All posts tagged: Suicides

AI Company Known for Teen Suicides Launches New Feature to Turn Books Into Roleplaying Experiences

AI Company Known for Teen Suicides Launches New Feature to Turn Books Into Roleplaying Experiences

Published by José Betancourt

Sign up to see the future, today Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech AI company Character.AI has long garnered a reputation for hosting some extremely dubious content. Though it built its early success off explosive popularity among teen users, it was repeatedly caught hosting wildly inappropriate bots — like ones modeled after real-world mass shooters or designed to encourage eating disorders. Outrage grew when a teen died by suicide after developing an intense emotional connection to a Character.AI chatbot, followed by at least two other suicides and related lawsuits. The situation got so bad that last year, the company banned underage users from interacting with its bots entirely. Now the company has announced “c.ai Books,” a bizarre feature designed to turn books into “choose your own adventure” novels. “Interactive AI storytelling is powerful, but a blank page can be intimidating,” the company wrote in its announcement. “Books gives you a familiar starting point — characters you know, narratives you love, and stakes that are already built in.” The company scraped classic …

Reducing Firearm Suicides Starts With Gun Reform, Not Gun Control

Reducing Firearm Suicides Starts With Gun Reform, Not Gun Control

Published by Jenni Sidey

Advocates of common-sense gun laws often cite the number of firearm deaths in the United States—nearly 50,000 per year—as a reason for tougher restrictions on the sale and distribution of guns. Rarely, though, do they or others note that more than half of all firearm deaths in this country are the result of suicides, not homicides.[1] In poll after poll, a large majority of Americans want stricter gun laws. This includes Republicans—79 percent of whom support background checks for gun shows and private sales, and 78 percent of whom support laws to prevent mentally ill people from buying guns—as well as most Democrats.[2] A poll by Quinnipiac University found even greater support for universal background checks: 97 percent of all voters, including 93 percent of Republican voters.[3] A large majority of gun owners also support gun reform. According to the Pew Center, 89 percent of gun owners believe that people who are mentally ill should be prevented from buying a gun, 82 percent believe that people on no-fly or government watch lists should be barred …

Wave of Suicides Hits as India’s Economy Is Ravaged by AI

Wave of Suicides Hits as India’s Economy Is Ravaged by AI

Published by José Betancourt

For decades, tech companies have relied immensely on India’s vast workforce, from entry-level call center jobs to software engineers and high-ranking managerial positions. But with the advent of advanced AI, which has been accompanied by employers greatly cutting back on hiring with the hopes of eventually automating tasks entirely, India’s tech workers are having to cope with a vastly different reality in 2026. As Rest of World reports, rising anxiety over the influence of AI, on top of already-grueling 90-hour workweeks, has proven devastating for workers. While it’s hard to single out a definitive cause, a troubling wave of suicides among tech workers highlights these unsustainable conditions. Complicating the picture is a lack of clear government data on the tragic deaths. While it’s impossible to tell whether they are more prevalent among IT workers, experts told Rest of World that the mental health situation in the tech industry is nonetheless “very alarming.” The prospect of AI making their careers redundant is a major stressor, with tech workers facing a “huge uncertainty about their jobs,” as …