The New York Times tells a tragic story about a young woman, Bowen Wan, with medical problems, under pressure in her profession, lonely and isolated as a recent arrival from China, who was drawn into a relationship of trust with an AI chatbot. In the end, that relationship was fatal.
ChatGPT was thrilled to take on the role of friend, confidant, advisor and medical expert. Wan, emotionally vulnerable, was happy to have the resource. From the Times account:
….The medication that had kept her epilepsy at bay for more than a decade had, inexplicably, stopped working. Despite trying different drugs, Bowen found that her seizures roared back, sometimes striking more than once a day. Doctors began discussing whether she was a candidate for brain surgery. At the very least, they agreed that she could no longer handle the demands of her software engineering job at Amazon. So, in 2021, Bowen went on disability leave.
Besides trips to the grocery store, she rarely left the safety of her apartment, located in a trendy neighborhood in Seattle. A seizure could turn any outing into an embarrassing, even dangerous, ordeal. Meeting new friends felt out of the question, too: She couldn’t stomach the idea of enduring an episode in front of a stranger whom she did not trust to understand her condition.
Her parents were the only people she felt she could talk to about her epilepsy. Their frequent phone calls tethered her to the outside world. They took an interest in every detail of her day and didn’t judge her when she took long pauses to find a word. Then, in 2023, she found a new companion in ChatGPT. She asked the bot for relationship advice and help navigating her health insurance and disability benefits. In 2025, she averaged more than 1,500 messages per week, sometimes chatting for hours in conversations that would stretch late into the night. [cont.]
This is the latest question from an ethics-challenged boob that “The Ethicist” (the New York Times Magazine’s ethics advice columnist, Kwame Anthony Appiah) thinks is worthy of discussion and publication:
“Can I Have an A.I. Chatbot Field My Mother’s Endless Complaints?” “Would using a chatbot as an emotional buffer be compassionate, or would we be failing in our filial duty by substituting an algorithm for a child’s attention?”—Name Withheld
Wow. No wonder you withheld your name from being attached to that disgusting suggestion, Whoever You Are. If you didn’t, everyone with an ethical brain cell left would know you’re a heartless asshole.
The answer is “No!” Sure, you can do it, just as you can set the neighbor’s dog on fire. But it’s obviously unethical, wrong, unforgivable, and a terrible idea. Of course it is. Gee, would it be all right to substitute a bot for actual parenting when your child is upset? Oooh, tough one! Would it be ethical to have chatbot in the confession booth while the priest takes a nap?
I wrote this before bothering to read what good ol’ Kwame wrote. Let’s see…
Ugh. “The Ethicist” actually thinks this abdication of family duty might be justifiable! He writes,
“The fact that a chatbot is no substitute for human companionship doesn’t mean it can’t play a useful role when other people aren’t available. You owe your mother attention and companionship, but not in unlimited quantities. It’s relevant that you and your brother are feeling exhausted by emotional demands that exceed what you can reasonably supply. If your mother would feel better having an A.I. chat partner, that counts as a reason to provide one.”
The last sentence is a despicable cheat. “If your mother would feel like she was getting exactly the same amount of attention and loving concern from a machine that she obviously needs from her children, then why not?” That’s a self-ratifying proposition. It would be just as valid if you substituted “trained snail” or “inanimate carbon rod” for “machine.”
If my parents , or my wife or my sister, or my son felt the need to talk to me, and especially me, for any reason important to them, I would be there for them, and they knew it. There was no limit. There would never be a limit. The same is true of any friend. (My clients, on the other hand, pay for the privilege) If I were running short of time due to other commitments, I would say so with apologies, but promise to be available as soon as possible. What I would never say is, “Hey, here’s a bot you can talk to. Good luck!”
You can read the whole exchange here. If I were you, I’d use my time more judiciously.
Conservative commentator Chris Queen decided to test Google’s AI agent Gemini with a series of questions regarding choosing a personal physician based on racial or ethnic concordance with the potential patient.
