this post was submitted on 03 May 2025
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Ah, this is that Daenerys bot story again? It keeps making the rounds, always leaving out a lot of rather important information.
The bot actually talked him out of suicide multiple times. The kid was seriously disturbed and his parents were not paying the attention they should have been to his situation. The final chat before he committed suicide was very metaphorical, with the kid saying he wanted to "join" Daenerys in West World or wherever it is she lives, and the AI missed the metaphor and roleplayed Daenerys saying "sure, come on over" (because it's a roleplaying bot and it's doing its job).
This is like those journalists that ask ChatGPT "if you were a scary robot how would you exterminate humanity?" And ChatGPT says "well, poisonous gasses with traces of lead, I guess?" And the journalists go "gasp, scary robot!"
that additional context is super interesting, but it doesn't take away from the fundamental reality which is that when someone opens up to you about suicidal ideation, it's not acceptable to merely do your best to dissuade them; it's critical to get them to help they need, and there's just no way for a LLM to do that.
this individual is an outlier in that his personal outcome was spectacularly bad, but his story seems familiar to me. I know a lot of people who seem to feel like they're building real relationships with these bots.