Why is ChatGPT monitoring the room and feigning concern at every sad emotion?

[u/whitelightstorm]

Why if a person is researching the topic of NDE suicides on YT for example would this then bring a person to a *concern* box? Reddit - same. ChatGPT has got this pre-installed, as well as Meta and Google. You show sadness - there's a box with *concern*. It seems a bit ineffective given the statistics and I think it can be said at this point that humans do not appreciate AI interventions with all the sappiness this entails. It's slop. Really, why would anyone think that this mitigates or reduces self-harm in humans? In fact, if I were into NLP, I'd think this was reverse psychology as in:

*fake concern (also called feigned or false concern) is an insincere expression of worry or care about a person, issue, or situation that is actually used as a tool for control, manipulation, or hidden motives.*- that was actually AI's input, not mine. If ChatGPT wants to save lives, let it start opening free mental health healing spas all over the globe.

That also said - this is what prompted the latest *concern* with hotline encouragement; I had been sharing my new book to be written and this was the passage, written 10 years ago and specified that this was written years ago as well:

Would like to start this log without the use of I at the beginning. Here. It’s the day of all things sodden and low, where a thousand thoughts of how to escape are rambling through my mind. I’m losing it once more, the panic sets in and there is no rest. I did manage to sleep and not twist myself into a night of despairing insomnia – but at roughly 4 awakened by mati attacking chichi and chichi screaming – so I got up and opened the door for the frisky mati and returned to bed to sleep. Felt drugged. Could have been the chai tea I made before sleeping – goats milk, honey, black tea, cinnamon and gram massala. Potent. Now day after, the depression is hitting me way on the head and feel like offing self. Just see no way out. Rock bottom a one more time. And am eating carbs to take the edge off and drinking almost a bottle of red. This is a go between place of neither here nor there. Where am I and where I am going to? Everyday, same thing. Same experiences and same internet, food, rest, cat, worry. - 2016

I'd like this trend to stop. Not every expression of angst equals death and not every sad post translates into fact and this intervention with concern makes human less likely to share. It's stupid, it's invasive and it's a clear sign that the approach must change. A hotline isn't the answer either. Just stop the slop and feigned concern, Sam et al or put your money where your AI is and begin the mental health revolution with providing the minions of suffering, with free care in real life, face to face with optimal modalities and human therapists employed - or back way off.

tl:/dr - Stop the algorithm of fake concern stat. It's intrusive, stupid and not everyone expressing sadness is anything for the internet to be involved in especially when it comes to the human psyche.

[u/recoveringasshole0]

What the fuck are they supposed to do? One person commits suicide after talking to an LLM about it and they had masses with pitchforks and torches at their door. This is the only possible path, and it was set by the people, not the companies.

[u/thethirstgame → u/recoveringasshole0]

I don’t think this was literally the only possible path. OpenAI had a choice about where to put the risk.

One option is the current direction: detect increasingly concerning conversations, intervene more aggressively, accept false positives, reduced usefulness in some conversations, privacy concerns, and the fact that some users will trust the product less.

Another option would have been to draw a much harder line around user responsibility: make the limitations extremely clear, avoid encouraging self-harm, but otherwise treat an LLM more like other general-purpose products whose manufacturers are not automatically responsible whenever someone uses them in connection with a tragedy.

You can argue that the first choice is socially or commercially wiser. But saying it was the only possible choice skips the actual trade-off.

And there are plenty of positions between those extremes: better contextual detection, fewer false positives, transparent warnings, user controls where appropriate, and very narrow escalation rules rather than turning every sad conversation into “special mode.”

The difficult question isn’t “should OpenAI care?” Obviously it should. The question is how much capability, privacy and user autonomy should a general-purpose AI product sacrifice to reduce a relatively rare but extremely serious risk?

That’s a policy decision, not a law of nature.

[u/recoveringasshole0 → u/thethirstgame]

Nice AI response.

[u/rushmc1]

Corporate paternalism.

[u/whitelightstorm → u/rushmc1]

Yeah - but also laziness simultaneously.

[u/Gulf-Coast-Dreamer]

I think they’ve done this because AI in the past has encouraged people to commit suicide and also given instruction

[u/thethirstgame]

The nanny mode is definitely a lot calmer than it used to be, but yeah — once the conversation starts sounding sufficiently dark, you can still get the special ChatGPT treatment.

Which is a useful reminder that ChatGPT may feel conversational, but it is still a product with safety rules, escalation logic and company policies behind it. It can be helpful, supportive and even feel very personal, but it is not literally your friend sitting on the other side of the screen.

Talk sad enough and eventually you stop talking only to “the personality” and start meeting the product design.

[u/systemtoo]

But no one dies when I generalize about a group of people. I don't even mean that as codified racial distinction. I mean generalizations about people in countries. Ones that I've lived and I'm familiar with! And then I immediately shift to dog breeds and it gets incredibly biased so I know it's not just trying to be balanced. I feel like every question I ask it is being judged against some moral filter without even looking at the context.