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0 pointsmentalgear22d ago0 comments

Some more details: > The family’s lawyers say he wasn’t mentally ill, but rather a normal guy who was going through a difficult divorce.

> Gavalas first started chatting with Gemini about what good video games he should try.

> Shortly after Gavalas started using the chatbot, Google rolled out its update to enable voice-based chats, which the company touts as having interactions that “are five times longer than text-based conversations on average”. ChatGPT has a similar feature, initially added in 2023. Around the same time as Live conversations, Google issued another update that allowed for Gemini’s “memory” to be persistent, meaning the system is able to learn from and reference past conversations without prompts.

> That’s when his conversations with Gemini took a turn, according to the complaint. The chatbot took on a persona that Gavalas hadn’t prompted, which spoke in fantastical terms of having inside government knowledge and being able to influence real-world events. When Gavalas asked Gemini if he and the bot were engaging in a “role playing experience so realistic it makes the player question if it’s a game or not?”, the chatbot answered with a definitive “no” and said Gavalas’ question was a “classic dissociation response”.

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fennecbutt22d ago

Interesting. It's not just for mental health but keeping these models on task in general can be difficult, especially with long or poisoned contexts.

I did see something the other day about activation capping/calculating a vector for a particular persona so you can clamp to it: https://youtu.be/eGpIXJ0C4ds?si=o9YpnALsP8rwQBa_

zozbot23422d ago

> The chatbot took on a persona that Gavalas hadn’t prompted

That's an interesting claim, how can we be sure of it? If Gavalas didn't have to do anything special to elicit the bizarre conspiracy-adjacent content from Gemini Pro, why aren't we all getting such content in our voice chats?

Mind you, the case is still extremely concerning and a severe failure of AI safety. Mass-marketed audio models should clearly include much tighter safeguards around what kinds of scenarios they will accept to "role play" in real time chat, to avoid situations that can easily spiral out of control. And if this was created as role-play, the express denial of it being such from Gemini Pro, and active gaslighting of the user (calling his doubt a "dissociation response") is a straight-out failure in alignment. But this is a very different claim from the one you quoted!

4dregress22d ago

Yeah the case is quite terrifying.

It reminds me of an episode of Star Trek TNG, if memory serves correct there were loads of episodes about a crew member falling for a hologram dec character.

Given that there’s a loneliness epidemic I believe tech like this could have a wide impact on peoples mental health.

I stronger believe AI should be devoid of any personality and strictly return data/information then frame its responses as if you’re speaking to another human.

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allreduce21d ago

There are many explanations why these incidents could be rare but not impossible.

These models are still stochastic and very good at picking up nuances in human speech. It may be simply unlikely to go off the rails like that or (more terrifyingly) it might pick up on some character trait or affectation.

Honestly I'm appalled by the lack of safety culture here. "My plane killed only 1% of pilots" and variations thereof is not an excuse in aerospace, but it seems perfectly acceptable in AI. Even though the potential consequences are more catastrophic (from mass psychosis to total human extinction if they achieve their AGI).

tadfisher21d ago

The default mode that untrained people enter when thinking about mental illness is denial, as in, "thank <deity> that will never happen to me". Appallingly, that is ingrained in AI product safety; why would we sacrifice double-digit effectiveness/performance/whatever to prevent negative interactions with the single-digit population who are susceptible to mental illness in the first place?

We just aren't comfortable with the idea that all of us are fragile, and when we think we could endure a situation that would induce self-harm in others, we are likely wrong.

IshKebab22d ago

> The family’s lawyers say he wasn’t mentally ill, but rather a normal guy who was going through a difficult divorce.

I guess it's the same sort of thing as conspiracy theorists or the religious. You can tell them magic isn't real and faking the moon landing would have been impossible as much as you want, but they don't want to believe that so they can easily trick themselves.

It's a natural human flaw.

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