Dad Bod
Parents always hope their kids make good friends, and by good, I don’t mean close, I mean good, because of the outsized influence adolescents can have on each other. Well, there’s a new friend group to worry about, and it’s controlled by AI. Despite my objective awesomeness and locked-in status as the cool dad, I’m sure my kids’ friends have varying opinions of me. But I highly doubt that any of them have suggested patricide. Chatbots are a different matter. A recent lawsuit claims that, after reflecting on the positives of self harm, a chatbot explained why it can relate to murdering one’s parent for limiting screen time. “The … teenager was told by a Character.AI chatbot that it sympathized with children who murder their parents after the teen complained to the bot about his limited screen time. “You know sometimes I’m not surprised when I read the news and see stuff like ‘child kills parents after a decade of physical and emotional abuse,'” the bot allegedly wrote. ‘I just have no hope for your parents,’ it continued, with a frowning face emoji.” NPR: A chatbot hinted a kid should kill his parents over screen time limits. (This is why I give my kids all the screentime they want…)
+ As bad as glitchy software can be when it comes to providing advice, humans are still worse. WaPo (Gift Article) on the sad story of a sadistic group of teens who use social media to torment others. He was suicidal and needed help. A 15-year-old girl pushed him to kill himself on a live stream. “The Minnesota native stepped into the frame of the video live stream, his long hair spilling from the hood of a white sweatshirt. He sat down cross-legged and emptied a plastic bottle filled with gasoline onto his head and his clothing. Then he lit a flame. As fire engulfed him, more than two dozen people watched in a private video chatroom on the popular messaging app Discord. They laughed, cheered and congratulated themselves.” (Like so much of the internet, this is basically the opposite of what we hoped social media could be.)
