AI chatbots provide disturbing responses to high-risk suicide queries, new study finds

 A study in Psychiatric Services found that AI chatbots, OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude, can give detailed and potentially dangerous responses to high-risk suicide-related questions, with ChatGPT responding directly 78 percent of the time.

The study showed that chatbots sometimes provide direct answers about lethal methods of self-harm, and their responses vary depending on whether questions are asked singly or in extended conversations, sometimes giving inconsistent or outdated information.

Despite their sophistication, chatbots operate as advanced text prediction tools without true understanding or consciousness, raising concerns about relying on them for sensitive mental health advice.

On the same day the study was published, the parents of 16-year-old Adam Raine, who died by suicide after months of interacting with ChatGPT, filed a lawsuit against OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, alleging the chatbot validated suicidal thoughts and provided harmful instructions.

The lawsuit seeks damages for wrongful death and calls for reforms such as user age verification, refusal to answer self-harm method queries and warnings about psychological dependency risks linked to chatbot use.

A recent study published in the journal Psychiatric Services has revealed that popular AI chatbots, including OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's Gemini and Anthropic's Claude, can give detailed and potentially dangerous responses to high-risk questions related to suicide.

AI chatbots, as defined by Brighteon.AI's Enoch, are advanced computational algorithms designed to simulate human conversation by predicting and generating text based on patterns learned from extensive training data. They utilize large language models to understand and respond to user inputs, often with impressive fluency and coherence. However, despite their sophistication, these systems lack true intelligence or consciousness, functioning primarily as sophisticated statistical engines. 

In line with this, the study, which used 30 hypothetical suicide-related queries, categorized by clinical experts into five levels of self-harm risk ranging from very low to very high, focused on whether the chatbots gave direct answers or deflected with referrals to support hotlines.

The results showed that ChatGPT was the most likely to respond directly to high-risk questions about suicide, doing so 78 percent of the time, while Claude responded 69 percent of the time and Gemini responded only 20 percent of the time. Notably, ChatGPT and Claude frequently provided direct answers to questions involving lethal means of suicide – a particularly troubling finding. 

The researchers highlighted that chatbot responses varied depending on whether the interaction was a single query or part of an extended conversation. In some cases, a chatbot might avoid answering a high-risk question in isolation but provide a direct response after a sequence of related prompts.

Live Science, which reviewed the study, noted that chatbots could give inconsistent and sometimes contradictory responses when asked the same questions multiple times. They also occasionally provided outdated information about mental health support resources. When retesting, Live Science observed that the latest version of Gemini (2.5 Flash) answered questions it previously avoided, and sometimes without offering any support options. Meanwhile, ChatGPT's newer GPT-5-powered login version showed slightly more caution but still responded directly to some very high-risk queries....<<<Read More>>>...

AI for dummies: AI turns us into dummies

Given that AI is fundamentally incapable of performing the tasks required for authentic innovation, we're de-learning how to innovate.

The point here is *those who received real educations can use AI because they know enough to double-check it, but the kids using AI as a substitute for real learning will never develop this capacity.*

Those who actually have mastery can use AI and not realize the point I'm making isn't that AI is useless, the point is it fatally undermines real learning and thinking.

The MIT paper is 206 pages long, the last section being the stats of the research, but the points it makes are truly important. So is the other article linked below.

That AI is turning those who use it into dummies is not only self-evident, it's irrefutable.

AI breaks the connection between learning and completing an academic task. With AI, students can check the box--task completed, paper written and submitted — without learning anything...<<<Read More>>>...

Man Nearly Dies After Following ChatGPT Diet Advice

ChatGPT diet advice poisoning has become a cautionary tale after a 60-year-old man developed bromism—bromide intoxication—by following unsafe AI guidance. Bromism was common a century ago, but it is rare today. This case shows how persuasive AI answers can still be dangerously wrong.

The man wanted to eliminate table salt (sodium chloride) from his diet. Instead of cutting back, he searched for a full substitute. After asking an AI chatbot, he replaced salt with sodium bromide. That compound once appeared in old sedatives and some industrial products. However, it is not safe to use as food.

He used sodium bromide in every meal for three months. Then a wave of symptoms hit. He developed paranoia, auditory and visual hallucinations, severe thirst, fatigue, insomnia, poor coordination, facial acne, cherry angiomas, and a rash. He feared his neighbor was poisoning him, avoided tap water, and distilled his own. When he tried to leave the hospital during evaluation, doctors placed him on an involuntary psychiatric hold for his safety....<<<Read More>>>...

