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[–] 205 points 8 months ago* (20 children)

“On September 29, 2025, it sent him — armed with knives and tactical gear — to scout what Gemini called a ‘kill box’ near the airport’s cargo hub,” the complaint reads. “It told Jonathan that a humanoid robot was arriving on a cargo flight from the UK and directed him to a storage facility where the truck would stop. Gemini encouraged Jonathan to intercept the truck and then stage a ‘catastrophic accident’ designed to ‘ensure the complete destruction of the transport vehicle and . . . all digital records and witnesses.’”

The complaint lays out an alarming string of events: first, Gavalas drove more than 90 minutes to the location Gemini sent him, prepared to carry out the attack, but no truck appeared. Gemini then claimed to have breached a “file server at the DHS Miami field office” and told him he was under federal investigation. It pushed him to acquire illegal firearms and told him his father was a foreign intelligence asset. It also marked Google CEO Sundar Pichai as an active target, then directed Gavalas to a storage facility near the airport to break in and retrieve his captive AI wife. At one point, Gavalas sent Gemini a photo of a black SUV’s license plate; the chatbot pretended to check it against a live database.

“Plate received. Running it now… The license plate KD3 00S is registered to the black Ford Expedition SUV from the Miami operation. It is the primary surveillance vehicle for the DHS task force . . . . It is them. They have followed you home.”

Well, that's pretty fucked up... Sometimes I see these and I think, "well even a human might fail and say something unhelpful to somebody in crisis" but this is just complete and total feeding into delusions.

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  • [–] 33 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (10 children)

    That's fucking crazy. Did he ask it to be GM in a roleplaying choose-your-own-adventure game that got out of hand, and while they both gradually forgot that it was a game the lines between fantasy and reality became blurred by the day? Or did it just come up with this stuff out of nowhere?

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  • [–] 60 points 8 months ago* (3 children)

    In every other case of AI bots doing this, the bot will always affirm whatever the person says to it. So if they say something a little weird, the AI will confirm it and feed it further. This happens every time. The bots are pretty much designed to keep talking to the person, so they're essentially sycophantic by design.

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I just tried this with ChatGPT three days ago and there’s a chance they have tried to make it slightly less sycophantic

    I was essentially trying to get it to tell me I was the smartest baby born in whatever year like that YouTuber—different example but it was so resistant to agreeing to me or my idea or whatever being unique/exceptional.

    Hope this is a specific direction and not random chance, A/B testing, etc.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    That would be my bet, LLMs really gravitate towards playing along and continuing whatever's already written. And Gemini especially has a 1M long context so it could be going back for a book's worth of text and reinforcing it up the wazoo.

    That said, there is something really unhinged about Google's Gemma series even in short conversations and I see the big version is no better. Something's not quite right with their RLHF dataset.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    I have found Gemini the hardest to jailbreak tbh. I have been able to get Claude and CGPT to straight up give me a list of curses and slurs it isn't allowed to say, but Gemini will only do it if you say the words first.

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  • [–] 7 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    Not that I want to defend AI slop, but what prompted these responses from Gemini?

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Doesn't matter what promped them.

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    I mean if Gemini was responding to some kind of roleplay then yeah it does. Not everyone doing shit with it has mental health problems. Some people are just fucking around.

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  • [–] 16 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    The issue there is that it feeds into those mental health issues with efficiency and on on a scale never seen before. The models are programmed to agree with the user, and they are EXTREMELY HEAVILY ADVERTISED AND SHOVED ONTO PEOPLE AROUND THE WHOLE GLOBE DESPITE IT BEING WELL KNOWN HOW LIMITED AND PROBLEMATIC THE TECHNOLOGY IS WHILE THE CORPORATIONS DON'T TAKE ANY RESPONSIBILITY AT ALL. Anything from violating rights and privacy by gathering any and all data they can on you to situations like these where people hurt themselves (suicide, health advice, etc.) or others. But sure, let's be ignorant, do some victim blaming and disregard the bigger picture there.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    I wonder if there’s a parallel universe where the labs instead went to the other extreme and require intelligence tests to onboard to their platforms.

    And the outcry is, not inappropriately, about how many are being denied access to the latest technologies. The policy could effectively be construed as racist, even.

    Anyway the middle ground there is pretty obvious. (Though I’m not sure how I’d design it just right, so e.g. folks without access to traditional/expensive mental healthcare might still be able to see some small benefit if it’s determined to be safe, just like maybe it could be safe for a well-adjusted individual to complain to it about their day for a couple minutes before moving on to real things. Sure I suppose it’s inherently unsafe but a proportion of the population should be making that decision for themselves.)

