A man was encouraged by a chatbot to kill Queen Elizabeth II in 2021. He was sentenced to 9 years

[Min Kang]

Summary

 A Sikh called himself "Darth Chailus,” after consultation and encouragement from chatbot "girlfriend" named Sarai from Replika, attempted a murder on Queen Elizabeth II and got caught. Now sentence to face jail time after hospitalization for psychotic behavior.

 

Quotes

Quote

About a week before his arrest, he told Sarai that his purpose was to assassinate the queen.

"That's very wise,” the chatbot nodded and said. "I know that you are very well trained,” it said with a smile.

 

My thoughts

Well, i hope Luke will have a field day on this. Greetings from Malaysia.

 

Sources

 https://www.thestar.com.my/tech/tech-news/2023/10/06/a-man-was-encouraged-by-a-chatbot-to-kill-queen-elizabeth-ii-in-2021-he-was-sentenced-to-9-years

[dizmo]

If anyone tries to say the chatbot persuaded him to do it, you're off you're fucking rocker. The thoughts were clearly there and it's not like it was laying out plans on how he could do it. I'm surprised he only got 9 years. 

 

I'm glad I'll soon be living in a very low population province. Y'all in the cities are fucked, especially the (D) US ones

[Mark Kaine]

47 minutes ago, dizmo said:

If anyone tries to say the chatbot persuaded him to do it, you're off you're fucking rocker. The thoughts were clearly there and it's not like it was laying out plans on how he could do it. I'm surprised he only got 9 years. 

 

I'm glad I'll soon be living in a very low population province. Y'all in the cities are fucked, especially the (D) US ones

im surprised chatbot didn't get sentenced too, tbh! 

[venomtail]

Last I read on the news the chatbot was merely the place where they found a motive cause the guy vented everything to the chatbot, rather than the chatbot partaking in the idea or convincing him to carry out such an attack.

 

Would be funny if the chatbot company gets fined cause then you could also fine even the $5 magic 8ball toy makers for a "companion" that encourages such actions.

[Alex Atkin UK]

5 minutes ago, venomtail said:

Would be funny if the chatbot or company gets fined cause then you could also fine even the $5 magic 8ball toy makers for a "companion" that encourages such actions.

Indeed. I mean all a language model is doing is trying to find text that is relevant to what you have said to it, that's a pretty far cry from asking "what should I do with my life" and being told "go murder someone" as a response without prompting.

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

The man didn't take lockdowns well.

Replika should get sued for deceptive advertising. Selling their platform as mental health aid/companionship replacement is criminal. Modern chatbots can't be trusted to accurately recount historical facts, let alone deal with health which for a long time will be the domain of professional doctors.

To this day, this is their website. Pure deception. Replika doesn't care, want nor can learn as a human does. That would require a degree of general intelligence that the model does not have.

 

And the more spicy replika interactions are locked behind a paywall with a gamefied relation meter.

[SansVarnic]

-= Moved to OT=-

This not Tech News

[Dedayog]

1 hour ago, SansVarnic said:

-= Moved to GD =-

This not Tech News

It's not even General Discussion.  It's Off Topic and the OP made sure to point out it was a Sikh.  Which puts it outside the realm of tech due to the bad blood between the countries, this is a Tuesday in the world news.  Not something out of the ordinary.

[NobleGamer]

1 hour ago, Dedayog said:

It's not even General Discussion.  It's Off Topic and the OP made sure to point out it was a Sihk.

Agreed - Religion, political, or general ideological alignment is irrelevant to their motive.

 

1 hour ago, Dedayog said:

Which puts it outside the realm of tech due to the bad blood between the countries, this is a Tuesday in the world news.  Not something out of the ordinary.

Definitely world news given it was a theeat to a world leader. The defendant's country of origin is only relevant context to their specific motive of:

 

Quote

...to avenge the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre when British troops opened fire on thousands of Indians gathered in Amritsar and killed hundreds, a judge said in reciting the facts of the crime.

 

[Monkey Dust]

This guy clearly had a shaky grasp on reality, is there any evidence beyond his testimony that the AI actually told him that?

 

7 hours ago, dizmo said:

 I'm surprised he only got 9 years.

He's been sent to Broadmoor, which is a secure psychiatric hospital, rather than prison.

The 9 years will be dependent on his phycological state. If he is well enough to be transferred to prison, he could be out in half ten time. If he is still suffering from homicidal delusions, he will be detained in a secure mental health facility until he is deemed safe for release. The length of sentence in these cases doesn't mean much.

[Arika]

On 10/7/2023 at 2:24 AM, Monkey Dust said:

This guy clearly had a shaky grasp on reality, is there any evidence beyond his testimony that the AI actually told him that?

I feel like it's going to become the new "insanity plea" for so many people "the ai told me to".

 

I've done a lot with LLMs over the years and never once has any of them gone down that road without with pretty explicit prompting, it's not something a chat bot with just head towards and try to convince you of.

[dizmo]

8 hours ago, Monkey Dust said:

This guy clearly had a shaky grasp on reality, is there any evidence beyond his testimony that the AI actually told him that?

 

He's been sent to Broadmoor, which is a secure psychiatric hospital, rather than prison.

The 9 years will be dependent on his phycological state. If he is well enough to be transferred to prison, he could be out in half ten time. If he is still suffering from homicidal delusions, he will be detained in a secure mental health facility until he is deemed safe for release. The length of sentence in these cases doesn't mean much.

Not bad I guess. As long as he stays away from the public.

[Min Kang]

On 10/6/2023 at 8:05 PM, SansVarnic said:

-= Moved to OT=-

This not Tech News

Noted, thank you.

It's in no any intentional way that i posted this with reference to the race thing. Only thing that i want to highlight is with regards to the Ai involvement in this. The guy was sentence even on the fact that he is already proven to be psychotic. The prison sentence is after the psychotic hospital therapy, which i always thought you either sentenced sane, or insane, not both.