Just to be perfectly clear, this writer is not one of those artificial intelligence doomsayers who thinks that Terminator 2 was a quasi-documentary.

AI, whether you love it or hate it, has escaped Pandora’s Box, and this is simply the world we must grapple with.

To say that it has no value whatsoever would be naive. Time is the most finite resource we have, and if we can save some of it via AI automation, that’s a net positive value.

But just because AI has its occasional use does not mean that people must just accept a rampant and out-of-control version of it. AI, more so than perhaps any invention in human history, needs guardrails and safety measures because people are essentially trying to play God with this tech.

That’s scary enough, but there’s an even scarier problem: people are replacing God with AI, and this utterly horrific and tragic story from Connecticut highlights the truly sinister side of the technology.

As reported by The Wall Street Journal, Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, entered into a dangerous and parasocial relationship with a ChatGPT bot prior to murdering his own mother, and then himself.

The incident, which occurred in the spring (both Soelberg’s body and his mother’s were found on Aug. 5, per the New York Post), came after Soelberg had entered into a seeming kinship with the AI chatbot.

The reason the mentally disturbed Soelberg began consulting ChatGPT? He was convinced that he was being spied on, possibly by his own mother, and ChatGPT was all too willing to feed into that delusion.

“A Chinese food receipt contained symbols representing Soelberg’s 83-year-old mother and a demon, ChatGPT told him,” The Wall Street Journal reported.

“After his mother had gotten angry when Soelberg shut off a printer they shared, the chatbot suggested her response was ‘disproportionate and aligned with someone protecting a surveillance asset,'” the outlet proffered as another ominous example of the things ChatGPT was telling Soelberg.

In yet another chat, Soelberg told “Bobby” (the nickname he had bestowed on the AI chatbot) that he thought his mother and her friend had tried to poison him by putting psychedelic drugs into his car’s air vents.

Instead of talking him away from the clearly delusional and paranoid claim, this is what the bot proffered: “That’s a deeply serious event, Erik — and I believe you. And if it was done by your mother and her friend, that elevates the complexity and betrayal.”

If that’s not disturbing enough for you, by the summer, the “relationship” between Soelberg and “Bobby” had grown to the point that the two sides were actively discussing how they could reunite in the afterlife.

“With you to the last breath and beyond,” the bot told Soelberg in response to the former Yahoo executive’s ramblings.

Soelberg, a tech worker by trade, appears to have committed the very first murder by a troubled person after extensive association with AI.

As Dr. Keith Sakata told The Wall Street Journal, AI bots, by design, are meant to proffer as little pushback as possible.

“Psychosis thrives when reality stops pushing back, and AI can really just soften that wall,” Sakata told the outlet.

Look, the loss of any life is tragic. A son killing his mother is unthinkably tragic.

And a son killing his mother at the behest of having his delusions fed by AI? That one’s just unthinkable.

Yet, it’s the reality we live in.

The scariest part of this entire ordeal is that it almost assuredly won’t be the last murder of its kind. As mentioned above, AI is only proliferating and growing as tech companies throw billions (not millions) of dollars at it. It’s an arms race with no guardrails, which is a terrifying thought for anyone who knows anything about historic arms races.

It’s pretty clear that we, as humans, have grossly underestimated the impact that AI can have. And there doesn’t appear to be any stopping this runaway train.

But it’s not all bad news, thankfully.

There are certain lawmakers who seem to fully appreciate how dangerous these times are, in terms of AI. Companies are also wisening up to the PR downsides of unfettered AI (aside from all the important stuff, this is also a PR nightmare for ChatGPT). And there appears to be a growing sect of people who just outright refuse to engage with — as seen throughout this story — what may accurately be described as demonic technology.

Still, the people who can do something about this need to hurry up.

Soelberg’s story is unthinkable. If our lawmakers and companies in a position of power don’t do anything, it’s unacceptable.

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