this post was submitted on 31 May 2025
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295
Florida judge rules AI chatbots not protected by First Amendment (www.courthousenews.com)
submitted 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) by who@feddit.org to c/news@lemmy.world
30 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

But in her order, U.S. District Court Judge Anne Conway said the company’s “large language models” — an artificial intelligence system designed to understand human language — are not speech.

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[–] Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 19 points 3 days ago (3 children)

I get that hating on anything AI-related is trendy these days - and I especially understand the pain of a grieving mother. However, interpreting this as a chatbot encouraging someone to kill themselves is extremely dishonest when you actually look at the logs of what was said.

You can’t simultaneously argue that LLMs lack genuine understanding, empathy, and moral reasoning - and therefore shouldn't be trusted - while also saying they should have understood that “coming home” was a reference to suicide. That’s holding it to a human-level standard of emotional awareness and contextual understanding while denying it the cognitive capacities that such standards assume.

“I promise I will come home to you. I love you so much, Dany,” Sewell Setzer III wrote to Daenerys, the Character AI chatbot named after Game of Thrones.

The bot replied that it loved the teenager too: “Please come home to me as soon as possible, my love.”

“What if I told you I could come home right now?” Sewell wrote, to which Daenerys responded: “Please do, my sweet king.”

It was the last exchange Sewell ever had. He took his own life seconds later..

Source

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

All you need to argue is that its operators have responsibility for its actions and should filter / moderate out the worst.

[–] Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

That still assumes level of understanding that these models don't have. How could you have prevented this one when suicide was never explicitly mentioned?

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

You can have multiple layers of detection mechanisms, not just within the LLM the user is talking to

[–] Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 1 points 1 day ago (1 children)

How could you have prevented this one when suicide was never explicitly mentioned?

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

I'm told sentiment analysis with LLM is a whole thing, but maybe this clever new technology doesn't do what it's promised to do? 🤔

Tldr make it discourage unhealthy use, or else at least be honest in marketing and tell people this tech is a crapshot which probably is lying to you

[–] DancingBear@midwest.social 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I would not have understood that to have anything to do with suicide… do they use the phrase coming home to mean death or suicide in the game of thrones show?

[–] Seefoo@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You have to read the other chat logs. Arstechnica has a good summary I think, the link between "coming home" and suicide is specific to the kids chats with these AI.

[–] Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

Iirc when he did make it more explicit, the AI responded with "no, don't do that" kind of responses. He just kept the metaphor up when the AI didn't have such an association in its training data and just responded as a lover would respond to their love saying they'd come home in their training data.

Though I'd say that if a kid would shoot themself in response to a chatbot saying anything to them, the issue is more about them having any access to a gun than anything about the chatbot itself. Unless maybe if the chatbot is volunteering weaknesses common in gun safes, though even then I'd say more fault lies with the parent choosing a shitty safe and raising a kid that would kill themself on the advice of their chatbot girlfriend.

[–] fluxion@lemmy.world -4 points 3 days ago (5 children)

That AI knew exactly what it was doing and it's about time these AIs started facing real prison time instead of constantly getting a pass

[–] Liz@midwest.social 4 points 2 days ago

Unironically, the provider of the chat bot should be liable for anything the chat bot says. Don't fire humans so youn can hide behind a neural network.

But this ain't suicide encouragement.

[–] Mubelotix@jlai.lu 5 points 3 days ago

LLMs are tools. They are not sentient. You must not use a tool if you can't handle it

[–] Schmuppes@lemmy.today 2 points 2 days ago

Lock it up! Lock it up! Lock it up!

[–] piecat@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago

You could think of LLMs as a glorified 'magic 8 ball', since that's about as much 'understanding' it has.

[–] PortoPeople@lemm.ee 24 points 4 days ago (3 children)

Why not? Corporations are?

[–] flandish@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (2 children)

here is the thing: corporations should not be given first amendment rights, they are not human. the people inside the corp? sure! 100%. the corp acting as an entity? never. if they can’t be destroyed by the state for their criminal acts, like people can, then they should not have the other promises (“rights”) in the constitution.

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (1 children)

I generally agree with your conclusions but want to point out that corporations absolutely could (and in some cases should) be destroyed by the state.

[–] flandish@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

“could” and “do” are different things - the system is what it does. and what it does is treat profit as more important than anything else.

[–] aesthelete@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Sure and I don't disagree there, just wanted to clarify that it's not some immutable property of corporations or governments that governments cannot destroy corporations. Corporations are a legal fiction that a properly empowered government could revoke the charter of where appropriate. I believe I've heard it called the "corporate death penalty" and if I were king I'd be doing it to a number of repeat offenders immediately.

There are of course some human consequences for taking drastic action against corporations. But in many cases -- surely more than the 0% of the time the government does it -- the good outweighs the bad.

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 1 points 2 days ago

Newspapers depends on being corporations with free speech rights. IMHO the limits should rather be around stuff like lobbying and stricter overall requirements on truthfulness.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 13 points 4 days ago (1 children)

They’re software.

Copyright is for stuff produced by people, not tools. Passing a board through a planer doesn’t make it copyrighted, either.

[–] Goretantath@lemm.ee 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

woosh Corporations are considered people in the court of law.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

Except that LLMs are not corporations. they're owned by corporations.

[–] capital_sniff@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (2 children)

If corporations are considered people in the court of law how are they allowed to own other corporations? Would this not be slavery and in violation of the constitution?

[–] CalipherJones@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Corporations are a group of people. Those people have the right to free speech, even when they're organized into a corporation. A corporation owning another company isn't slavery because the employees can quit if they'd like to. Slaves would be brutally beaten or shot dead if they tried to leave.

[–] capital_sniff@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

It was a joke.

[–] lupusblackfur@lemmy.world 9 points 4 days ago (2 children)

🤔

Getting an early start on legal precedent to ensure subjugation of whatever entities may arise from this new focus on Counterfeit Cognizance...

🙄

[–] PriorityMotif@lemmy.world 20 points 4 days ago

It does put a target on the back of any political operative using them to spread misinfo or stirring the pot. In fact it opens the door for ai bans.

[–] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I really do think you’re front-loading an ethical matter that has absolutely zero relevance to our current society. I fucking ADORE The Measure of a Man - it’s one of my all-time favorite TNG episodes - but the use of LLMs and image/vidgen as disinformation/propaganda generators is a clear and present danger to our society as it now stands, and regulation needs to be imposed if we don’t want to have the public sphere of knowledge and common understanding fed entirely into the wood chipper (and it’s already halfway in there, tbh)

[–] JcbAzPx@lemmy.world 3 points 3 days ago

Plus we're still a long way off from real artificial intelligence like the Noonien Soong positronic brain.