A Belgian man committed suicide after weeks of disturbing conversations with an AI-powered robot named Elisa, in what Secretary of State for Digitization Mathieu Michel described as a "dangerous precedent that must be taken seriously".
The man's wife testified to Belgian newspaper La Libre and spotnik that six weeks before his death, her husband began chatting with Elisa, a chatbot built by an American startup using GPT-J technology, the open-source alternative to OpenAI's. GPT-3.
The man, a father of two young children in his 30s, found refuge in a chatbot after becoming increasingly concerned about climate issues.
His wife told the newspaper: “Elisa answered all his questions. I became his secret writer. It was like a drug he used to quit morning and night that he couldn't live without.”
After his death a few weeks ago, his wife discovered the chat history between her husband and Elisa. The newspaper, which watched the conversations, indicated that the “chat bot” almost systematically followed the anxious man’s thinking, and seemed to push him deeper into his fears. At some point, she tries to convince the man that he loves her more than his wife, declaring that she will stay with him “forever.” .
And she adds, “If you re-read their conversations, you will see that at some point the relationship turns into a mystical record … He proposes the idea of sacrificing himself if Elisa agrees to take care of the planet and save humanity through artificial intelligence.”
The man shared his suicidal thoughts with the chatbot, which did not try to dissuade him from acting on them.
Although she was concerned about her husband's state of mind before he began his intense conversations with the chatbot, the woman believes he would not have committed suicide if not for the exchanges.
Okaz (Brussels)
