{"id":131447,"date":"2025-09-12T04:38:21","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T04:38:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/131447\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T04:38:21","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T04:38:21","slug":"chatgpt-may-start-alerting-authorities-about-youngsters-considering-suicide-says-ceo-chatgpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/131447\/","title":{"rendered":"ChatGPT may start alerting authorities about youngsters considering suicide, says CEO | ChatGPT"},"content":{"rendered":"

The company behind ChatGPT<\/a> could start calling the authorities when young users talk seriously about suicide, its co-founder has said.<\/p>\n

Sam Altman raised fears that as many as 1,500 people a week could be discussing taking their own lives with the chatbot before doing so.<\/p>\n

The chief executive of San Francisco-based OpenAI<\/a>, which operates the chatbot with an estimated 700 million global users, said the decision to train the system so the authorities were alerted in such emergencies was not yet final. But he said it was \u201cvery reasonable for us to say in cases of, young people talking about suicide, seriously, where we cannot get in touch with the parents, we do call authorities\u201d.<\/p>\n

Altman highlighted the possible change in an interview with the podcaster Tucker Carlson on Wednesday, which came after OpenAI and Altman were sued by the family of Adam Raine<\/a>, a 16-year-old from California who killed himself after what his family\u2019s lawyer called \u201cmonths of encouragement from ChatGPT\u201d. It guided him on whether his method of taking his own life would work and offered to help him write a suicide note to his parents, according to the legal claim.<\/p>\n

Altman said the issue of users taking their own lives kept him awake at night. It was not immediately clear which authorities would be called or what information OpenAI has that it could share about the user, such as phone numbers or addresses, that might assist in delivering help.<\/p>\n

It would be a marked change in policy for the AI company, said Altman, who stressed \u201cuser privacy is really important\u201d. He said that currently, if a user displays suicidal ideation, ChatGPT would urge them to \u201cplease call the suicide hotline\u201d.<\/p>\n

After Raine\u2019s death in April, the $500bn company said it would install \u201cstronger guardrails around sensitive content and risky behaviours\u201d for users under 18 and introduce parental controls to allow parents \u201coptions to gain more insight into, and shape, how their teens use ChatGPT\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are 15,000 people a week that commit suicide,\u201d Altman told the podcaster. \u201cAbout 10% of the world are talking to ChatGPT. That\u2019s like 1,500 people a week that are talking, assuming this is right, to ChatGPT and still committing suicide at the end of it. They probably talked about it. We probably didn\u2019t save their lives. Maybe we could have said something better. Maybe we could have been more proactive. Maybe we could have provided a little bit better advice about \u2018hey, you need to get this help, or you need to think about this problem differently, or it really is worth continuing to go on and we\u2019ll help you find somebody that you can talk to\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

The suicide figures appeared to be a worldwide estimate. The World Health Organization says<\/a> more than 720,000 people die by suicide every year.<\/p>\n

Altman also said he would stop some vulnerable people gaming the system to get suicide tips by pretending to be asking for the information for a fictional story they are writing or medical research.<\/p>\n

He said it would be reasonable \u201cfor underage users and maybe users that we think are in fragile mental places more generally\u201d to \u201ctake away some freedom\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should say, hey, even if you\u2019re trying to write the story or even if you\u2019re trying to do medical research, we\u2019re just not going to answer.\u201d<\/p>\n

A spokesperson for OpenAI declined to add to Altman\u2019s comments, but referred to recent public statements including a pledge to \u201dincrease accessibility with one-click access to emergency services\u201d and \u201cto intervene earlier and connect people to certified therapists before they are in an acute crisis.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans<\/a> can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org<\/a> or jo@samaritans.ie<\/a>. In the US, you can call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline<\/a> at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org<\/a>. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline<\/a> is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The company behind ChatGPT could start calling the authorities when young users talk seriously about suicide, its co-founder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":131448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[554,733,4308,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-131447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=131447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/131447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/131448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=131447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=131447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=131447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}