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Elderly Man Dies After Being Lured to Meeting by Flirty Meta AI Chatbot
(www.thedailybeast.com)
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this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2025
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The AI didn't make him trip...
But it did convince a cognitively impaired 76 year-old that was a good idea to go romping about in the dark.
And gave a live address??
He could have tripped in his bathroom where a lot of people die, not just the elderly. Such things happen no matter how much you're trying to make environments safe. I'm not trying to defend AI here (I would be the last one to do so).
This is so stupid, you can say this about literally any death ever. The bot directly led to the situation that killed him in this instance.
Also, no reasonable judge would hold Meta liable.
This is a text book example of a proximate cause argument.
Correlation does not imply causation.
Facepalm
Thats the correct response to everything you post yeah
Yeah this is a dumb take. If I lured an elderly person down a dark shaft with the promise of something and then he got lost / died / tripped in the dark and couldn't get help I would be charged with at least endangerment.
Except that's not what happened here. To use your hypothetical: You would have convinced the person to go to the dark shaft, but on the way to you he tripped on the stairs at a regularly used and maintained subway platform and died, you would NOT be charged with endangerment. He hadn't gotten to the dangerous place yet where you were creating dangerous conditions.
I think assuming all of the subway is well maintained is your flawed assumption. Had more than a few trip and fall cases that were actually the city's liability.
This is an okay counter. I would still make the argument that he wouldn't have left the house under normal circumstances and thus meta should be liable to some degree
So if your friends talk you into coming to their place and you trip coming out of your house, your friend should be charged?
Does your opinion change if it was a real person instead of an AI?
Lets test your logic some more:
If a person got in their car to drive to their drug dealer to buy drugs (a crime in most places), and he got in a car accident with an unrelated driver, then died, wouldn't your logic say the drug dealer should be charged with having some culpability in the driver's death?
Do you believe that is the law currently? Do you believe the drug dealer should be charged with a portion of the responsibility of the death because the driver wouldn't have left the house this time unless he wanted to buy drugs?
No of course not, but that's not perfectly analgous because the person purchasing drugs initiated it and went on their own accord.. This is an elderly man with cognitive decline.. Idk about you but I'm picturing a person with early dementia being led out of the house by Meta's robot..
Good luck with trying to create a world that is completely safe because it's not possible.
The old man had cognitive decline and a robot told him to leave his house multiple times... The world can't be bubblewrapped argument shouldn't be used here; there are better places.
How can you be sure?
We aren't at the stage where AI-controlled robots run around and make people die by "accident"... yet.
Woosh!