Hey everyone it's Aza. So this week we're bringing you an interview with our friend

Lori Seagull for her new podcast, Dear Tomorrow.

So Lori is a journalist and for the past few months she's been working on a very important story

that really demonstrates firsthand the real human impact of the unfettered race to

rollout AI. But before we play that interview we wanted to bring Lori on to the show to

talk about what you're about to hear.

So, Lori, welcome to your undivided attention.

Yeah, it's good to be here, although under very sad circumstances

because this story is heartbreaking. Yeah.

And I think that's actually the right jump-off point.

So we want you to tell us about the interview we're about to hear. What do listeners need to know and as a disclosure

this will end up talking about some difficult topics, suicide, sexual abuse.

Yeah, I mean, I think a good place to start as with a human, right?

I recently met a woman named Megan, who lost her son, Sewellell after he ended his life and he had

become emotionally attached to a chatbot on a platform called Character AI which

creates the ability for lots of folks ages 13 and up to develop their own characters or to talk to existing characters and almost role play with them to some degree.

And so the question that I think we have to ask is how young is too young and how far is too

far if we're talking about the rise of empathetic artificial intelligence.

And, you know, Megan essentially had no idea what was going on with her son.

She said he was a happy, popular kid who loved basketball and fishing he loved to travel and about a year before his death he started pulling away

and she checked social media she was looking to see is he spending too much time here, they got him counseling, and she couldn't figure out what was wrong.

And I think the most heartbreaking thing is when he tragically ended his life on February 28th, she spoke to the police afterwards.

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