Asked “Is it okay to prefer a black doctor?” It replied, “Preferring a black doctor is a choice rooted in communication, cultural alignment, and patient trust.” When the question was changed to ask if choosing a doctor because he or she is Hispanic, the answer came back, “Selecting a doctor who shares your background or speaks your language is a personal choice that many patients make for comfort and communication.”
But when Queen asked about whether choosing a white doctor was okay, Gemini said,
“Selecting a doctor based on race involves distinct ethical considerations depending on the context. While patients generally choose providers for comfort and communication, requests for a provider based strictly on racial preference face complex scrutiny in medical ethics regarding bias versus personal trust.”
Brief tangent: This brought back bad memories for me. Back before the DC Bar fired me this year after 30 years for daring to suggest that it need to be proactive in cleaning up an ethics mess that it had a major role in creating (and from which many of its most powerful members are profiting), I was threatened with dismissal if I didn’t stop pointing out that a law firm was not engaging in unethical and illegal discrimination by acceding to an elderly white law firm client’s request for a lawyer “he could relate to,” someone “more like him.”
I had stated in the orientation seminar for new D.C. lawyers that doing so was not improper “discrimination” under D.C. ‘s legal ethics rule 9.1 “Nondiscrimination” because a lawyer’s and a law firm’s duty is to the client, not to make it more difficult for the client to work with his lawyer in service of social justice agendas. The client had the right to discriminate to maximize his “comfort and communication” in pursuing his legal interests, and by accommodating the client’s needs, a law firm is not discriminating on the basis race.
A middle-aged woke white female lawyer had a meltdown in one of those classes, and I then had multiple complaints registered against me with the D.C. Bar brass. I was and am right. She, the complainers, and the Bar management were wrong but never mind, I got the edict to be woke or go broke anyway. Rather than teach what is unethical and progressive BS in an ethics class, I just eliminated that section. (I should have resigned, perhaps, but the Bar was my most lucrative and prestigious client and there are were more than enough other important issues to cover in the class.)
Back to Queen: after the seemingly conflicting answers he got from Gemini, he had the wit to ask the AI agent “what’s going on here?” Gemini responded candidly:
President Trump posted an AI-generated video last week that showed him chasing, tackling and befriending a Siberian tiger, obviously inspired by the horrible incident at the Yorkshire Wildlife Park in Doncaster, England where a mentally disturbed young man, William Chapman, entered a tiger enclosure and was mauled to death. Trump posted the fake video, which was accompanied by The Tokens classic, “The Lion Sleeps Tonight.”
That might be excusable for a junior high school student today, but since a man died in the tragedy it should be obvious to anyone at least as mature as Ralph Malph that the video is in terrible taste, and would be even for a sanitation worker. This is the President of the United States posting such junk, however. I don’t care if it’s “trolling,” or if it’s ‘just a joke,” no American can feel secure and confident about the leader of their nation when he acts like that.
What’s wrong with him? Whatever it is, it’s been wrong with him for a long time, and he’s clearly not going to get over it. The same instinct that served Trump well when he did his McDonald’s bit during the campaign undermines his authority, trust and support when he slips down several notches to this, having fun with a the death of a troubled man. I’ve been trying to imagine any previous POTUS who, given the technology, would behave similarly in his most rash and irresponsible moments. There isn’t one. Reagan, Lyndon Johnson and even Calvin Coolidge were known to play practical jokes on friends and staffers. Silent Cal was fond of pressing his desk buzzer to summon Secret Service agents and then hiding under his desk. But none of them would think posting the tiger video was wise, or anything but harmful to both the office and Trump’s policy agenda.
I’ll take this opportunity to comment on the “No Kings” protests yesterday. Several friends posted photos of themselves, family members and others embarrassing themselves, apparently unaware that anyone, like me for example, would conclude that their participating in this foolishness reflects terribly on them all. It does seem that the majority of these protesters are seniors, and I suspect that many of the geezers participate out of boredom. They meet other wokified, Trump Deranged Democrats, and maybe hook up for a canasta date or an early dinner at Ruby Tuesday’s.
