When AI Turns Deadly

Until there is compelling evidence otherwise, I believe artificial intelligence is a useful tool — but it has to be used properly. AI is not just for computer programmers, it is available to many people. Moments ago, AI helped me reject a "highly dangerous phishing tactic". 

There are video channels where owners are deceitful. There are videos of concerts that never happened. Fine, but when we are told a concert is real, or that AI characters sign autographs...stop lying. Aside from entertainment, developers are claiming that essentially, AI can be your trusted companion.

Artificial Intelligence, Pixabay / Gerd Altmann (geralt)

Remember, AI models are essentially computer programs, and they are subject to the biases of their programmers.

Artificial intelligence has been documented to include false information and spurious references in scientific material. The cute way to describe this is hallucinating (implying a real mind behind the words exists). Okay, let's say what that "mind" is doing: lying. (In fact, I was essentially called a liar by an AI search engine one time.) It can even get into psychotic territory, and I have not only corrected it, but it has corrected its own previous answers.

Some folks think that the creation of artificial intelligence by man can give us a way to do away with our Creator; AI can be our salvation. That is galactically stupid.

The most disturbing AI-related “Stop the world I want to get off!” type of story I’ve come across so far was in the Wall Street Journal [late August 2025]. A 56-year-old man, living with his mother in a wealthy New York suburb, developed a “friendship” with ChatGPT, imagining the bot as if it possessed a spirit and consciousness in the form of a disembodied companion whom the man called “Bobby Zenith.”

The chatbot encouraged these delusions, which got progressively worse as the man apparently enabled the “memory” feature and the electronic companion immersed itself fully in a case of galloping mental illness, including fears that his mother was plotting against him. The result was a murder-suicide, whose details and methods the Journal discreetly withholds, which is probably for the best:

You can read the rest at "In Connecticut, Horrors of AI Finally Come into View." A short related article followed, "An Intelligent Design Addendum to AI Horror in Connecticut." By the way, when discussing the phishing attempt that was directed at me with an AI search engine, it told me that I was doing the right thing and being encouraging. Like a person might.