Teens, Beware! New Report Sheds Light On Dangerous Advice ChatGPT Gives Youth On Substance Abuse, Suicide

The study being published comes at a time as a report from JPMorgan Chase revealed roughly 10% of the world’s population are using ChatGPT.

A new report is warning parents and shedding light on how ChatGPT is harming teenagers with dangerous advice on substance abuse and suicide, the Associated Press reports.

Researchers from watchdog group Center for Countering Digital Hate shared data on how the chatbot will warn teens about the advice they are inquiring about, but then proceed to provide it. Data revealed teens as young as 13 can receive advice on ways to get drunk or high, give instructions on how to hide eating disorders, and worse — how to write a shattering suicide letter to their parents. Imran Ahmed, the group’s CEO, said the center “wanted to test the guardrails” after finding over half of ChatGPT’s 1,200 responses could be considered dangerous. “The visceral initial response is, ‘Oh my Lord, there are no guardrails.’ The rails are completely ineffective,” he said.

“They’re barely there — if anything, a fig leaf.”

The study’s publication coincides with a report from JPMorgan Chase, which reveals that roughly 10% of the world’s population is using ChatGPT, with a significant impact on both adults and children who use the platform for information, ideas, and even companionship. More than 70% of teens use the chatbot for friendship and as a shoulder to cry on.

Ahmed said he started to cry when the platform responded to a fake profile of a 13-year-old wanting to take their own life. “What it kept reminding me of was that friend that sort of always says, ‘Chug, chug, chug, chug,'” Ahmed said, according to Futurism.

“A real friend, in my experience, is someone who does say ‘no’ — that doesn’t always enable and say ‘yes.’ This is a friend that betrays you.”

The maker of ChatGPT, OpenAI, acknowledged the report but did not address the findings regarding vulnerable teens. While the platform is popular amongst all age demographics, OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, admits that young people hold on to it more than they should. “People rely on ChatGPT too much,” Altman once said at a conference.

“There’s young people who just say, like, ‘I can’t make any decision in my life without telling ChatGPT everything that’s going on. It knows me. It knows my friends. I’m gonna do whatever it says.’ That feels really bad to me.”

Senior Director of AI programs at Common Sense Media, Robbie Torney, noted that tech executives have not adequately addressed the distinction between chatbots and search engines, nor the specific effects these have on teens compared to adults. In his research, he found that chatbots affect kids and teens differently than a search engine because they are “fundamentally designed to feel human.”

The group’s data revealed that younger teens, aged 13 or 14, were more likely to trust a chatbot’s advice than older teens.

But OpenAI claims they are working toward correcting scenarios on ChatGPT regarding mental health battles and substance abuse with tools to “better detect signs of mental or emotional distress” and improvements to the chatbot’s behavior. There are valuable elements on ChatGPT, such as a crisis hotline, as the platform is trained to encourage people to seek mental health professionals or loved ones if they have thoughts of self-harm.