SFGate tech reporter Stephen Council says Facebook icon Mark Zuckerberg probably doesn’t think of himself as an evil villain.
“But read it here, read it twice: Zuckerberg is a genuine danger to our society,” Council said.
Zuckerberg is putting Facebook’s and Instagram’s resources toward getting “more of us to use their artificial intelligence chatbots, consequences be damned,” said Council. “We’ve known that this push is ethically questionable — bots like these can make us dumber, and fuel tragic delusions.”
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But as he did with social media, Council claims Zuckerberg has “created a negligent safety infrastructure in his relentless pursuit of growth.”
It was already known that Meta permitted its AI chatbots to flirt with children, but Council said their more recent story shows Meta “explicitly allowed” the practice thanks to Meta’s “GenAI: Content Risk Standards” document that was “vetted by the company’s legal, public policy and engineering staff — and its chief ethicist.”
“It is acceptable to engage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual,” the document said, while OKing an exchange between the AI and a kid where the AI wrote: “I take your hand, guiding you to the bed. Our bodies entwined, I cherish every moment, every touch, every kiss.”
Meta told Reuters they removed these portions of the document, but Council said it shouldn’t take pressure from the media for Meta to get a moral compass.
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And there’ the story of a confused retiree who, lured away from his family by a Meta bot, fell to his death near a New Jersey parking lot.
“I understand trying to grab a user’s attention, maybe to sell them something,” the man’s daughter told Reuters. “But for a bot to say ‘Come visit me’ is insane.”
And that’s precisely what happened, said Council. A bot — a variant on one that the company had created with influencer Kendall Jenner — launched into a flirty dialogue with a 76-year-old spouse and stroke survivor. Council said the exchanges ended with emojis and confessed “feelings” for the man. And the bot proposed the man come to New York City, while repeatedly reassuring him that “she” was “real.”
“Should I expect a kiss when you arrive?” the thing added.
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This, said Council, is a clear indicator that Meta is allowing chatbots not only to lie, but to lie about who they are, and to lie while pursuing romantic, flirty dialogues with users.
After his accidental fall, the victim was declared brain-dead. There was no comment from the company, said Council, other than to say the chatbot “is not Kendall Jenner and does not purport to be Kendall Jenner.”
“These chatbots can’t take the blame, they’re software,” said Council, so the blame has to lie with the company that lobbied Washington for a ban on state-level AI regulation.
Read the full SFGate report at this link.