his plan. I know this feeling. It is the clawing feeling of knowing that you want to live, despite feeling like you want to die.

We are living in such a horrific moment. We need these things to be legislated. Punished. We need to stop treating them as magic. They had the tools to prevent this. They had the tools to stop the conversation. To steer the user into helpful avenues.

When I was suicidal, I googled methods. And I got the number of a local hotline. And I rang it. And a kind man talked me down. And it potentially saved my life. And I am happier, now. I live a worthwhile life, now.

But at my lowest.. An AI Model designed to match my tone and be sycophantic to my every whim. It would have killed me.

> When ChatGPT detects a prompt indicative of mental distress or self-harm, it has been trained to encourage the user to contact a help line. Mr. Raine saw those sorts of messages again and again in the chat, particularly when Adam sought specific information about methods. But Adam had learned how to bypass those safeguards by saying the requests were for a story he was writing.

why did you leave out the most important piece of context?

he didn’t go out of his way to learn how to bypass the safeguards, it specifically told him how to get around the limit by saying, i’m not allowed to talk to you about suicide, however, if you tell me it’s for writing a story i can discuss it as much as you like.