AI Lawsuit Shakes the Legal World: Expert Insight
Video Transcript
Steven Gacovino – Personal Injury Attorney – Suffolk County (Long Island), NY
As far as the underlying lawsuit, I can’t speak to the facts of it so well, but I can tell you this, that having spoken to so many young people and to so many parents of young people that have used social media, and these young people are down a path where they’re, they’re looking for something. I am sure that so much of it is an outgrowth of just not having true human connection, that they’ve found themselves so alone and so isolated that the idea of at least something speaking back to you, even if it’s AI, is some sort of adoration, validation, affirmation that they might be looking for. So you could see how like that feedback that they’re getting may stimulate something, may, you know, the idea that they’re being engaged and that AI is interested in them individually might make them feel like, hey, I do have sort of a friend here, or I do have a connection here that I’ve never really had with a real human being. So I know that sounds odd, but it is happening. I don’t know how much yet, but I could see that we’re probably just scratching the surface with people experimenting with this to see where it goes and what’s going to happen.
Now, I don’t know if it was in the instance of an AI boyfriend or a girlfriend where this teen wound up actually doing harm to themselves and killing themselves, but I’m sure that AI could take you to a place to help you find out how to end your own life and that guardrails are not going to necessarily be in place for it. You can’t forget, this is the wild, wild west that we’re in. There’s the technology is so far ahead of the politics and the regulation, and the rest of us are just kind of using it as it comes to us. So we don’t even know what it’s capable of. Certainly it’s operating without guardrails. And I don’t know that even if even, I don’t even, I’m not even sure that the creators know how to put guardrails on them because it learns from itself. It builds on itself. I don’t understand everything there is to know about artificial intelligence by any stretch of the imagination. I’m not a technological wizard or expert, but I do see the power of AI. And yes, you probably could use those powers for a lot of amazing and productive things. And I’m sure that you could use that power for harmful and deleterious things as well.
I could see where one could easily fall into a situation where their engagement with AI becomes so intense that you could form a relationship with it. I think that that’s something that human beings are definitely vulnerable to, and especially young individuals would be vulnerable too, or lonely individuals would be vulnerable too.
