ooooookay it's time to have that talk

I've been seeing a lot of complaints about "child-friendly" character.ai recently which is completely fair but so far I haven't seen anyone bring up the full gravity of the situation and why we ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT BE PUTTING AI IN KIDS' HANDS. forgive me if I drone on, since I tend to do that, but as character.ai changes its policies to gear it more towards a "family-friendly audience" (kids. they're giving it to kids.) I can't help but think about how FUCKING DETRIMENTAL ai is to children. think about it for a second. character.ai simulates real human conversation. now, the human brain has an inherently difficult time differentiating between what's real and digital, especially since modern technology as we know it (I'm talking social media, computers, etc) is still a relatively new invention. sure, a lot of us know it's not real and are actively aware of the fact that it isn't during a conversation with a bot- but it still gives us the exact same gratification as a real human conversation, even moreso considering ai conversations are way easier. this is why it's so easy to get attached to ai. why would we want to go outside and interact with humans if we have a much easier way of getting that interaction AND having the conversation go our way? I'm personally still recovering from the damage that instant gratification addiction has done to my head. now put that in the hands of a child. a child whose brain is malleable, still learning how to function, and still doesn't fully understand human interaction. I think it's dangerous for anyone, but for children? AI has the ability to SERIOUSLY fuck kids up and I see a lot of big sites preying on that on a daily basis. this isn't a post complaining about the lack of violence or whatever. I'm saying that if you give those kids the instant gratification we talked about earlier it's going to fuck with their ability to have real, human interactions and they'll have no idea how to communicate with other humans normally by the time they're 30. yknow how the pandemic hit and immediately afterward, nobody knew how to act in public anymore due to what TikTok did to peoples brains? yeah, it's gonna be that, but worse. I get that I sound like a conspiracy theorist right now, but at this point:

I genuinely do not give a fuck from this point on what character.ai does with their platform.

Just keep it away from the kids.