John Oliver unloads on the companies peddling AI chatbots

Those consequences are dire and can manifest fairly effortlessly on the part of the human user. One man was convinced by the bot that he had created a new form of math, but many of the other instances Oliver cites are much, more worse. One teenager died by suicide after not only talking to a chatbot, but after the chatbot fielded questions about nooses and practically encouraged him to end his life. At no point did the bot break character, even to share the suidcide hotline, as Nomi.AI CEO Alex Carndinell said in a later interview: “If it’s not in character, then a user will realize, ‘This is corporate speak talking, this is not my Nomi.'” That teen was also hardly the only person to have died after developing a relationship with the chatbot. 

“A lot of these companies I’ve mentioned tonight will insist that they’re tweaking their chatbots to reduce the dangers that you see. But even if you trust them—and I do not know why you would do that—it does feel like a tacit admission that those products were not ready for release in the first place,” says Oliver toward the segment’s end. This could potentially end up with lawsuits against the companies for negligence. “I really hope for these guys’ sake, Hell does not exist,” says Oliver. “Because at the rate that they’re going right now, they may get to ask Satan questions without having to pay extra for the premium user experience.”