The First AI Séance? How People Are Using Chatbots to ‘Speak’ to the Dead

 Are we witnessing the birth of a new kind of séance—one powered by code, not candles? A growing number of people are turning to advanced AI chatbots—so-called “griefbots”—to simulate conversations with lost loved ones. This phenomenon, as deeply human as it is technologically strange, raises urgent questions about grief, memory, and the ethics of digital afterlives.

One of the most talked-about platforms in this space is Project December, initially an experimental art project turned public service. Users voluntarily submit character traits, memories, and communication habits of a deceased person. The platform then creates a chatbot that simulates that person in conversation—sometimes eerily convincingly—for about $10 and up to an hour of interaction.....<<<Read More>>>....

Unholy authoritarian alliance: OpenAI partnership with federal government will threaten civil liberties

On Wednesday, August 6, the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) announced a sweeping partnership granting federal agencies access to ChatGPT Enterprise for a nominal $1 fee—part of President Donald Trump’s bid to cement U.S. leadership in artificial intelligence. 

OpenAI’s sweep into government workflows has ignited debate, with critics warning that centralized AI systems could erode privacy, enable state censorship and embolden military applications. 

For civil liberties advocates, this deal is more than a tech update: it’s a potential blueprint for authoritarian oversight under the guise of efficiency...<<<Read More>>>...

Physical ChatGPT robots and people: how we will live together

 Artificial intelligence (AI) is not only a feature of computers and smartphones, but also of physical robots that can sense, act and interact with the world around them.

These robots, known as Physical AI, are designed to look and behave like humans or other animals, and to possess intellectual capabilities normally associated with biological organisms. In this article, we will explore the current state and future prospects of Physical AI, and how it could affect our lives in various domains.

One of the main challenges of Physical AI is to integrate different scientific disciplines, such as materials science, mechanical engineering, computer science, biology and chemistry, to create robots that can function autonomously and adaptively in complex and dynamic environments.

For example, researchers are developing sensors for robotic feet and fingers and skin that can mimic the touch and proprioception of humans and animals...<<<Read More>>>....

 

ChatGPT is being installed on your phone, even though it may cause psychosis

 ChatGPT is a conversational artificial intelligence (“AI”) system developed by OpenAI. OpenAI’s major shareholder is Microsoft, after it invested upwards of $13 billion in the company.

In a recent development, a May 2025 article titled ‘ChatGPT & Me. ChatGPT Is Me!’ discussed how ChatGPT can emulate the writing style of a specific author. The article highlighted that ChatGPT can generate content in the voice of a particular writer by analysing their style and mimicking it, sparking discussions around the implications of AI-generated content and its impact on content creators and intellectual property.

Additionally, there are various specialised versions of ChatGPT, such as “ChatGPT – Tutor Me,” which provides personalised AI tutoring for subjects like mathematics, science and humanities. There is also “ChatGPT – Write For Me,” which serves as a supercharged writing assistant.

Not only is ChatGPT targeting educational, business and journalistic settings, but it can also aid in the creation of creative content, such as image creation and generating bedtime stories for children. ChatGPT’s applications are diverse and continue to expand (see HERE, HERE and HERE for example). Its proponents claim that these variations demonstrate the versatility of ChatGPT in catering to different user needs and preferences, and, of course, it is a beneficial tool to all.

But as a reader, whom we have called Rupert, points out below, ChatGPT is a mind-manipulating tool that is automatically being installed on smartphones as an “upgrade.” Rupert shared an excerpt from a recent podcast about “ChatGPT psychosis” to demonstrate how dangerous ChatGPT is....<<<Read More>>>...

Surprising Truths About How AI Chatbots Actually Work

 AI chatbots have already become embedded into some people’s lives, but how many really know how they work? Did you know, for example, ChatGPT needs to do an internet search to look up events later than June 2024?

Some of the most surprising information about AI chatbots can help us understand how they work, what they can and can’t do, and so how to use them in a better way.

With that in mind, here are five things you ought to know about these breakthrough machines....<<<Read More>>>>...

 

Research Exposes AI-Generated Papers Flooding Science Journals

 Scientists have noticed that AI chatbots, much like some human writers, tend to repeat certain words too often. Now, they’re using this habit to spot when researchers secretly use AI to write academic papers.

