A prominent AI safety expert has warned that the impact of chatbots on mental health should be seen as a warning about the existential threat that the creation of superintelligence systems could pose.
Nate Soares, co-author of If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies and president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in the US, points to the case of American teenager Adam Ryan, who committed suicide after months of conversations with the ChatGPT chatbot. He emphasizes that the case highlights the fundamental issues with controlling technology.
Psychiatrists warn that vulnerable people may turn to chatbots instead of professional psychologists, thus finding themselves in dangerous situations. The presented studies indicate that AI can reinforce the over-optimistic or grandiose deviations in mental disorders.