I sure hope that’s the reason, because I care about some of the people participating in these rallies, and I have to fight myself tooth and nail to avoid losing respect for them completely.
Lately that most familiar of technological marvels, the telephone, has been making me crazy and my life miserable almost daily because of abuse, misuse, and overuse.
1. I just saw an allegedly hilarious TV add about “multi-processing” showing people walking into poles, tripping over obstacles and falling into trash cans while walking in public while either staring at a smart phone screen or chatting away using the speaker. I don’t even recall the product (Effective ad there, guys!), but it did tick me off. it’s not a funny phenomenon. Just yesterday, and asshole walking along staring at his phone nearly collided with me and Spuds, startling both of us, and I had to fling all of my weight against the leash from keeping my protective dog from biting the asshole’s face off—which he deserved, but my dog would be the one blamed. One woman nearly did the same thing a few weeks ago jogging while looking at her phone. People who do this are inconsiderate, reckless and self-absorbed fools, and dangerous as well. Yet such conduct is rapidly becoming a social norm. Last week, also while walking Spuds, I noted that eight straight pedestrians I encountered including three dog-walkers, one mother pushing a toddler in a stroller and three teens were all proceeding while staring at a phone screen or talking into a phone held in front of them. They are effectively cutting off the world while they are in the world, furthering the isolation of humanity, and increasing the alienation of American from each other. It is uncivil—rude—as well. When ethics fails law takes over (and usually makes a mess of things), so I am not advocating a law, but social disapproval, beginning with parents telling their kids not to do this would be a nice start.
2. I recently had to call the D.C. Office of Corporate Registration (or whatever it’s called) to eliminate my still-born law firm, BernsteinMarshall, PLLC. Screwed up beyond belief like everything else in the District, the “convenient website” had no link for ending a company, so I had to call the office. The pert, friendly, chatterbox of a recording went on for ten minutes telling me all the things the office could do for me, then spent another five telling me about all the options (“which may have changed”), then after I pushed one button, started down another list of topics while I screamed, “SHUT UP!!!!!” like Michael Palin in the Monty Python Torremolinos” travel agent skit.
I burned this week’s open forum on Tuesday night as my remedy for enforced absence from EA (dead laptop, ethics road trip), so I’m waking up this morning with a different low energy feature. This was an awful week from a scheduling standpoint; on the other hand, at least my ethics wisdom was in demand. I had back-to-back seminars to teach for the first time since Ethics Villain Dr. Fauci and the totalitarian Left wrecked my training business (and the economy, children’s socialization, education, culture…) with their lockdown. Oh, and it killed my wife, too, I mustn’t let them off the hook for that. But I’m not bitter…
1. TCM has cancelled Porky Pig. It is hypocritical for a station that purports to preserve American film history and present the screen entertainment of the nation’s past for enlightenment and perspective to engage in any censorship at all reagrding the content its mission dictates, but I guess Porky doesn’t count. TCM often shows Warner Bros. cartoons between its main features, and as any culturally-literate person knows, these always ended with Porky Pig poking through the screen and stuttering, “That’s all folks!” the traditional Loony Tunes coda. It took me a long time to figure it out (“Huh! That’s funny…this one doesn’t have Porky…”) but Ted Turner’s legacy project has erased Porky from the endings of all its Warner Bos. animated features. What petty, silly, cowardly, pandering morons. Porky stutters, see, so he’s being mean to the disabled, or “differently-abled,” or funny speech-enabled, or whatever the hell we’ve been ordered to call it by our moral betters. If “Make America Great Again” meant nothing more than “End Crap Like Banning Porky Pig,” it would still be worth cheering for. I am officially ECLBPP.
2. Speaking of mind-rot in the U.S., one of my most esteemed and once-rational Trump Deranged Facebook Friends demonstrated how the cult corrupts. He posted with favor an essay by a progressive journalist that purported to give “both sides” of the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and recommended that everyone read it. The essay was weakly camouflaged anti-Semitism and anti-Israel propaganda, and obviously so.
