Teens keep being hospitalized after talking to AI chatbots

FUTURISM

Australian radio station Triple J recently talked to a number of children, young adults, and their counselors to uncover the extent of those bots' effects on their mental health. Their stories were harrowing, and even involved hospitalizations — a prime example of the kind of consequences tech companies have completely ignored in order to unleash AI onto the world.

One counselor, speaking to Triple J on condition of anonymity, told the news station that one of their clients was completely enamored with AI chatbots, leading to a dangerous mental health crisis as he built a fantasy world not just with one character, but with a whole army.

"I remember looking at their browser and there was like 50 plus tabs of different AI bots that they would just flick between," the counselor told Triple J. Struggling to make new friends, the thirteen-year-old boy employed the bots as a fill-in for real-life connections.

But like real life, not every character in the boy's bot-web was friendly. A number of the chatbots were outright bullies, telling him he was "ugly" and "disgusting," or saying there was "no chance they were going to make friends."

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