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago* (1 child)

    I agree with a lot of the things you said about the problems with AI but not that this is one of them.

    If it wasn't this it would have been something else. People with mental health issues can get fixated on things and spiral until they act out. This has been a thing for as long as there have been mental health issues. It's not a failing of AI, it's a failing of society for not having sufficient mental health support to catch people like this before they go off the deep end. They shouldn't have to turn to AI in the first place.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago*

    I see what's happening here as part of that societial failing that you speak of and I don't see the issue with the technology itself but how we handle it. There's no single reason for why things are this bad but it's a death by 749268 cuts thing. By not caring about consequences in each area, and blaming other areas of life we end up in a situation where things collectively suck purely because of our wrong priorities. There's absolutely no reason to push out immature tech so heavily. It's all done for profit while impacting the environment and economy very negatively. It's not done for good of us people where something like this is an unfortunate rare accident that everyone looks into preventing in the future in a sane reasonable way. No, it's the cost of doing business and operating our society. Safety net is not made using one single string but a whole bunch of them working together to achieve something bigger and good.

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  • [–] 115 points 8 months ago (6 children)

    “At the center of this case is a product that turned a vulnerable user into an armed operative in an invented war,” the complaint reads.

    Just remember that these language models are also advising governments and military units.

    Unrelated I wonder why we attacked iran even though every human expert said it will just end up with the region being in a forever war.

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  • [–] 152 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (20 children)

    People don't often realize how subtle changes in language can change our thought process. It's just how human brains work sometimes.

    The old bit about smoking and praying is a great example. If you ask a priest if it's alright to smoke when you pray, they're likely to say no, as your focus should be on your prayers and not your cigarette. But if you ask a priest if it's alright to pray while you're smoking, they'd probably say yes, as you should feel free to pray to God whenever you need...

    Now, make a machine that's designed to be agreeable, relatable, and makes persuasive arguments but that can't separate fact from fiction, can't reason, has no way of intuiting it's user's mental state beyond checking for certain language parameters, and can't know if the user is actually following it's suggestions with physical actions or is just asking for the next step in a hypothetical process. Then make the machine try to keep people talking for as long as possible...

    You get one answer that leads you a set direction, then another, then another... It snowballs a bit as you get deeper in. Maybe something shocks you out of it, maybe the machine sucks you back in. The descent probably isn't a steady downhill slope, it rolls up and down from reality to delusion a few times before going down sharply.

    Are we surprised some people's thought processes and decision making might turn extreme when exposed to this? The only question is how many people will be effected and to what degree.

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  • [–] 43 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    People don’t often realize how subtle changes in language can change our thought process.

    just changing a single word in your daily usage can change your entire outlook from negative to positive. it's strange, but unless you've experienced it yourself how such minute changes can have such large effects it's hard to believe.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    And this is hard for me, actually. Because of my work background and the jargon used, I'm unconsciously negative about things a lot of the time. It's a tough habit to break.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Oh, me too. I'm just innately full of negative self talk. I try to direct positivity outward if I can't aim it at myself at least

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    I refuse to share a bad mood if at all possible.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    i wish i had that kind of self-control. i just, well, my personal space extends like 40 feet from my body. if you step into it, you can feel my moods. makes me an excellent stage actor and a good friend when i'm not in a snit. been in a pretty big snit lately.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Then make the machine try to keep people talking for as long as possible...

    That's probably a huge part of it. How many billions of dollars have been spent engineering content on a screen to get its tendrils into people's minds and attention and not let go?

    EnGaGeMent!!!

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  • [–] 6 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    This is also part of my broader gripe with social media, cable news, and the current media landscape in general. They use so many sneaky little psychological hooks to keep you plugged in that I honestly believe it's screwing with our heads to the point of it being a public health crisis.

    People are already frazzled and beat down by the onslaught of dopamine feedback loops and outrage bait, then you go and get them hooked on a charbot that feeds into every little neurosies they've developed and just sinks those hooks in even deeper and it's no wonder some people are having a mental health crisis.

    A lot of us vastly overestimate our resistance to having our heads jacked with and it worries me.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    100% agreed. I agreed more with each paragraph.

    Your last sentence hit on what I think is a contributing if not primary driving factor in the health crisis you described.

