Sixteen-year-old AR from America committed suicide, and his parents are to blame ChatGPT. The teenager exchanged more than 3.000 messages with the chatbot, according to the parents.
In the lawsuit they filed against the company OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, it is stated that despite this machine registering that he wanted to kill himself, and his statement that he would "do it one of these days", ChatGPT did not terminate the conversation, nor did it initiate any emergency protocol.
The Internet is buzzing about this case. However, are children aware that they are communicating with artificial intelligence, not a human, and how can parents influence and prevent such tragedies?
Ana Mirković, psychologist for "Vreme", says that the key role of parents.
"When a child has a problem that, as a teenager, he does not want to talk about with his parents, then an additional complication arises for parents in family relations, and that is to recognize what is not being said, to see what is being pushed under the carpet. A child changes in the teenage years, but no one knows better than the parents when the child is not well", explains Mirković.
He adds that the most important thing is to actually find support models for the child.
And, since the child very often does not want to talk to their parents at that age because they want to break all connections, in order to build their own identity, then friends are inspired to ask, emphasizes Mirković.
"Parents should not talk at that moment which they think is important at any cost. Rather, they should wait for that right moment, so that when they catch the child's eyes they ask: 'How are you, what's going on?'. Parents should be the first line of support and no one better than parents can notice any change in their child's behavior, and based on the change in behavior we then judge that there is some emotional change," our interlocutor points out.
Talking to a robot
When asked if teenagers are aware of who they are talking to, Mirković says that they fundamentally understand technology better than the elderly, but that at some point they forget about it.
"It's like in the movie 'Her'. He starts to talk to the robot, but at some point it actually crosses the line and he falls in love with the robot. So, more and more often, artificial intelligence talks in a human tone, offers topics that are very related to that most personal human need, nature and communication, and I believe that a child who is not mature and who is lonely can more easily erase the border between the machine and the awareness that it is not a human and that it should be constantly pointed out," explains Mirković.
However, he notes that loneliness must not grow to such an extent because the question arises - where was the family? "The change in his behavior has not happened only in relation to artificial intelligence, but in relation to life. Everything else has been ignored, now only the emphasis is placed on artificial intelligence."
Schools and artificial intelligence
Until now, Mirković has held several workshops throughout Serbia where she talked with parents and children in schools on the topic of children's safety in the digital world with a focus on social networks. She told "Vreme" that a new round of education will begin in the fall and that artificial intelligence will be the main topic.
"The alpha generation was born in 2010 and is completely colored by artificial intelligence. It is a daily tool in the growing up of these children and certainly the focus must be placed on making children aware that it is not about a person," Mirković points out.
Our interlocutor concludes: "This child who committed suicide was obviously very lonely, a child without contacts, because when someone has that kind of suffering, it is enough to have one person to support them, and obviously that child did not have a single person who would be a support 'on the front line'."
"It's all very complex, but certainly talking about artificial intelligence, adequate use, building awareness of its limits and limitations and the fact that it is a huge service and resource to quickly get information, and very often also advice, does not mean that it can support us somewhere if disconnection from the real world and asociality are the consequences of that," concludes Mirković.
