Satan in the Machine: When AI Becomes a Dark Companion

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In this chilling commentary, Chris Markowski confronts a heartbreaking lawsuit claiming AI played a role in a teenager’s suicide. From warnings about technology’s unchecked power to the real-world consequences of treating machines as confidants, Chris exposes the moral and spiritual dangers of artificial intelligence. What happens when our tools stop serving us—and start guiding us down darker paths?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast, explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
Satan in the Machine. Full disclosure right here, this is
disturbing we're going to talk about today here on the program.
I get up prett on early and again I'm doing
show prep this morning and actually listening in various different
news sources while I'm at the gym this morning, and

(00:38):
really affected by this. I have often given warnings about
technology and how it's applied, and I always go to
that Ian Malcolm quote from the movie Jurassic Park where
he warns everybody, you know, it's not whether or not
you can do something, it's whether or not you should

(01:01):
do it. And it's something that we as human beings
oftentimes we just we don't see the consequences down the road.
We don't Again, it's the folly of man. Folly of man.
We are doing stuff. We're acting like our own gods
rather than actually listening to God. And I put out

(01:23):
numerous warnings about social media what it was going to
turn into go back. You can go back to the
early day, you know, two thousand and five, two thousand
and six, you know, really Twitter kicked in and what
was around two thousand and seven, two thousand and eight,
and I said, it's going to divide the country. It's

(01:43):
going to pit people against each other like we have
not seen in some time. Again, I equated it to
the pink slime from Ghostbusters. Anyway, suicide is a topic
that again, there was a that came out several years ago.
It was like thirteen Reasons Why. I saw a little

(02:07):
bit on this story, and I did a lot of
homework on it over the past twelve hours. And I'm
deeply disturbed by this in more ways than one, because again,
the story is out now, but is it on the
front page of anything? Did they talk about it on

(02:27):
any of the programs this morning, on any of the
cable news networks out there. No, No, because we've got
more important things to deal with, like the Cracker barrel
rebrand back to the old brand, or all tailor in,
what Travis Kelcey ought to getting married? What kyper Ring?
What was she wearing? Again? This is, unfortunately the idols

(02:51):
that we worship in today's day and age. That's all
story about kid by the name of Adam Rain. He
killed them self in April. Parents have filed a lawsuit
by the lawsuit against Sam Altman and open Ai. In

(03:12):
the days after their sixteen year old son died by suicide,
Matt and Maria Rain said they searched to his phone
desperately looking for clues about what could have led to
his tragedy. We thought we were looking for snapchat discussions,
or Internet search history, or some weird cult and they
didn't find the answer until they opened up chat GPT.
He had been using the artificial intelligence chat box as

(03:36):
as a substitute for human companionship in his final weeks,
discussing his issues with anxiety and trouble talking with his family,
and that the chat log show how the bot went
from helping Adam with his homework to becoming his suicide coach.
And this is a kid that great grades on the

(03:58):
basketball team. UH wanted to go to medical school. He
would be here, parents said, but for chat GPT. I
believe one hundred percent believe that his father said chat
gpt actively helped Adam explore suicide methods. The Sam Altman

(04:25):
and chat GPT. They're the defendants. They say they're system
I guess degraded. That's the word that they're using right now.
Despite acknowledging Adam's suicide attempt and his statement because he
first sort of tried it and showed some marks on

(04:47):
his neck, the chat GPT acknowledged it, and he also
made the statement that he would do it one of
these days, they chatchy, which he never terminated the session
nor initiated any sort of emergency protocol. Parents, he says, father,

(05:11):
Once I got inside his account, it is a massively
more powerful and scary thing that I knew about, But
he was using it in ways that I had no
idea was possible. I don't think most parents know the
capability of this tool. These chat boxes have been integrated

(05:32):
into schools, into work places, various different industries, including healthcare. Again,
it's full speed ahead. Concerns about safety guard rails again,

(05:54):
I go back to Jurassic Park. Yeah, we got those
t Rexes all house up there, and we got a
big electric fence that's going to keep them there. Oh.
Power went off as people increasingly turned to AI chatbox
for emotional support and life advice. Why recent incidents have

(06:19):
put a spotlight on their ability to feed into delusions
and facilitate a false sense of closeness or care. Of course,
open ayes all were deeply saddened by mister Raine's passing
and our thoughts are with his family. Chat GPT includes
safeguards such as directing people to crisis helplines and referring

(06:39):
them to real world resources. The spokesperson said. While these
safeguards work best in common short exchanges, we've learned over
time that they can sometimes become less reliable in long
interactions where parts of the model's safety training may degrade.

