Chair Cassidy, Hawley Sound Alarm on Dangers of Children Using AI

WASHINGTON - U.S. Senators Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA), chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) Committee, and Josh Hawley (R-MO) are seeking answers on how companies are protecting children from potential dangers of artificial intelligence (AI).

This comes after recent tragedies where multiple children took their own lives after being influenced by AI platforms. Reports indicate that teenagers were able to get AI chatbots to respond to questions, including how to hide evidence of self-harm and sexually explicit conversations. Additionally, a chatbot failed to respond when a teenager told it they "want[ed] to die."

"The safety of AI tools, particularly those available to children and teenagers, is paramount. It is unacceptable that AI tools do not have robust policies in place to ensure that they do not support or encourage harm," wrote the senators. "That AI would have the capability to encourage, instruct, or convince a user-in one of the most recent cases a fourteen-year-old-to end his life is deeply troubling."

The senators are seeking information from OpenAI, Anthropic, Character.AI, and Alphabet.

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