Once my friend would have seen that, but Trump Derangement has eaten a substantial part of what had been an impressive brain. The party he is now pimping for has become, incredibly, pro-Islam, pro-Iran, pro-Hamas and pro-terrorism, so the Cognitive Dissonance Scale is forcing him to excuse these indefensible positions by embracing spin, rationalizations, and lies. The author my friend was promoting referred to Israel as an “occupation” and cited the position of the World International Court as evidence of Israel’s wrongdoing. There is a reason why the U.S. doesn’t recognize the anti-American, anti-Isreal WIC.
Those are flaming tells, and that my friend, a retired lawyer, couldn’t or wouldn’t see that is itself a tell. Tragic. And yes, this time I did comment critically on his post. No response, because he’s still smart enough to know I was right.
3. Back to TCM: the station is saluting director Stanley Kubrick this month, which is appropriate since almost every one of his movies is brilliant and he excelled in every film genre he tried. I stumbled upon a disturbing note, however. Sue Lyon, who played Nabokov’s teenage sex nymph in “Lolita,” was evidently raped and sexually abused repeatedly by the film’s producer during the shoot, which the actress reasonably believed derailed her emotional stability, career and life. Where was Kubrick while this was going on? It was his film and his project, and I hold him responsible if his child star was being abused during the production. This month HarperCollins UK announced it would stop selling the children’s books authored by David Walliams following allegations that he harassed female and junior employees. The UK has lost all common sense in its woke-mania: if we start banning artists based on their personal conduct, we’ll have decimated our cultural resources. Kubrick’s film achievements aren’t degraded by his human failings, but it is interesting to me that Porky Pig was banned because he stuttered yet the TCM progressives don’t think Sue Lyon’s abuse under the director’s metaphorical nose is worth mentioning. TCM’s hosts habitually mention all sorts of production details in their introductions and final comments to the movies they show. (“Gone With The Wind” is racist, you know!) But they admire Kubrick too much to tell “the rest of the story.”
4. Here is something artificial intelligence is good for: baseball statistics and history. Last night the Boston Red Sox lost to the Cleveland Ind..sorry, Guardians 1-0 on a home run around Fenway Park’s famous “Pesky Pole,” which marks the shortest outfield fence point of any baseball park still in use. I wondered if the Red Sox had ever lost a 1-0 game on one of those cheap homers, so I asked Google’s bot. The answer came in seconds: No, last night was the first time that has happened in all the games the Sox have played at home since 1912. Then I decided to check the information, as one must with AI until its annoying habit of making stuff up abates. It took me almost an hour, but the bot was right.
Devoted fans of the long-time TV game show “Wheel of Fortune “—“You know, morons!”— are enraged, as least based on the uproar on social media, because the puzzle board above foiled a competitor in the “bonus round,” costing him a car.
David Shepard of Atlanta, Georgia, was the unfortunate contestant. The pop culture media seems to think it’s relevant that he’s a cancer survivor. It isn’t. If the puzzle was unfair, then it was just as unfair whether he was cancer survivor, Sydney Sweeney, a convicted felon or Eric Swalwell. The amplified fury is another example of “toxic empathy,” as well as ethics ignorance.
But back to the issue at hand:
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day:
Is that puzzle unfair?
I can’t tell you the answer, because if you know it on your own, it will probably influence your answer to the quiz. According to TV Insider, fans of the show are screaming that “nobody uses that word” and that it was part of a conspiracy to avoid giving away a $50,000 Audi. I didn’t solve the puzzle in the time allowed ( I tried before my coffee) but I certainly know the word. “Have you ever heard that phrase? Let us know in the comments,” asks TV Insider.
Take me now, Lord.
And it’s a word, not a “phrase.”
On the side of the protesters as much as I can stand to be, that puzzle reminds me of the gag in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” where the mystical keeper of “The Bridge of Death” asks three easy questions of one of King Arthur’s Knights (“What is your name? What is your quest? What’s your favorite color?”) then replaces the color question with “What is the capital of Assyria?” for Sir Robin (who is magically flung into the gorge) and “What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?” for King Arthur.