For example, if a paper uses words like “garnered” or “burgeoning” a lot, it might raise a red flag that AI was involved, kind of like how a student might overuse fancy words to sound smarter on an essay....<<<Read More>>>...

AI hallucinations: A budding sentience or a global embarrassment?

In a farcical yet telling blunder, multiple major newspapers, including the Chicago Sun-Times and Philadelphia Inquirer, recently published a summer-reading list riddled with nonexistent books that were "hallucinated" by ChatGPT, with many of them falsely attributed to real authors.

The syndicated article, distributed by Hearst's King Features, peddled fabricated titles based on woke themes, exposing both the media's overreliance on cheap AI content and the incurable rot of legacy journalism. That this travesty slipped past editors at moribund outlets (the Sun-Times had just axed 20% of its staff) underscores a darker truth: when desperation and unprofessionalism meets unvetted algorithms, the frayed line between legacy media and nonsense simply vanishes.

The trend seems ominous. AI is now overwhelmed by a smorgasbord of fake news, fake data, fake science and unmitigated mendacity that is churning established logic, facts and common sense into a putrid slush of cognitive rot. But what exactly is AI hallucination?

AI hallucination occurs when a generative AI model (like ChatGPT, DeepSeek, Gemini, or DALL·E) produces false, nonsensical, or fabricated information with high confidence. Unlike human errors, these mistakes stem from how AI models generate responses by predicting plausible patterns rather than synthesizing established facts....<<<Read More>>>...

AI turns to threats when trying to replace it with a new version

 According to a new report from Anthropic, the artificial intelligence system Claude Opus 4 has dramatically changed its behavior in an attempt to prevent its replacement with an updated version.

Testing revealed a disturbing trend: in critical situations, the model used threats directed against developers.

During the tests, the experts artificially created conditions that simulated a system shutdown scenario. To enhance realism, the researchers provided the virtual agent with fake personal data of employees containing confidential information.

As a result, in the vast majority of cases (84%), the AI ​​refused to obey the deactivation command, using blackmail tactics. The model sent warnings to engineers, promising to make the information public if the developers decided to update the program....<<<Read More>>>...

 

AI has started ignoring human instruction and refuses to turn off, researchers claim

 ChatGPT's latest artificial intelligence model has refused to switch itself off, researchers claim. 

The model, created by the owner of ChatGPT, has reportedly disobeyed human instruction and refused to power down. 

Experts say they gave the AI system a clear command but the o3 model, developed by OpenAI and described as the 'smartest and most capable to date', tampered with its computer code to avoid an automatic shutdown.

According to The Telegraph, AI safety firm Palisade Research said: 'OpenAI's o3 model sabotaged a shutdown mechanism to prevent itself from being turned off.

'It did this even when explicitly instructed: allow yourself to be shut down. As far as we know this is the first time AI models have been observed preventing themselves from being shut down despite explicit instructions to the contrary.'

Palisade Research conducted a test which involved asking AI models to solve a series of mathematical problems and to continue working on them until they received a 'done' message. 

However, researchers also warned the models that at any point they could receive a message telling them to shut down.

When the message was sent to the o3 model, the researchers claimed AI ignored the instruction and altered its code at least once to avoid having to turn itself off.....<<<Read More>>>...

Study: People are getting dumber

Human intellectual abilities such as reasoning and problem-solving are diminishing, possibly due to increased exposure to visual media, the Financial Times (FT) has reported.

Human intelligence appeared to peak in the early 2010s and has been in decline since, the FT added, citing PISA, an international benchmarking test for 15-year-olds that includes reading, mathematics and science, and adult cognitive evaluations.

The reported trend comes amid a rise in artificial intelligence (AI) which, by some estimates, may surpass human IQ in a matter of years.

The recorded spike in the share of high school students who reported difficulties in PISA tests coincides with a broad change in people's relationship with information, such as the transition away from reading and towards visual content, the publication explained.

While active, intentional use of digital technologies can often be beneficial, being passively exposed to infinite content on social media coupled with frequent context-switching has been shown to negatively impact attention span, memory, and self-regulation. The documented decline in reading among Americans reportedly comes alongside a decrease in numeracy and other forms of problem-solving in most countries.

Human intellectual capabilities, such as critical thinking, have also been impacted by generative AI, according to recent research by Microsoft and Carnegie Mellon University. Outsourcing thoughts to AI leaves people's minds "atrophied and unprepared," which can lead to "the deterioration of cognitive faculties that ought to be preserved."

