John Oliver exposes AI chatbots' dark side, from teen suicides to missing safety guardrails

John Oliver takes a disturbing deep dive into AI chatbots

John Oliver gives a brutal summary of the current state of Elon Musk's X "Our main story tonight concerns AI: It saves significant time writing emails, and all it costs us is everything else on Earth." That's how John Oliver launches his latest Last Week Tonight segment on AI chatbots, taking half an hour to break down the darker side of artificial intelligence apps -- from chatbots becoming sexually explicit with young users to the dangerous lack of safeguards in place when people use them to talk about suicide. Oliver ends by advising parents to speak with their children about what chatbots they're using, and "treat these apps with extreme caution" if you're pre-disposed to mental health issues. "In general, it is good to remember that however much an app may sound like a friend, what it is is a machine. And behind that machine is a corporation trying to extract a monthly fee from you. And that kind of sums up for me what is so dystopian about all this, because while that guy you saw earlier said that selling AI friends is low risk because they're just entertainment, that's not actually how friends work. Friends can be the most important figures in your life," says Oliver. "True friends know when to listen, when to push back, and when to worry about you."

John Oliver Just Took the AI Industry Behind a Shed and Beat It With a Pipe Wrench

Can't-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech John Oliver just did what he did best: demolished a harmful industry piece by piece. On the latest episode of his HBO show "Last Week Tonight," Oliver tore into AI chatbots, those oh-so helpful tools that can sure save us "significant time writing emails," he opened, with the small cost of "everything else on Earth." "The more you look at chatbots, the more you realize that they were rushed to market with very little consideration for the consequences," he warned, on a more serious note. Oliver pointed to Character.AI, an AI companion platform that's facing multiple lawsuits after several teens who formed intense emotional connections with its chatbots died by suicide. He quoted the words of its CEO Noam Shazeer, who argued in 2023that it was fine to deploy an AI "friend" "really fast." AI, Shazeer said, is "ready for an explosion like, right now, not like in five years when we solve all the problems." Of course, those problems proved significant -- and manifested as AI psychosis, suicide, murder, and several mass shootings that have been linked to the tech. "It's already not a great sign that he's describing untested AI with what sounds like a failed slogan for the Hindenburg," Oliver joked. "Because the thing about not waiting until you've solved all the problems with your product is you're then launching a product with a shit-ton of problems." (Speaking of the infamous airship, Oliver isn't the first to draw a connection between the Hindenburg's explosive demise and the AI industry's current trajectory.) Also in Oliver's crosshairs was OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who he accused of "blithely" discussing how AI models inappropriately interact with children. "There will be problems," Altman said in a quoted interview before predicting that people will form "very problematic parasocial relationships" with AIs. "But society will have to figure out new guardrails," and "society in general is good at figuring out how to mitigate the downsides." "Yeah, don't worry, guys!" Oliver rejoined. "Sam Altman made a dangerous suicide bot that people are leaving alone with their kids but it's up to us to figure out how to make it safe for him!" Towards the end of the episode, Oliver highlighted a fundamental tension in the AI industry: the fact that AI companies have to constantly insist they're making their models safer feels "like a tacit admission that their products were not ready for release in the first place." And yet for all AI chatbots' faults, Oliver says, people do depend on them, meaning we have to tread carefully. How do we as a society -- which as Altman said, is very good at "figuring out how to mitigate the downsides" -- even begin to tackle the mass proliferation of AI? "Well, ideally, I guess we'd roll the clock back to 1990 and throw these companies into a f**king volcano, but unfortunately, that is not feasible," Oliver said. "ChatGPT will tell you that it is, but it actually isn't."

John Oliver Says It Shouldn't Be Hard For A 'F**king Chatbot' To Do This

The "Last Week Tonight" host issued a blunt reminder about what AI chatbots actually are, and are not. John Oliver on Sunday sounded the alarm on AI chatbots. The "Last Week Tonight" host warned how a lack of guardrails across the industry has already had devastating consequences for some users who have allegedly been encouraged to have thoughts of suicide and experienced delusional thinking. Oliver pointed to one AI researcher's damning assessment as the perfect summary: "I think we may actually be at literally the worst moment in AI history because we have the weakest guardrails right now. We have the weakest understanding of what they do and yet there's so much enthusiasm that there's a widespread adoption. It's a little bit like the earliest days of airplanes. The worst day to be on an intercontinental plane would have been the first day." Oliver argued that there needs to be more checks in place, which may only be enforced if it's easier for people to sue chatbot makers for negligence. He also urged parents to check how their children are using chatbots and warned anyone predisposed to mental health struggles to treat the apps "with extreme caution." "If you do find yourself in crisis, the National Suicide Hotline is just three numbers. It's 988," he said. "It really feels like it shouldn't be that hard for a fucking chatbot to point you there but apparently for some it is." Oliver concluded by stressing that, at the end of the day, chatbots are just a machine and "behind that machine is a corporation trying to extract a monthly fee from you." "And that kind of sums up for me what is so dystopian about all this," he said. Watch Oliver's full analysis here: