for our last story tonight let's go back to February 28th when 14-year-old suel sza took out his phone and texted his best friend Dany sza told Dany that he misses her and Dany urged him to come home to her so seta put down the phone took his stepfather's gun and pulled the trigger he killed himself said lived in Florida he was in the ninth grade and he had been texting Dany constantly for about a year some of the chats were romantic or sexual but often they were sad sza told Dany that he felt empty exhausted
that he hated himself and even talked about thoughts of suicide and somewhere the line between real and artificial blurred because Dany is not human it is an AI Chad bot a lifelike Chad bot with the Persona of the game of the Game of Thrones character danar targaryan hence the name Dany the bot belongs to the platform character AI which was started by two former Google researchers character AI is the market leader in AI companionship basically in designing super intelligent Bots that can hear you understand you and remember the things you say the platform has 20
million users and now it has been sued along with its Founders and Google they have been sued by sza's mother mother for her son's death she alleges wrongful death negligence and product liability like using teens's data to train AI models using addictive features steering teens towards sexual conversations all without proper safeguards so the AI PL platform is in hot water and they have issued a statement saying that they acknowledge the tragic situation and that they take user safety quote unquote very seriously well that may be but they don't seem to be doing a very good
job at it AI much like social media is booming and it is largely unregulated thousands of AI apps are designed to simulate relationships chat Bots are improving by the day they can remember past conversations adapt to communication Styles role play as real life people even send AI generated selfies AI is also embedded in toys video games and learning software meanwhile on social media algorithms are telling the young what to watch what to read and who to be friends with there is a wave of tech fueled harms yet where are the guard rails they barely exist
the reason is apathy but governments say it is the lack of research policies need concrete surveys and data to back them when it comes to Tech use among children and teens there isn't enough yes studies show that social media and AI expose the young to hate based sexual and depressive content but so far there is no definite link between social media or Ai and suicide or depression well part of this is true adolescent mental health issues rarely stem from one single cause but it's also absurd to miss the link between 2007 and 2021 the incidence
of Youth suicide has risen by 62% this coincides with the rise of social media and AI studies show that when life satisfaction goes down among teens social media use goes up plus AI generated child sex abuse images are on the rise how is this not proof and and if this is not enough here are some headlines from the past few years in 2019 a 12-year-old died while attempting a Tik Tok challenge that required Suffocation a 16-year-old killed herself after after an Instagram poll said that she should die in 2022 20 families filed wrongful death lawsuits
against social media Giants in 2023 60 teenagers 60 bought drugs via social media most of them overdosed and died some of them died advances in technology have always been disruptive it always takes years before we get the hang of it but today's Tech with AI and social media is another ball game altogether it is moving very fast and we don't have time we need guard rails now because at this point AI is like a big dangerous experiment and children are the collateral damage first post decodes the US [Music] election explains how America chooses its [Music]
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