Can A Chatbot Be Held Responsible For A Teen's Suicide?

How much responsibility do AI companies have for their products' actions? PLUS: A public health success: peanut allergy rates plummet.

In this edition:

• Half A Million Young Californians Aren’t In School Or Work. Most Are Men.

• A Teen in Love With a Chatbot Killed Himself. Can the Chatbot Be Held Responsible?

• How Politics Is Changing the Way History Is Taught

• For Teens Dealing With Substance Use, A Recovery School Opens In Virginia

• Trump Pushes An End To Medical Care For Transgender Youth Nationally

• Peanut Allergies Have Plummeted in Children, Study Shows

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Half A Million Young Californians Aren’t In School Or Work. Most Are Men. (Cal Matters)

By Adam Echelman: California has nearly 500,000 young people ages 16 to 24 who are in the same predicament, neither working nor in school. Finding them a job is part of the solution, but it goes much deeper than that. Many are struggling socially and emotionally, too, making it even harder to move forward.

Men are particularly at risk. In July, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order to address “the alarming rise in suicides and disconnection among California’s young men and boys.”

It’s a “crisis,” Newsom told former President Bill Clinton in an interview at the Clinton Global Initiative last month. “Look at the dropout rates. Look at the depths of despair. Look at the issues around loneliness. Look at every critical category. It’s just blinking red lights for young men.” READ MORE

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Photo by Marc Clinton Labiano on Unsplash

A Teen in Love With a Chatbot Killed Himself. Can the Chatbot Be Held Responsible? (New York Times)

By Jesse Barron: Megan Garcia, who is a lawyer, devoted herself to investigating her son’s digital life. His iCloud account was linked to hers, and by resetting his password she was able to access his Character.AI profile, where she recovered some of his exchanges with Daenerys and other chatbots. She also found a journal in his bedroom, in which he had written about Daenerys as though she were a real person. Garcia sent all of the material to a lawyer, who filed a wrongful-death lawsuit in October 2024.