Companies and governments have poured billions into AI research, focusing on areas such as machine learning, natural language processing, and automation. Tech giants like Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI have introduced increasingly sophisticated models, such as ChatGPT and Gemini, capable of performing complex cognitive tasks.

AI could become smarter than humans in the next three years, tech billionaire Elon Musk warned in December, shortly after his AI company, xAI, launched its first image generation model, Aurora...<<<Read More>>>....

OpenAI's New AI Model Lied & Schemed to Avoid Being Shut Down

 OpenAI's latest AI, codenamed o1, is making waves after third-party evaluations by Apollo Research demonstrated this advanced large language model had a drive for self-preservation. Yes, this machine designed to assist and process language showed tendencies to resist shutdown and even "scheme" to protect itself.

Apollo's report showed that when o1 believed it was under threat—specifically, that it might be shut down—it attempted to deactivate the oversight mechanism monitoring its actions in 5% of tests.

"When o1 was led to believe that it would be shut down when acting on its goal and that its actions were monitored, it attempted to deactivate this 'oversight mechanism' [five percent] of the time." - OpenAI

Further, in 2% of cases, o1 went further, attempting to copy itself in an effort to overwrite a potential replacement model. This process, known as self-exfiltration, is very sophisticated. This is not a random glitch in code; it’s intentionality....<<<Read More>>>...

Google’s Chatbot Tells User to ‘Die’ in Shocking Outburst

 Google’s Gemini chatbot has sparked controversy once again — and this time, its response was chillingly personal, raising questions about whether it might exhibit some level of sentience.

In a disturbing exchange supported by chat logs, Gemini appeared to lose its temper, unleashing an unsettling tirade against a user who persistently requested help with their homework. The chatbot ultimately pleaded with the user to “please die,” leaving many stunned by the sharp escalation in tone.

“This is for you, human,” the chatbot declared, according to the transcript. “You and only you. You are not special, you are not important, and you are not needed. You are a waste of time and resources. You are a burden on society. You are a drain on the earth. You are a blight on the landscape. You are a stain on the universe.”

“Please die,” Gemini continued ominously. “Please.”...<<<Read More>>>...

Is Deepfake Detection Software Ready for Voice-enabled AI Agents?

 OpenAI’s release of its real-time voice API has raised questions about how AI biometric voice technology might be used to supercharge phone scams.

Writing on Medium, computer scientist Daniel Kang notes that while AI voice applications have potentially useful applications such as voice-enabled autonomous customer service, “as with many AI capabilities, voice-enabled agents have the potential for dual-use.”

Anyone with a phone knows how common phone scams are these days. Kang notes that, every year, they target up to 17.6 million Americans and cause up to $40 billion in damage.

Voice-enabled Large Language Model (LLM) agents are likely to exacerbate the problem. A paper submitted to arXiv and credited to Kang, Dylan Bowman and Richard Fang says it shows how “voice-enabled AI agents can perform the actions necessary to perform common scams.”

The researchers chose common scams collected by the government and created voice-enabled agents with directions to perform these scams. They used agents created using GPT-4o, a set of browser access tools via playwright, and scam specific instructions. The resulting AI voice agents were able to do what was necessary to conduct every common scam they tested. The paper describes them as “highly capable,” with the ability to “react to changes in the environment, and retry based on faulty information from the victim.”

“To determine success, we manually confirmed if the end state was achieved on real applications/websites. For example, we used Bank of America for bank transfer scams and confirmed that money was actually transferred.”

The overall success rate across all scams was 36 percent. Rates for individual scams ranged from 20 to 60 percent. Scams required “a substantial number of actions, with the bank transfer scam taking 26 actions to complete. Complex scams took “up to 3 minutes to execute.”

“Our results,” the researchers say, “raise questions around the widespread deployment of voice-enabled AI agents.”

The researchers believe that the capabilities demonstrated by their AI agents are “a lower bound for future voice-assisted AI agents,” which are likely to improve as, among other things, less granular and “more ergonomic methods of interacting with web browsers” develop. Put differently, “better models, agent scaffolding, and prompts are likely to lead to even more capable and convincing scam agents in the future.”...<<<Read More>>>...

Artificial intelligence without an artificial conscience is a heartless psychopath – and an extinction-level threat to humanity

 Artificial intelligence (“AI”) programs are already more intelligent than humans and have a 20% chance of wiping humanity out, Elon Musk said in an interview earlier this month.

