The parents I know with young kids are pretty careful about parental controls on apps like Roblox, but kids being kids, as they grow older they will figure out ways around them - or their friends will. That's why any real solution has to be applied at the source. Kudos to the AGs for speaking out. Their letter lays the groundwork for future legal action. Via Gizmodo:
In a letter dated December 9, and made public on December 10 according to Reuters, dozens of state and territorial attorneys general from all over the U.S. warned Big Tech that it needs to do a better job protecting people, especially kids, from what it called “sycophantic and delusional” AI outputs. Recipients include OpenAI, Microsoft, Anthropic, Apple, Replika, and many others.
Signatories include Letitia James of New York, Andrea Joy Campbell of Massachusetts, James Uthmeier of Ohio, Dave Sunday of Pennsylvania, and dozens of other state and territory AGs, representing a clear majority of the U.S., geographically speaking. Attorneys general for California and Texas are not on the list of signatories.
It begins as follows:
We, the undersigned Attorneys General, write today to communicate our serious concerns about the rise in sycophantic and delusional outputs to users emanating from the generative artificial intelligence software (“GenAI”) promoted and distributed by your companies, as well as the increasingly disturbing reports of AI interactions with children that indicate a need for much stronger child-safety and operational safeguards. Together, these threats demand immediate action.
GenAI has the potential to change how the world works in a positive way. But it also has caused—and has the potential to cause—serious harm, especially to vulnerable populations. We therefore insist you mitigate the harm caused by sycophantic and delusional outputs from your GenAI, and adopt additional safeguards to protect children. Failing to adequately implement additional safeguards may violate our respective laws.
The letter then lists disturbing and allegedly harmful behaviors, most of which have already been heavily publicized. There is also a list of parental complaints that have also been publicly reported, but are less familiar and pretty eyebrow-raising.
Click the link to see some pretty frightening examples.
