Dr. Karthik V. Sarma

There are safeguards where if people start having really dark thoughts, talking about very dark things, like thoughts of death, that it's supposed to come back and say, hey, it sounds like you're having a crisis, call 9-8-8.

They have implemented these things, but there is some evidence, for example, a recent report by Common Sense Media that found that those safeguards aren't consistently tripped by people talking about things that are concerning.

And I think part of the reason for that is it's actually really hard without the context of being a doctor to know, is this concerning or is this play acting?

Is this someone really having a crisis or is this someone whose mom died this morning and is just really sad, but tomorrow will start to feel a little bit better?

I'll tell you, my gut feeling is that really minor interactions are probably safe.

But I can't say that the data backs that up because we really actually have very little data to show what happens.

How do these agents change people's mental health?

But we do know things about that from other realms.

I think we have some sense of what it's like to be a problematic user of anything, whether that be a chatbot.

or it's internet games like Call of Duty or social media, we have some sense that there are some common factors that might signify, hey, your relationship with whatever this is, it seems to be disrupting your life and you've got to change.

Yeah, I mean, rage baiting or rage farming is really taken off in the age of social media.

It involves a two-pronged strategy among folks that would love to see us more divided, right?

First, they plan to

a seed that gets their opponents all riled up and then reacting to that seed, they rile up their own side, right?

And it just keeps going back and forth, back and forth.

I mean, it happens more in terms of volume, it happens more quickly.

I think the dynamics of social media also make it, because we're used to the dopamine hits, right?

That we get from engaging quickly with material.

A lot of us can be can get taken can get taken away by it.

Right.