alt Hacker NewsThe article is Aug 26, 2025, and describes events from April, over a year ago.
Safeguards have improved drastically since then.
> Many continue to ignore the fact that they're hurting kids for profit.
That's a rather hyperbolic way of putting it. A side effect of this particular product is that it occasionally harms kids. They're not profiting off of the harm, nor is the harm deliberate.
Cars harm kids. There's decades of unsafe toys harming kids. The FDA exists to make sure food doesn't harm kids. We used to use lead paint and asbestos, which harm kids. Climate change harms kids.
I'm sure some kids have used The Internet to Google Search this same information. There are books you can check out from the library on the topic.
It's definitely worth acknowledging the edge cases, but it's absurd to act like the AI companies are some unique evil - IKEA has probably killed more kids than every LLM combined. I don't even have to pull out the big guns like "cars".
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Seems pretty evil to pretend that safeguards around this product are even possible. They're not.
> Safeguards have improved drastically since then
Source? Seriously. I'd love to see data showing deaths–or even frequencies–have dropped. My views on AI for under-16s is still evolving.
Given how the AI companies are fighting these cases in court, and given their backers’ public rhetoric, I suspect they aren't seeing a one-off risk.
> Cars harm kids
This is tobacco-industry rhetoric. The relevant facts are frequency, magnitude and novelty (the last indicating we may be mis-sampling the first two).
> FDA exists to make sure food doesn't harm kids
Mm hmm. Where’s the FDA for AI and social media?
> worth acknowledging the edge cases, but it's absurd to act like the AI companies are some unique evil
I agree with this. AI isn't a unique evil. But AI companies are uniquely defensive, dismissive and negligent when it comes to harming kids. Call it the Mosseri Effect. When an industry continuously promotes people who predate on kids and their parents' wallets, the edge cases are going to wind up inside the lines.