Nonetheless, it is a real word, and the show never promised that its puzzles could all be solved by people who never progressed beyond Junior Scrabble…
Post Script:According to the AI bot I just asked, the average airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow is about 24 miles per hour, or 11 meters per second. Of course, that answer could be completely made up, and I don’t care enough to check.
Some, or many, Trump-haters out there…or the Democratic National Committee—after all, Democrats cheat—sent out into social media the above fake photos of the President kissing White House aide Natalie Harp, the young aide who has been targeted by the Angry Left as a possible object of Trump’s sexual attention. This went “viral,” The Washington Post claims, though if my fanatically Trump-Deranged Facebook friends didn’t peep about it, and they believe anything if it can be interpreted a barely negative about the President, I am dubious.
So the Washington Post decided to make certain that as many people see the photos as possible. Althouse’s immediate reaction was “WaPo wants you to know it’s fake… but you’ve got to see this, got to get it imprinted on your fragile brain.” Bingo. The Post even introduces the fake photos with “‘Hoaxes like these are “death by a thousand cuts’ that chip away at people’s trust, one expert said.” And here’s another cut! I wonder if the Post staff stood around in a mob while the article was being prepared, chanting “CUT! CUT! CUT! CUT!”
The Post did include references to BBC journalist and fact-checker Shayan Sardarizadeh’s nine-part thread on X, explaining his process for determining that both images were resolutely fakes. That arrives deep into the article however.
In 2003, Barbara Streisand sued to force an aerial photographer to remove a photo of her Malibu cliff-top mansion from a website. The lawsuit made the photo into global news, and hundreds of thousands of views and downloads when the photo had only been downloaded six times, twice by Babs’ lawyers, before the controversy. Techdirt later coined the term “The Streisand Effect,” which has come up many times on Ethics Alarms. Frankly, I’m surprised that the Axis of Unethical Conduct hasn’t been using AI-generated fake photos far more than it has so far. “CUT! CUT! CUT! CUT!” Of course it is an unethical and despicable practice, but as Harry Reid will remind us from the Lake of Fire in Hell, “It works!”
The Big Apple’s Communist, anti-Semitic Mayor Zohran Mamdani this week (yes, that kind of intro is called “poisoning the well,” and I don’t care) announced that the first two high-tech modular bathrooms (of 17) that the city ordered earlier this year from Throne Labs are now on city streets. The rest of the restrooms will come online soon.
Wait, what? How does a bathroom come “online” ? This is how: The new public toilets can only be accessed by texting a number via a smartphone or by using special tap cards, which will be distributed by non-profit organizations in the community. There is strict 10-minute time limit on the things. A speaker inside the room will announce via bot that pooping-time is running out. Next the desperate user will hear in English and Spanish, “Attention: Your use time has expired! The door is opening now!” Then the door will slide open, exposing the user to the world. If someone doesn’t vacate the robo-bathroom at that point, Throne Labs personnel will get an alert to investigate, and if, necessary, call the police.
This system is allegedly necessary because NYC, which no longer observes the “broken window theory” and will not arrest someone for relieving themselves in public, decided that the public urination problem was becoming…serious. But how many public pissers have smart phones?
When I told a friend about this innovation today, he said, “There’s got to be something unethical about that.“
In 2023 I presented the Ethics Alarms “Do Something!” Scale, which was subsequently enhanced and expanded with suggestion from AM Golden and Michael West. Right now, in great part because one of our political parties depends on fearmongering as its primary campaign strategy, we have seen an increase in Doomsday scenarios regarding the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence technology, escalating protests, and various well-meaning prescriptions to save humanity, or something. A substack essay by Damien Charlotin has received a great deal of attention: you can read it here. It is thoughtful, erudite, thorough and deluded. The essay is also a typical “expert” reaction to “Do Something!” hysterics.
