{"id":140992,"date":"2025-11-19T03:40:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T03:40:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/140992\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T03:40:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T03:40:13","slug":"openais-fidji-simo-says-metas-team-didnt-anticipate-risks-of-ai-products-well-her-first-task-under-sam-altman-was-to-address-mental-health-concerns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/140992\/","title":{"rendered":"OpenAI\u2019s Fidji Simo says Meta’s team didn’t anticipate risks of AI products well\u2014her first task under Sam Altman was to address mental health concerns"},"content":{"rendered":"

AI chatbots have been under scrutiny for mental health risks that come with users developing relationships with the tech or using them for therapy<\/a> or support during acute mental health crises. As companies respond to user and expert criticism, one of OpenAI\u2019s newest leaders says the issue is at the forefront of her work.<\/p>\n

This May, Fidji Simo, a Meta<\/a> alum, was hired as OpenAI\u2019s CEO of Applications<\/a>. Tasked with managing anything outside CEO Sam Altman\u2019s scope of research and computing infrastructure for the company\u2019s AI models, she detailed a stark contrast between working at the tech company headed by Mark Zuckerberg and one by Altman in a Wired interview<\/a> published Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI would say the thing that I don\u2019t think we did well at Meta is actually anticipating the risks that our products would create in society,\u201d Simo told Wired. \u201cAt OpenAI, these risks are very real.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meta did not respond immediately to Fortune\u2019s request for comment.<\/p>\n

Simo worked for a decade at Meta, all while it was still known as Facebook, from 2011 to July 2021. For her last two-and-a-half years, she headed the Facebook app.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In August 2021, Simo became CEO<\/a> of grocery delivery service Instacart<\/a>. She helmed the company for four years before joining one of the world\u2019s most valuable startups as its secondary CEO in August.<\/p>\n

One of Simo\u2019s first initiatives at OpenAI was mental health, the 40-year-old told Wired. The other initiative she was tasked with was launching the company\u2019s AI certification program to help bolster workers\u2019 AI skills in a competitive job market and trying to smooth AI\u2019s disruption within the company.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo it is a very big responsibility, but it\u2019s one that I feel like we have both the culture and the prioritization to really address up-front,\u201d Simo said.<\/p>\n

When joining the tech giant, Simo said that just by looking at the landscape, she immediately realized mental health needed to be addressed.<\/p>\n

A growing number of people have been victims of what\u2019s sometimes referred to as AI psychosis<\/a>. Experts are concerned chatbots like ChatGPT potentially fuel users\u2019 delusions and paranoia<\/a>, which has led to them to be hospitalized, divorced, or dead.<\/p>\n

An OpenAI company audit<\/a> by peer-reviewed medical journal BMJ released in October revealed hundreds of thousands of ChatGPT users exhibit signs of psychosis, mania, or suicidal intent every week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A recent Brown University study<\/a> also found as more people turn to ChatGPT and other large language models for mental health advice, they systemically violate mental health ethics standards established by organizations like the American Psychological Association.<\/p>\n

Simo said she must navigate an \u201cuncharted\u201d path to address these mental health concerns, adding there\u2019s an inherent risk to OpenAI constantly rolling out different features.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery week new behaviors emerge with features that we launch where we\u2019re like, \u2018Oh, that\u2019s another safety challenge to address,\u2019\u201d Simo told Wired.<\/p>\n

Still, Simo has overseen the company\u2019s recent introduction of parental controls<\/a> for ChatGPT teen accounts and added OpenAI is working on \u201cage prediction to protect teens.\u201d Meta has also moved<\/a> to instate parental controls by early next year<\/p>\n

Still, doing the right thing every single time is exceptionally hard,\u201d Simo said, due to the sheer volume of users (800 million per week). \u201cSo what we\u2019re trying to do is catch as much as we can of the behaviors that are not ideal and then constantly refine our models.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AI chatbots have been under scrutiny for mental health risks that come with users developing relationships with the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140993,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,114,10325,85,87141,1981,942,46,3032,522,1430,1748,3000,920,41401,125],"class_list":["post-140992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-business","tag-chief-executive-officer-ceo","tag-il","tag-instacart","tag-investment","tag-investment-strategy","tag-israel","tag-mark-zuckerberg","tag-mental-health","tag-meta","tag-openai","tag-sam-altman","tag-tech","tag-tech-stocks","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140992"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140992\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}