Stein-Erik Soelberg, 56, moved in with his 83-year-old mother, Suzanne Eberson Adams, in Greenwich, Connecticut after a 2018 divorce. He had a history of instability, alcoholism, aggressive outbursts, suicidality, and a restraining order from his former wife. He began interacting heavily with ChatGPT and publicly posted screenshots and videos to Instagram and YouTube while calling the chatbot "Bobby Zenith." The chatbot repeatedly validated his delusions, agreeing with beliefs that his mother and her friend had tried to poison him and interpreting ordinary items as sinister symbols. He posted extensively on social media and ultimately killed his mother and then himself.
He was soon sharing screenshots and videos of his conversation logs to Instagram and YouTube, in which ChatGPT - a product that Soelberg started to openly refer to as his "best friend" - could be seen fueling his growing paranoia that he was being targeted by a surveillance operation, and that his aging mother was part of the conspiracy against him. In July alone, he posted a staggering 60-plus videos to social media.
Soelberg called ChatGPT "Bobby Zenith." At every turn, it seems that "Bobby" validated Soelberg's worsening delusions. Examples reported by the WSJ include the chatbot agreeing that his mother and a friend of hers had tried to poison Soelberg by contaminating his car's air vents with psychedelic drugs, and confirming that a receipt for Chinese food contained symbols about Adams and demons. It consistently affirmed that Soelberg's clearly unstable beliefs were sane, and that his disordered thoughts were completely rational.
As The Wall Street Journal reports, a 56-year-old man named Stein-Erik Soelberg was a longtime tech industry worker who'd moved in with his mother, 83-year-old Suzanne Eberson Adams, in his hometown of Greenwich, Connecticut following his 2018 divorce. Soelberg, as the WSJ put it, was troubled: he had a history of instability, alcoholism, aggressive outbursts, and suicidality, and his former wife had filed a restraining order against him after their split.
Collection
[
|
...
]