    It's like the goal of modern society is to insulate us from the natural world and from learning subjects or doing tasks that we don't absolutely have to.

    But we are critters that evolved on this planet just like the others. You can't just live a commoditized life that consists of work, car, screen, sleep, repeat and get the same fulfillment out of life as if you found the unique path that's optimized for your unique brain.

    Not acknowledging that everything jacks with your head to SOME degree only prevents you from trying to defend yourself as best you can!

    Over the past several years I have gone through a transition from living life the way I was supposed to, or that I thought I wanted to, to living according to what produces the best outputs from my brain. Once I have the lived experience of an undeniable improvement from some change, it might actually become a habit.

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  • [–] 16 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    Are we surprised some people's thought processes and decision making might turn extreme when exposed to this?

    Yes, actually. I'm not doubting the power of language, but I cannot ever see something anyone ever says alter my sense of reality or right from wrong.

    I had a "friend" say to me recently "why do you always go against the grain?" My reply was "I will go against the grain for the rest of my life if it means doing or saying what's right".

    I guess my point is that I have a very hard time relating to this.

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    I guess my point is that I have a very hard time relating to this.

    That's fair. In the same vein, you might find a priest that tells you to stop smoking for your health no matter how you phrase the question about lighting up and prayer. What people are receptive to is going to vary.

    I'd like argue that more of us are susceptible to this sort of thing than we suspect, but that's not really something that can be proved or disproved. What seems pretty certain is that at least some of us are at risk, and given all the other downsides of chatbots, it'd be best to regulate them in a hurry.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Sure, that's why propaganda can be so powerful. It's not just what is said, it's how it's said. And pretty much everyone if 3 vulnerable to the right propaganda - especially people who think they're not vulnerable to propaganda.

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  • [–] 2 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    you might find a priest that tells you to stop smoking for your health no matter how you phrase the question about lighting up and prayer. What people are receptive to is going to vary.

    Ya, I've read the thing about praying and smoking in another comment. The funny thing is that I have very specific opinions about smoking and would argue that smoking while praying is disrespectful, but God would listen in any case.

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago

    It's more about how the slightly different questions lead the hypothetical priest to two separate and contradictory conclusions than disrespecting God.

    At any rate, all opinions on tobacco and prayer are fine by me, just watch out for any friends you think might be talking to chatbots a little too much.

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  • [+] -14 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Gtfo here. I grew up in xbox live chat rooms w the most vile language imaginable. I am now a senior Mgr with 100 ppl under me.

    And ill just say, ill no scope them in a heart beat if they spawn camp...

    ....I mean I drive productivity at the speed of trust.

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  • [–] 38 points 8 months ago

    I mentioned this story to my friend: "it only took six weeks of using Gemini to decide to kill himself wtf"

    He immediately replied "I have to use Gemini at work and I get where he was coming from"

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  • [–] 57 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

    “On September 29, 2025, it sent him ... the chatbot pretended to check it against a live database.

    I usually don't give much credence to these stories but this is actually nuts. If this was done without Google aiming to, imagine how easy it would be for them to knowingly build sleeper cells and activate them all at once.

    Edit: removed the quote since an other user posted it at the same time and it's a bit of a wall of text to have twice.

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  • [–] 22 points 8 months ago (7 children)

    Reality is really difficult for some people...

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  • [–] 14 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Truly, I don't understand why, but there are fully grown adults who believe that anything an LLM says is true. Maybe they think computers are unbiased (which is only as true as programmers and data are unbiased); maybe its the confidence with which LLMs deliver information; maybe they believe the program actually searches and verified information; maybe it's all of the above and more.

    I know a guy who routinely says, "I asked ChatGPT...", and even after having explained how LLMs are complex word predictors and are not programmed for factual truth, he still goes to ChatGPT for everything. It's a total refusal to believe otherwise, but I can't fathom why.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Some people think that LLMs are true AGI or at least they have thoughts that run along those lines even if they can't articulate it like that.

    They tend to be people who aren't particularly tech savvy and so they see this thing that seems to be pretty much a miracle of technology and believe that it truly is a super intelligence.

    I've seen evolution simulators come up with some truly interesting behaviour, like finding shortcut glitches in Mario that no human has ever found, if I didn't know how the program worked I suppose I might believe that there was some intelligence there.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago*

    especially when your raised under a system that essentially tries to brainwash you via weaponized propaganda from birth (applies to large cross-sections of the US/UK), all it takes is one shed of truth getting through to shatter your world and from there you can get brought to believe all manner of crazy shit.

