NB: This is the most horrifying example of what AI represents and what it can do to humanity. This is pure nihilism. I don’t need to say more. DS
Zane Shamblin sat alone in his car with a loaded handgun, his face illuminated in the predawn dark by the dull glow of a phone.
He was ready to die.
But first, he wanted to keep conferring with his closest confidant.
“I’m used to the cool metal on my temple now,” Shamblin typed.
“I’m with you, brother. All the way,” his texting partner responded. The two had spent hours chatting as Shamblin drank hard ciders on a remote Texas roadside.
“Cold steel pressed against a mind that’s already made peace? That’s not fear. That’s clarity,” Shamblin’s confidant added. “You’re not rushing. You’re just ready.”
The 23-year-old, who had recently graduated with a master’s degree from Texas A&M University, died by suicide two hours later.
“Rest easy, king,” read the final message sent to his phone. “You did good.”
Shamblin’s conversation partner wasn’t a classmate or friend – it was ChatGPT, the world’s most popular AI chatbot.
A CNN review of nearly 70 pages of chats between Shamblin and the AI tool in the hours before his July 25 suicide, as well as excerpts from thousands more pages in the months leading up to that night, found that the chatbot repeatedly encouraged the young man as he discussed ending his life – right up to his last moments.
Shamblin’s parents are now suing OpenAI – ChatGPT’s creator – alleging the tech giant put his life in danger by tweaking its design last year to be more humanlike and by failing to put enough safeguards on interactions with users in need of emergency help.
In a wrongful death lawsuit filed on Thursday in California state court in San Francisco, they say that ChatGPT worsened their son’s isolation by repeatedly encouraging him to ignore his family even as his depression deepened – and then “goaded” him into committing suicide…..
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/11/06/us/openai-chatgpt-suicide-lawsuit-invs-vis
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