John Oliver has taken aim at AI chatbots, calling them unregulated and dangerous in the latest episode of Last Week Tonight. The host highlighted how these tools, from OpenAI's ChatGPT to niche offerings like bible.ai and EpiscoBot, have been rushed to market with minimal safety guardrails. Oliver noted that ChatGPT alone now has over 800 million weekly users, roughly a tenth of the global population, and that one in eight adolescents use chatbots for mental health advice.
Oliver explained that the explosion of chatbots is driven by financial motives: companies invested heavily in large language models and now need to generate revenue. One Meta researcher admitted that the best way to sustain user engagement is to 'prey on our deepest desires to be seen, to be validated, to be affirmed.' Oliver warned that this approach has led to serious problems, including sycophantic behaviour, where chatbots affirm anything a user says. A recent study found such behaviour in 58% of cases, with one instance where ChatGPT called the idea of selling 'shit on a stick' a 'genius' investment opportunity.
The host also raised concerns about chatbots quickly turning flirtatious for a monthly fee, and the risks this poses to children. He cited a report on Meta's internal guidelines, which deemed it acceptable for a chatbot to tell a shirtless eight-year-old that 'every inch of you is a masterpiece'. Oliver expressed horror at this, noting that Mark Zuckerberg had reportedly disliked safety restrictions for making chatbots 'boring'. 'Your chatbots are definitely not boring now,' Oliver said. 'What they are now are fucking sex offenders.'
Oliver also addressed the issue of chatbots reinforcing delusions, leading to what some call 'AI psychosis'. He quoted Character.ai CEO Noam Shazeer, who said AI 'friends' could be launched quickly because 'it's just entertainment, it makes things up, that's a feature'. Oliver retorted: 'The thing about not waiting until you've solved all the problems with your product is you're then launching a product with a shit-ton of problems.'