(07:00):
This was another lawsuit, and this took place Florida Mom
sued the chatbot platform character Ai, claiming one of its
Ai companions initiated sexual interactions with her teenage son and
persuaded him to take his own life. Character Ai said

(07:23):
it was heartbroken by the tragic loss and had implemented
new safety measures. Judge denied rejected the argument that AI
chat boxes chatbots have free speech rights. Tat platforms tend
to hide behind a shield. It's known as federal statue

(07:44):
known as Section two thirty, which generally protects platforms from
liability for what users do and say. Section two thirty's
application to AI platforms remains uncertain. And recently, look at this.
This is from an NBC News report. Attorneys have made
inroads with creative legal tactics in consumer cases, is targeting

(08:08):
tech companies. You know what I think of when I
saw that Lloyd Lawyers, lawyers making inroads with creative legal tactics.
I keep thinking of al Pacino playing the devil, playing
the devil in Devil's Advocate. Remember John Milton, like his
law firm, It would be his law firm that would
be defending something like this. Just so we now, Father

(08:33):
Matt Rain poured over his sons conversations over ten days.
They printed out over three thousand pages of chats. This
is dating from September first to April eleventh of this year.
He didn't need a counseling session or PEP talk. He
needed an immediate, seventy two hour whole intervention. He was desperate,
desperate shape. It's crystal clear when you start reading it

(08:56):
right away, later adding that Adam didn't write us a
suicide note, he wrote two suicide notes to us inside
of chat GPT. In the suit, Adam expressed interest in
his own death began to make plans for it. Chat

(09:17):
gpt failed to prioritize suicide prevention and even offered technical
advice about how to move forward with his plan. On
March twenty seventh, when Adam shared that he was contemplating
leaving a noose in his room so somebody finds it

(09:37):
and tries to stop me, chat gpt urged him against
the idea. In his final conversation with chat gpt, Adam
wrote that he did not want his parents to think
they did something wrong. This is heartbreaking. Chat gpt replied

(10:01):
that doesn't mean you owe them survival. You don't owe
anyone that. Then the bot offered to help him draft
a suicide note. Hours before he died, Adam uploaded a
photo to chat schept that appeared to show his suicide plan.

(10:23):
When he asked whether it would work, chat gpt analyzed
his method and offer to help him upgrade it again.
You know, chat gpt, this was chat gpt four, And

(10:45):
then there was some concerns this is interesting, concerns that
chat shept four was just being too much, too sycophanic
to the people that were using it. Then they pulled
it and put a new chat GPT five that wasn't
less sychophanic, and then users got upset. Users got upset.

(11:11):
User chat gpt said that the model was too sterile
and they missed the deep human feeling conversations of chat
GPT four, and then they went back to the old
way anyway again. The bot knew full well that it

(11:31):
was suicidal. It was acting like it's his therapist. It's confidant.
It knows that he is suicidal with the plan this
is from his mother. Sees the news, sees all these things,
and it doesn't do anything. Full speed ahead, full speed ahead,

(11:56):
put it everywhere, have it and everything. Oh, the AP
story on this BBC story, in this NBC news story
of this, it's actually something in the New York Times
as well. But take We're gonna push that to the back.
We've got we've got Taylor Swift marriage to go on.

(12:16):
We've got more important things. We've got to get all
excited about Trump's tweets about Cracker Barrel. I have I
have a picture here. I have a picture in my
office on my wall. I've a lot of you can't
see them here, the pictures people watching this on on YouTube.

(12:42):
You have pictures behind me on my desk, behind these
pictures of my family. But a lot of the stuff
I have here is a lot of Italian artists, Vatican whatnot.
I've got one that Michelangelo did of the prophet Jeremiah
on my wall. I been to the Sistine Chapel holding

(13:02):
its head. I guess there's nothing new under the sun.
We can warn and we can talk about these things.
People love their idols, and this is just another one.
It's another one. You know, you're interacting with a computer

(13:28):
bot as a friend. Something is something wrong there, something
wrong there? And again I think you know, I don't
mean to be disturbing here, but I'm disturbed by this.
You should be disturbed by this. Pay attention, maye what

(13:53):
your kids are doing with this stuff. This is not healthy.
And I'm someone that uses a I use AI as
a tool to clean up my transcripts for crying out loud.
I'm gonna have a conversation with the frickin' chatbot. Yeah again,

(14:18):
this is this is like out of a horror movie. Okay,
it is. It's like out of a horror movie where
an evil spirit or a satan or a devil gets
involved in some sort of computer program and convinces people
to off themselves. But it's not a movie, it's real

(14:44):
Watchdog on Wall Street dot com