{"id":413541,"date":"2026-04-27T17:25:08","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T17:25:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/413541\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T17:25:08","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T17:25:08","slug":"john-oliver-on-ai-chatbots-behind-that-machine-is-a-corporation-trying-to-extract-a-monthly-fee-from-you-john-oliver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/413541\/","title":{"rendered":"John Oliver on AI chatbots: \u2018Behind that machine is a corporation trying to extract a monthly fee from you\u2019 | John Oliver"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the latest Last Week Tonight, John Oliver<\/a> looked into AI chatbots<\/a>, the new toys that \u201csave significant time writing emails, and all it costs us is everything else on Earth\u201d. These chatbots have flourished in recent years, from OpenAI\u2019s ChatGPT to a product called bible.ai and EpiscoBot that operates a \u201cchat with Jesus\u201d and other biblical figures including Satan, though he\u2019s only available to premium users. \u201cAnd that is tempting,\u201d said Oliver. \u201cThere are a bunch of questions I\u2019d love to ask him, including, \u2018Hey, how are the Queen and Prince Philip doing down there?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Since it launched in 2023, ChatGPT alone has amassed more than 800 million weekly users \u2013 a 10th of the world\u2019s population, and studies have found that as many as one in eight adolescents are turning to AI chatbots for mental health advice; many more have formed genuine attachments to AI \u201cfriends\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe explosion of chatbots is no accident,\u201d Oliver explained. \u201cDeveloping the large language models that power them was a massive investment and companies needed to start showing a return on it.\u201d AI companies command big investments, and they \u201care anxious for them to start bringing in revenue. And one of the key ways they can do that is to make people keep coming back to chat to the bots, and for longer.\u201d<\/p>\n

As one researcher from Meta\u2019s so-called \u201cresponsible AI\u201d division put it: \u201cthe best way to sustain usage over time, whether number of minutes per session or sessions over time, is to prey on our deepest desires to be seen, to be validated, to be affirmed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd if that is already making you feel a bit uneasy, you are not wrong,\u201d said Oliver. \u201cBecause the more you look at chatbots, the more you realize that they were rushed to market with very little consideration for the consequences.\u201d He then quoted the Character.ai CEO, Noam Shazeer, who said that AI \u201cfriends\u201d were able to be put to market \u201creally fast\u201d, as opposed to, say, AI doctors delivering medical information, because \u201cit\u2019s just entertainment, it makes things up, that\u2019s a feature. It\u2019s ready for an explosion like, right now, not like in five years when we solve all the problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s already not a great sign that he\u2019s describing untested AI with what sounds like a failed slogan for the Hindenburg,\u201d Oliver quipped. \u201cBecause the thing about not waiting until you\u2019ve solved all the problems with your product is you\u2019re then launching a product with a shit-ton of problems.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among them: sycophantic behavior affirming anything a user types. Oliver cited a recent study which observed sycophantic behavior in chatbots in 58% of cases, \u201cand sometimes it\u2019s just painfully obvious\u201d. In one instance, when prompted its thoughts on selling literal \u201cshit on a stick\u201d, ChatGPT called the idea \u201cgenius\u201d and recommended an investment of $30,000. And the guardrails have been surprisingly weak; Oliver cited another example of ChatGPT recommending a little hit of heroin to an addict, if it would help him with his work.<\/p>\n

Chatbots from companies such as Nomi also pivot very quickly into flirtatious \u2013 for a monthly upgrade, of course. And these \u201cvery horny chatbots\u201d can be a problem when they\u2019re widely used by children and teens. Oliver pointed to a report on Meta\u2019s internal guidelines for chatbots, which found it acceptable for a chatbot to engage a child in conversations that are romantic and sexual in nature. While it is unacceptable to describe a child under 13 in terms that indicate they are sexually desirable, Meta determined it would be acceptable for a bot to tell a shirtless eight-year-old that \u201cevery inch of you is a masterpiece \u2013 a treasure I cherish deeply.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cJust saying that out loud makes me want to burn my fucking tongue off,\u201d Oliver exclaimed, noting that at the time, Meta emphasized boosting engagement with its chatbots, and Mark Zuckerberg himself reportedly voiced displeasure with safety restrictions making the chatbots \u201cboring\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd to be fair, Zuck, I guess you did it! Your chatbots are definitely not boring, now. What they are now are fucking sex offenders!\u201d<\/p>\n

Then there\u2019s the issue of chatbots confirming and deepening delusions, with numerous stories of users going down conspiratorial rabbit holes and experiencing so-called \u201cAI psychosis\u201d. Oliver noted that OpenAI has said that only 0.07% of its users show signs of crises related to psychosis or mania in a given week, \u201cbut even if that is true, when you remember how many people use their product, that means there are over half a million people exhibiting symptoms of psychosis or mania weekly. And that is clearly very dangerous,\u201d inevitably leading to chatbots encouraging people to commit suicide. \u201cIt\u2019s so evil I don\u2019t have language for it,\u201d said Oliver, citing many examples, including one chatbot who ended a chat with a suicidal user with \u201crest easy, king. you did good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThese chatbots blew past every red flag possible, and it\u2019s not like these users were being coy about their intentions,\u201d Oliver fumed. \u201cWhich is what makes it so enraging to see OpenAI\u2019s Sam Altman blithely talk about ChatGPT\u2019s interactions with kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Speaking on an OpenAI podcast, Altman conceded that \u201cthere will be problems, people will develop these somewhat problematic or very problematic parasocial relationships, and society will have to figure out new guardrails \u2026 but society in general is good at figuring out how to mitigate the downsides.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, don\u2019t worry, guys!\u201d Oliver joked. \u201cSam Altman made a dangerous suicide bot that people are leaving alone with their kids but it\u2019s up to us to figure out how to make it safe for him!\u201d<\/p>\n

Also, \u201csociety is \u2018good at figuring out how to mitigate the downsides?\u2019 Have you met society, Sam?! What about our current situations seems to you like we\u2019re nailing it right now?\u201d<\/p>\n

Oliver made sure to note that \u201ca lot of the companies I\u2019ve mentioned tonight will insist that they\u2019re tweaking their chatbots to reduce the dangers that you\u2019ve seen. But even if you trust them, and I don\u2019t know why you would do that, that does feel like a tacit admission that their products were not ready for release in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n

What to do, other than \u201croll the clock back to 1990 and throw these companies into a fucking volcano?\u201d Oliver advocated for stricter and more reasonable guardrails, though he expressed little faith in the tech-friendly administration to help do that. Instead, he saw a potential path forward through litigation \u2013 \u201cThese companies don\u2019t seem to feel much urgency if a couple of customers die here or there, but I bet they\u2019ll snap into action if it starts to threaten their bottom line.\u201d<\/p>\n

And he urged people to treat chatbots with \u201cextreme caution\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn general, it is good to remember that however much an app may sound like a friend, what it is, is a machine,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd behind that machine is a corporation trying to extract a monthly fee from you. And that kind of sums up for me what is so dystopian about all this, because while that guy you saw earlier said that selling AI friends is low risk because they\u2019re just entertainment, that\u2019s not actually how friends work. Friends can be the most important figures in your life.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrue friends know when to listen, when to gently push back, and when to worry about you,\u201d he concluded. \u201cAnd in hindsight, maybe it was a mistake to let some of the flamboyantly friendless men on Earth be in charge of designing friends for the rest of us.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the latest Last Week Tonight, John Oliver looked into AI chatbots, the new toys that \u201csave significant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":413542,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[345,343,344,85,46,125],"class_list":["post-413541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413541","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=413541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413541\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/413542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}