Character.AI To Bar Children Under 18 From Using Its Chatbots 27
An anonymous reader quotes a report from the New York Times: Character.AI said on Wednesday that it would bar people under 18 from using its chatbots starting late next month, in a sweeping move to address concerns over child safety. The rule will take effect Nov. 25, the company said. To enforce it, Character.AI said, over the next month the company will identify which users are minors and put time limits on their use of the app. Once the measure begins, those users will not be able to converse with the company's chatbots. "We're making a very bold step to say for teen users, chatbots are not the way for entertainment, but there are much better ways to serve them," said Karandeep Anand, Character.AI's chief executive. He said the company also plans to establish an AI safety lab.
Last October, a Florida teenager took his own life after interacting for months with Character.AI chatbots imitating fictitious characters from the Game of Thrones. His mother filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging the platform's "dangerous and untested" technology led to his death.
Last October, a Florida teenager took his own life after interacting for months with Character.AI chatbots imitating fictitious characters from the Game of Thrones. His mother filed a lawsuit against the company, alleging the platform's "dangerous and untested" technology led to his death.
Lame (Score:3)
Blaming a "chat bot" for your teenagers death is ridiculous.
Poor parenting is the more likely culprit.
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Blaming "poor parenting" for some teenager’s death is ridiculous.
Wider societal pressures and technological catalysts, including toxic social media, cyber bullying and chat bots encouraging isolation and delusion, are the more likely culprit.
Re: Lame (Score:1)
Probably Russia too. It's always Russia.
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Sure. Russia does get blamed for a lot, but then again they’re complete cunts doing a lot of bad stuff. So it kind of evens out.
Joking aside, I think the salient point of my message, that we should not put all blame on parents for teenage suicide, is quite reasonable. The idea that all teenage suicide is owing to poor parenting is inaccurate and downright offensive.
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Why do you care if parents or God or the dog or whatever is to blame? We want to minimise teenagers' deaths, or anyone's deaths for that matter, even when "poor parenting" is involved (how are you even going to assess "poor parenting" nation-wide, and what you're going to do about it even if you manage to identify those cases, I don't know). Most of the time we can also blame "poor parenting" when a child dies in a swimming pool. We still want to have laws that mandate protection mechanisms against anyone d
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We want to minimise teenagers' deaths, or anyone's deaths for that matter, even when "poor parenting" is involved (how are you even going to assess "poor parenting" nation-wide, and what you're going to do about it even if you manage to identify those cases, I don't know).
The problem with this is that usually the way governments try to do it is by limiting the freedom of people who have nothing to do with teenagers (they are not parents, teachers etc and probably do not interact with teenagers at all).
We still want to have laws that mandate protection mechanisms against anyone drowning (including but not only children).
And then you get rules that forbid people from stepping one meter in the sea, because the sea today has bigger waves than a small lake.
We want fewer victims of easily avoidable deaths, that's it.
How about this - all teenagers get locked up in padded rooms and given no tools to commit suicide. It would prevent all deaths of this type? Do
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How about this - all teenagers get locked up in padded rooms and given no tools to commit suicide.
It is evidently excessive and would be struck down by courts for several reasons.
Would I need to upload a picture of government-issued ID to the company?
This concern is legitimate but transient. We're going to build better implementations as time passes and age-verification becomes more prevalent.
Last week I was asked to make a refundable 1 € payment to verify my name and that would also work for age. My bank already has a copy of my government-issued ID, there is no need to upload it to other websites, they only need is to check I'm using an adult kind of credit card or b
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Most cultures have an expression similar to “it takes a village”. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Good luck with parenthood, should the possibility ever arise. I wouldn’t wish the challenges of a child with mental illness or suicidal ideation on anyone, not even arrogant incel know-it-alls on Slashdot banging on about raisin
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Whose job is it to teach children how to deal with such issues?
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Yours — should you ever manage to get laid, and bang one out.
Yes. And my child does just fine, thank you.
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There's something even worse here. It's not only that teenage suicide would be the parent's fault (let's assume it is be the case in an hypothetical case; let's leave whether this is a rare or a common situation to another discussion). The problem is that, being (by assumption) the parents' fault, it appears to some users that the child's death would be a shoulder-shrugging acceptable death; or a fair punishment for the "poor parent" skills; not caring at all that the purpose of is to prevent unnecessary ch
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Too much responsibility is being placed on 18yos (Score:3)
Likely a legal issue (Score:1)
Their lawyer's AI-assistant probably told them they had to.
All kidding aside, with today's legal climate I'm surprised this didn't happen sooner.
Re: Likely a legal issue (Score:2)
How (Score:3)
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Give it 2 weeks of reddit exposure and the AI will be a child predator easily able to hone in on the young and vulnerable.
*note extreme use of sarcasm...
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How is the AI going to tell the age of the user?
Easily, based on a few minutes of text chat. It is the sort of pattern-matching that a small AI running on your phone could do easily.
Talk for a while on varied subjects, and the AI will know your age, sex, politics, personality, IQ, postcode and shoe size.
OR, do it Leisure Suit Larry style.
Q1) What is your favourite meal?
a) “Pizza!” or “Ice cream!”
b) “Burgers and fries” or “Sushi”
c) “Thai curry” or “Grilled salmon”
d) “Roas
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How is the AI going to tell the age of the user?
Same way the porn sites do, require signins that are verified with proof of identity up-front. For two reasons, to tie all online activity to you, and to keep scooping up data to profile you. I can see a day coming where most of the net is locked down this way, and sites that don't comply with identity verification will be vilified. The days of an open internet are passing, and those of us that were fond of it will soon be deemed predatory outlaw worshippers.
Better yet for the affected families (Score:2)
Better yet provide a free lifetime subscription to bring back the affected families' dead child as an AI chat bot personality.
Make this a trend and advertise the capability to bump shareholder profits as a measure of good will, and then slowly shift the market to accept that AI chat bot personality creates value and saves the consumer money over having a living child.
-ENOTACT
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Isn't this a Black Mirror episode?
Raises hand (Score:2)
Aren't all Chatbots/AIs under 18? Just sayin' ...
but... (Score:2)
But what about the children over 18?