A Belgian married father-of-two has died by suicide after talking to an AI chatbot about his global warming fears.
The man, who was in his thirties, reportedly found comfort in talking to the AI chatbot named ‘Eliza’ about his worries for the world. He had used the bot for some years, but six weeks before his death started engaging with the bot more frequently.
The chatbot’s software was created by a US Silicon Valley start-up and is powered by GPT-J technology – an open-source alternative to Open-AI’s ChatGPT.‘Without these conversations with the chatbot, my husband would still be here,’ the man’s widow told La Libre, speaking under the condition of anonymity.
The death has alerted authorities who have raised concern for a ‘serious precedent that must be taken very seriously’.