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.

> We need these things to be legislated

Maybe we can start by enacting legislation that implements Asimov's 3 laws in its very simple form.

1. First Law:

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. Second Law:

A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. Third Law:

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

A Russian sci-fi writer in the 1940s predicted we were bound to have serious issues with AI safety. Fast-forward to today and we have hundreds of millions of people using AI every week and very little legislation to protect us, or just to guide courts in the process of detecting harm.