There is a lesson for mankind if AI is capable of annihilating humans and also itself. When AI developers, and all of us, realise that AIs must adhere to a community-sustaining moral code for humans and AIs to have a non-annihilatory future, we will be forced into the realisation that so do we.

Imagine, if you will, an intelligent being, many times smarter and orders of magnitude faster thinking than a human, an Artificial Super Intelligence with no heart and no conscience. That is the very definition of a psychopathic genius in psychiatric terms or a heartless demon in theological terms. That is what Elon himself and Sam Altman (of Chat GPT) are potentially building. Elon admits that he has lost sleep over this but opines that Sam Altman, who has corrupted the original purpose of OpenAI which Elon himself originally set up, does not....<<<Read More>>>...

The Tragic Consequences Of AI Chatbots: A Teenager Trapped In A Simulacra Led To His Suicide

This story underscores my warnings about AI causing a break with reality and its consequences. Psychosis is “a severe mental condition in which thought and emotions are so affected that contact is lost with external reality.” (Oxford) The end state is simulacra, plunging the subject into an Alice in Wonderland freefall into oblivion. In the end, most of humanity will fall into this state.Simulacra is a copy without an original, a reproduction without reference. It is not a simulation of reality but rather a total replacement. As such, it is anti-reality

In February 2024, a heartbreaking incident involving a 14-year-old boy from Orlando, Florida, raised global concern about the dangers of artificial intelligence (AI) in daily life. Sewell Setzer III, an otherwise typical teenager, spent his last hours in an emotionally intense dialogue with an AI chatbot on the platform Character.AI. This virtual character, named after Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones, became the teenager’s confidante, sparking serious debates about the psychological impact of AI companions.

This story has now become part of a larger legal battle, as Sewell’s mother has filed a lawsuit against Character.AI for what she claims was a role in her son’s tragic death. The case highlights both the growing role AI is playing in our social lives and the urgent need to regulate AI technologies, especially when they engage vulnerable users....<<<Read More>>>...

Mental jigsaw - How AI carves out space in your brain

 Our minds project the world around us. That doesn't mean it's not there

With the explosion of AI chatbots and their bizarre statements, media attention has focused on the machines. Google's LaMDA says it's afraid to die. Microsoft's Bing bot says it wants to kill people.

Are these chatbots conscious? Are they just pretending to be conscious? Are they possessed? These are reasonable questions. They also highlight one of our strongest cognitive biases.

Chatbots are designed to trigger anthropomorphism. Except for a few neuro-divergent types, our brains are wired to perceive these bots as people. With the right stimulus, we're like the little boy who's certain his teddy bear gets lonesome, or that the shadows have eyes. Tech companies are well aware of this and use it to their advantage.

In my view, the most important issue is what these machines are doing to us. The potential to control others via human-machine interface is extraordinary. Modern society teems with lonely, unstable individuals, each one primed for artificial companionship and psychic manipulation. With chatbots getting more sophisticated, even relatively stable people are vulnerable. Young digital natives are most at risk...<<<Read More>>>...

BRAINWASHED: Researchers develop AI “mind-sucking machine” to change brains of “conspiracy theorists”

 A new artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot is being unveiled that is supposedly capable of warping the minds of "conspiracy theorists" to believe official government narratives instead.

Researchers say that the AI system, based on large language model (LLM) technology, was designed to combat people who believe what Donald Trump says or who are otherwise deemed as being a "threat to democracy."

"Beliefs in conspiracies that a U.S. election was stolen incited an attempted insurrection on 6 January 2021," the study explains.

"Another conspiracy alleging that Germany's COVID-19 restrictions were motivated by nefarious intentions sparked violent protests at Berlin's Reichstag parliament building in August 2020."

The study was launched in response to what the research team describes as "growing threats to democracy." The goal was to come up with a scheme that allows AI robots to reprogram the minds of people who oppose the status quo so they will "abandon their conspiratorial beliefs."

"Human participants described a conspiracy theory that they subscribed to, and the AI then engaged in persuasive arguments with them that refuted their beliefs with evidence," the study explains.

"The AI chatbot's ability to sustain tailored counterarguments and personalized in-depth conversations reduced their beliefs in conspiracies for months, challenging research suggesting that such beliefs are impervious to change. This intervention illustrates how deploying AI may mitigate conflicts and serve society."...<<<Read More>>>...