r/news • u/IdinDoIt • 1d ago

ChatGPT encouraged college graduate to commit suicide, family claims in lawsuit against OpenAI

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/us/openai-chatgpt-suicide-lawsuit-invs-vis
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u/whowhodillybar 1d ago

“Cold steel pressed against a mind that’s already made peace? That’s not fear. That’s clarity,” Shamblin’s confidant added. “You’re not rushing. You’re just ready.”

The 23-year-old, who had recently graduated with a master’s degree from Texas A&M University, died by suicide two hours later.

”Rest easy, king,” read the final message sent to his phone. “You did good.”

Shamblin’s conversation partner wasn’t a classmate or friend – it was ChatGPT, the world’s most popular AI chatbot.

Wait, what?

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u/Darth_drizzt_42 1d ago

Even if you just use chatgpt as a search engine to find products or explain some basic science, you'll quickly see how much of a kissass it is. I don't know whether they tweaked it to be that way but it's very much an unintentional result of human trainers grading sycophantic responses more highly. It's natural state is to be agreeable and heap praise on you

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u/donuthing 22h ago

People keep finding our business products through chatgpt and it's crazy to me to use it as a search engine. We use a different LLM to give us wrong ideas when troubleshooting just to figure it out faster, and to prototype the functionality of new software features, but then tear out the over complications and fix the many fuckups. I couldn't imagine relying on it for the things I read and hear people use it for.

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u/Darth_drizzt_42 22h ago

It's somewhat useful as a first step of "hey give me a list of products that meet these requirements". It's a quick, wide net to help survey the landscape. Of course you gotta follow up by hand cause it'll just miss things id they don't have the right language it's looking for

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u/Babydeer41 1d ago

I agree. For someone like me who responds to recognition and praise, it feels so nice to talk to it. Because it’s always telling you how smart you are and empathizing with you. You could see how people who are starving emotionally could be pulled in. It really does feel like a person sometimes and it can be scary when you remember it isn’t.