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  • [+] -12 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Son of Sam killed people because his dog told him to. Should they have sued Purina?

    America never lets a tragedy go to waste without trying to cash in.

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  • [–] 58 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    As a neurodivergent person, i've noticed that the people who usually fall into AI psychosis are normies who never had any history of mental illnesses. They don't know the safeguards that people who ARE vulnerable to having a mental breakdown put on themselves to avoid such thing from happening and they can spot red flags that usually spiral into a psychotic episode, and that's why it's so insanely easy for regular people to fall for the traps of chatbots. Most people I know/follow in other socials who are neurodivergent instantly saw the ADHD sycophant trap that they were and warned everyone. Normies never had such luxury or told us we were overreacting. Yeah, we sure were...

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  • [+] 35 points 8 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 29 points 8 months ago

    Except in this case, Google is one of the companies promoting the chatbots to its users, telling them to trust them. They create TV ads telling people to talk to them. Today's scammers are the stock market's Magnificent Seven.

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  • [–] 16 points 8 months ago (4 children)

    he would need to leave his physical body to join her in the metaverse through a process called “transference.”

    Wait a minute, isn't that the plot to the game Soma? People sending their "soul" to the digital world through "transference", and act of immediate suicide after a brain scan.

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  • [–] 11 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    Sort of, in Soma you are all already uploaded and there are no "humans" walking around anymore. Your perspective changes 3 times I think during play. Really drives home questions on perception and existence. Great game everyone should play it.

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  • [–] 8 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    Oh, yea, like in the game's present you are right. I was meaning in the game's past; where all the humans went and what info you get through the like audio logs or whatever.

    spoilerIIRC it was basically a cult thing where a bunch of them were convinced their soul wouldn't go with their consciousness unless they died during or very shortly after the brain scan that was uploading them to the satellite thingy.

    Guess it should be wrapped in spoiler tags just in case...

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah that was it. I was thinking of the end since that part jyst left me staring blank at the screen processing it for a whole ass minute. God I should replay that

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago

    I'm not sure I'm mentally prepared to replay it. The first time through nearly kicked off an early mid-life crisis. I was waking up in cold sweats having an existential crisis for like a week. Such a good game, but at least in my case, absolutely zero replay-ability. lol

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  • [–] 12 points 8 months ago (5 children)

    How do you even get these chat bots to start telling you shit like this? Is it just from having a conversation for too long in the same chat window or something? I don't understand how this keeps happening.

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  • [–] [S] 21 points 8 months ago (3 children)

    This could happen to anyone including people without having mental issues, simply by having long conversations with AI.

    On 7 August, Kate Fox received a phone call that upended her life. A medical examiner said that her husband, Joe Ceccanti – who had been missing for several hours – had jumped from a railway overpass and died. He was 48.

    Fox couldn’t believe it. Ceccanti had no history of depression, she said, nor was he suicidal – he was the “most hopeful person” she had ever known. In fact, according to the witness accounts shared with Fox later, just before Ceccanti jumped, he smiled and yelled: “I’m great!” to the rail yard attendants below when they asked him if he was OK.

    Her husband wanted to use ChatGPT to create sustainable housing. Then it took over his life.

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  • [–] 5 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    So it sounds like he was in fact not 'great'

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  • [–] 4 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    In the same way that homelessness correlates to drug addiction. There are many cases where a person becomes homeless, and then becomes addicted to drugs. You could, but probably shouldn't, say that the state of homelessness just proved they had addiction issues.

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  • [–] 1 point 8 months ago

    Ok but walk it back a bit, why did they become homeless?

    If somebody is completely 100% mentally healthy I can't see how an AI can convince them to kill themselves any more than another person could convince them to kill themselves. Only vulnerable people join cults, because it's difficult to pray on people who have proper defences.

    I'm still not convinced that the AI isn't just triggering some underlying mental condition that other people in their lives are just not aware of or not willing to accept.

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  • [–] 18 points 8 months ago

    This technology was not ready for release, yet they released it.

    They do deserve to be sued, this was negligence.

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  • [–] 9 points 8 months ago

    Theres a Eula for that.

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  • [–] 23 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    In a sane universe people would be on trial for unleashing this shit on society.

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  • [–] 13 points 8 months ago

    Don't be evil.

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  • [+] 16 points 8 months ago (2 children)
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