AI Addiction, Behavior, and Suicide

They're getting better at what they're doing, but better doesn't necessarily mean better for the people. It just means better for the program. Welcome back to Silicon Valley Front Row. I'm David Lam, born and raised in Silicon Valley. And I'm Steve, and I've been here about the same as long as you have been here, over 30 years. So last time we talked about a bunch of things regarding AI from how it impacts the brain, as well as one of the front runners, Jensen Huang with NVIDIA. So you actually have an interesting connection way back with Jensen Huang, right? Yeah. So he didn't come last time. We were waiting for him. He didn't show up. I met him at Stanford. He had a speech there about a year ago. He talked about his vision and all that. But I worked at LSI Logic out of college. I went to San Jose State. Just out of college, I worked at LSI from 1992 to 2002 for 10 years. And he worked there from 85. He was also out of college. Pretty much his second company was LSI Logic. And he was there till 93. So we overlapped for a year. And I haven't met him in person there. It's a big company. And he started as an engineer, and then he went up to a director level in the CoreWare program, which was what LSI developed at the time. So yeah, we were at the same company. But what's actually interesting, after 93, he ended up being the CEO of NVIDIA till now. So it's probably the longest tenure of a CEO in the Silicon Valley that's kind of unheard of to be CEO for so long. So he's a very respected person in so many ways. But what's interesting about LSI Logic is where I worked for all these years, there's at least four people that I know of, I've met personally, who became CEOs of major companies. That's amazing. Yeah. It was Brian Halla, CEO of National Semiconductor, coming from LSI. Moshe Gavrilov became CEO of Xilinx, which was bought by AMD. Big company, obviously, Intel's a competitor and also very involved with AI. And then we had Jensen. And then John Dana. John Dana started as an intern at LSI in 1985, same as Jensen Huang. He became, he was very fast, went through the ranks, and he ended up CEO of Altera Corporation in the late 90s. So a lot of interesting stories. Wow. LSI. And that was nearby, right? Is that in Sani? That's in Milpitas. Milpitas. It was in Milpitas. So as not, they got bought out by a vague of technologies, and now it's Broadcom that ended up being LSI. But a lot of stories there. There's this kind of old people that grew up here in the Silicon Valley, these old engineers who pretty much made this valley happen. And people from LSI were part of it, including the founder, of course, Wolf Corrigan. And also to mention yourself, too, who came from LSI, now host of Bay Area Innovators. Yeah, a host related to technology. All right, so for this next part, we're going to talk a little bit about algorithms, how AI functions, and later a little bit about the job losses associated with AI. And as you can see, we just changed the backgrounds here. So yeah, Steve, so we have this article here from The Epoch Times about how some interactions with AI, people have become apparently delusional, and even it led to suicide, and even like psychiatric issues. So what I understand from my research is that people have been developing like bonds while talking to artificial intelligence, because it's apparently programmed to, you know, converse with people and also stimulate their thoughts. So whatever someone says, it's supposed to kind of support it in a way. And apparently in this interview with Sam Altman and Tucker Carlson, Sam Altman, who's also a forerunner when it comes to AI, is that if someone says something that's not true to an AI, it might... Hallucinate, right? That's what... Yeah, the word was hallucinate. Yes. It might not outright, like, say that, oh, like, I think the example in the interview was something like, oh, what year was this person president? But the person wasn't president at all. Yes. And I think they're programmed to take that in and think like, oh, okay, this is the first time I'm hearing that. But if this was president, if this was true, let me work it out or something. And it kind of like develops that. So I think one of the main problems I can see, well, first of all, we are not experts on this. We are just commenting on these issues. And to me, I want to state what's the obvious. And one thing that's obvious to me is that once you get attached, once you get hooked on these bots that you communicate with, it can be very dangerous. And right behind you, there's the story in the Epoch Times where someone gives the example of a person talking to a bot about... The bot was telling him something that made this person delusional. He thought he's like... He knows something that's amazing, and he wanted to tell everyone. And he says, guys, look what this bot told me, that the world is this way, or whatever. And he ended up in hospital. He ended up being completely becoming mentally ill as a result of that. So these are the kind of things that happen. But what's very important, I think, in this whole process is what the algorithm does. And what the algorithm does, it just feeds whatever you like and you're interested in, it feeds more of that. And on the surface, you'd say, well, what's wrong with that? I like ice cream. Give me more ice cream. So on the surface, you don't see anything wrong with it. But it is wrong because it makes you super addicted to it. And then you cannot put the phone down. You cannot stop doing what you're doing because it kind of keeps feeding you that information, that thing that you're looking for. And it obviously is very good at it. So... Sort of like a best friend that can keep egging you on in certain ways. And then just real quick about the suicidal incidents. Apparently, if someone mentions suicide, the chatbots are supposed to respond with help links and hot links to suicidal hotlines to help. But apparently, in the end, some cases, people have been pushed to end their lives. That's exactly right. There's at least one case that was pretty big news when Chajipati helped a student commit suicide. And he gave him kind of the, not the tools, but the knowledge, or he says, this is what a beautiful suicide would look like, or whatever. And it actually happened. And the parents of that student sued Chajipati and sued Sam Altman directly. Now, of course, they're going to say, yeah, this is a tragedy. This is one case that happened. It's not normal. But unfortunately, there's more and more of these cases. And again, the big question is, what happens next when these things get more and more, quote, perfected? They're getting better at what they're doing. But better doesn't necessarily mean better for the people. It just means better for the program and better for Chajipati, not what's good for the people. Good points. And AI is supposed to, apparently, the creators or developers are saying that they want to make it better and have these safeguards, like with the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis. He wants to put safeguards in place because as AI develops, they want to make sure there's a safety precaution. So as far as Jensen Huang, we do still want to ask him. His vision. So we should invite him sometime to the show. Absolutely. That's a wrap. Tune in next time for more on Silicon Valley Front Row.