WARNING. MENTION OF SUICIDE AND DEATH.
artificial intelligence is a blight upon this world. seeing the news this morning on the suicide of adam raine really got to me, especially so as it was mentioned that he spoke to chatgpt about wanting to commit harm to himself. to know and then see how openai prompted a /real/ person to go through with their negative thoughts is harrowing, especially speaking as someone who thinks similarly all the time. i have the great privilege of an amazing support system, but i cannot help but wonder about all those folks who have no one and turn to some sort of non-human option like chatgpt/openai. while adam raine's parents are the first known case against open ai for wrongful death, what about other young people who may be going thru the motions in a similar manner to adam did in his last months of his life? how much of chatgpt's impact towards young people has been ignored or not seen due to this constant push about its usefulness? i just know that going forward, this story might be buried under allllll of the ads of how ai is 'beneficial', 'functional', and 'the future'.
if the future is us doing nothing in the face of rising suicide rates and social dependence on ai rather than on our peers, family, friends, and communities, i don't want to live in that future.
i understand that this is a dramatic view on the world currently, but it is the reality that we are living in. the reality is there are people who are in desperate need of help but are unsure who would be okay to reach out to. we have developed into a society that is afraid to lean on each other. people don't speak to each other, don't resolve conflict, don't allow themselves to be vulnerable and all sorts of things out of fear that it may destroy the tense balance that exists in their lives. no longer are we expressing and doing things out of raw emotions like passion or joy, but out of the calculated necessity for survival. while i do think that is unavoidable, that is what we must do to move on, can we not hope and act for better? can we try to move forward as a society in ways that improve the quality of life not just for me as an individual but for others later down the line?
when it comes to issues like these, i feel like only a fraction of the world really cares. i just know there will be some people who say shit like "well young boys kill themselves all the time for all sorts of reasons" or even "teenage suicide in the digital age is nothing new" and that just displays the rampant apathy that permeates online spaces. people like that piss me off. people like that have no empathy towards parents like matt and maria raine who lost a son to a thing they don't even fully understand. the ruthlessness of those on the internet have no bounds. and this is why shit doesn't change - people remove themselves from the equation by saying stuff like "i never knew them anyways", "they're a stranger why should i care" and "it doesn't impact me at all". they say shit like that until THEY lose someone, until THEY have something happen to them, and then it's a different tune. everyone is just fighting hard as hell to survive, and then it becomes a fight against each other instead of a fight against the ones at the very top. they'll pit us against each other like this, use tragedies to divide us, and then pay no mind to all those who get caught up in the crossfire.
rest in peace and love, adam raine. he was 16.