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

(www.nytimes.com)
443 points jaredwiener | 1 comments | 26 Aug 25 14:15 UTC | HN request time: 0.215s | source
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pembrook ◴[27 Aug 25 08:28 UTC] No.45036880[source]▶
This is dumb. Nobody is writing articles about all the times the opposite happened, and ChatGPT helped prevent bad stuff.

However, because of the nature of this topic, it’s the perfect target for NYT to generate moral panic for clicks. Classic media attention bait 101.

I can’t believe HN is falling for this. It’s the equivalent of the moral panic around metal music in the 1980s where the media created a hysteria around the false idea there was hidden messages in the lyrics encouraging a teen to suicide. Millennials have officially become their parents.

If this narrative generates enough media attention, what will probably happen is OpenAI will just make their next models refuse to discuss anything related to mental health at all. This is not a net good.

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1. spacechild1 ◴[27 Aug 25 13:30 UTC] No.45039423[source]▶
ChatGPT is obviously not suited for therapy. No human therapist would ever say the things that ChatGPT did in this case. Someone posted the full complaint that contains many chat excerpts. These are horrifying!