Frontier AI labs are seemingly in a race to melt the impressionable minds of underage users into a puddle.
For years now, we’ve watched individuals under the age of 18 become obsessed with social AI companions, an alarming trend that has already had catastrophic consequences, from chatbots encouraging them to engage in self-harm to even being implicated in a series of deaths. And that’s without getting into the growing wave of evidence that AI is undermining education in profound ways.
The vast majority of AI labs happen to be headquartered in California, a state whose governor is now trying to get ahead of the problem — while simultaneously providing the companies with a home, in optics that are dicey at best.
On Thursday, the state’s governor Gavin Newsom signed what his office called “landmark bipartisan legislation” to protect “children online and when using artificial intelligence.”
