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I don’t think that’s what happened though. He was encouraged to do this by the bot, where had he told someone else, they would have actively discouraged him and probably called the cops. Having someone or in this case something encouraging you to do something that you’re thinking about but not yet willing to do would lower the threshold on you actually doing those things. It’s a path way often exploited by cults and radical groups to get people to believe in and do things they normally wouldn’t.
In the case of an "AI" being at play though, isn't at least part of its supposed utility derived from the recommendations it makes? On the one hand, denying the whole reason for it's existence is a great way for developers to absolve themselves of any and all responsibility of their designs. On the other, it's a great way to divert and outsource responsibility for horrible behaviors of its users.
Well, for some people I suppose so. I don’t think anyone is using a free online chatbot AI to make major decisions, or at least not anyone mentally healthy. I don’t know how actually foreseeable it is that someone would ask a free online chatbot if they should murder a major world political figure and then actually do it. The response itself was pretty generic— “you’re well trained so go for it” — this is something you could use as a reply to almost any questions about whether to try do do something. If I asked Replika about whether I should enter a karate tournament, I’d get a similar answer.
This issue isn’t the bot, and I don’t think it’s reasonable for every single chatbot company to think up every question that can possibly be asked that could be used to justify doing something evil or stupid and then try to put hard coded answers in for those things. It would be nearly impossible to predict.
The biggest single factor in how the bot got him to try to kill the queen has nothing to do with the bot. It was the issue of him being socially isolated enough that the only thing he was talking to was a chatbot program that he has a para-social relationship with. The bot can’t fix that, and neither can the company be responsible for that. It’s a major problem in modern industrial society that there are people having a lot of difficulties making friends and especially close friends. Had this person had a friend he could talk to, he wouldn’t have been trying to kill QEII. His actual friends would have talked him down, or failing that have tried to get him mental help.
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