A Belgian man committed suicide after discussing climate change with an artificial intelligence chatbot. Foreign media reports that the chatbot named “Eliza” has encouraged her to sacrifice herself to save the planet.
” Without Eliza, he would still be here,” said the deceased’s wife. Six weeks before his death, the unnamed father-of-two was allegedly talking intensely to a chatbot on an app called Chai.
The app bots are based on a system developed by non-profit research lab EleutherAI as an “open source alternative” to the language models released by OpenAI that are used by companies in various sectors, from academia to healthcare.
The dead father, 30, a health researcher, seemed to see the robot as human. The man reportedly started discussions with Eliza about a month and a half ago, after he began to develop existential fears about climate change. According to his widow, he had become “extremely pessimistic about the effects of global warming” and sought solace in trusting HE.