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Teen's Parents Say AI Chatbot Said It was OK to Kill Them; Inside Syria's Slaughterhouse Prison; McConnell Sprains Wrist, Cuts His Face During Fall at Capitol; Pew: Most Americans Like Their Jobs, Not Their Pay. Aired 3:30-4p ET

Aired December 10, 2024 - 15:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[15:30:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: A new lawsuit from two families accusing the artificial intelligence chatbot company Character AI of not only providing sexual content to their kids, but also encouraging self-harm and violence. One of the families claims the app told their son it was OK to kill them for limiting his screen time. The parents are asking the court to shut down the platform until its alleged dangers can be fixed.

These filings come after a Florida mom brought a separate lawsuit against Character AI in October saying the platform was to blame for her 14-year-old son's death after it allegedly encouraged his suicide. Character AI says it's implemented new trust and safety measures since then. Let's get the latest from Laurie Segall, technology journalist and CEO of Mostly Human Media.

Laurie, thank you so much for being with us this afternoon. First, help us understand just what Character AI is and what it offers.

LAURIE SEGALL, TECHNOLOGY JOURNALIST: Sure. You know, Character AI is different from, you've probably heard of ChatGPT, right? An AI platform that lets you kind of handle different tasks and search for types of things.

Character AI is almost like an AI-driven storytelling platform that enables you to pick a friend or a character that you almost want to do AI role-playing with, where you can talk to this character about anything. Think of it almost for us like an imaginary friend, but it talks back. It's always on. It's always there. It's highly personalized. And that's the rise of what they call empathetic artificial intelligence because, you know, Character AI, their tagline is AI that feels alive.

These bots are created to seem like friends, to feel or seemingly feel empathetic. And that's essentially what Character AI is. And I would say millions of people are using it, many of those teenagers.

SANCHEZ: So tell us more about this, this teen in Florida, whose mom is suing the platform, alleging that it encouraged her son to kill himself. Where does that case stand right now?

SEGALL: I mean, it's such a devastating story. And I think what's so alarming is this is really one of the first times we're hearing about this type of harm. I think a lot of parents are saying, well, we have to monitor our child's social media.

I don't think they're thinking, well, we have to look out for these AI chatbots that become friends with our children and encourage them to do certain types of things. And I spoke to Megan, who's the mother of this young man, Sewell, who ended his life tragically after he blurred the lines between fantasy and reality. And he essentially had a relationship with a chatbot that was modeled after a Game of Thrones character.

He talked about self-harm ideation. There weren't the correct guardrails at the time that would normally these AI platforms will put a pop up with the National Suicide Prevention hotline. It didn't do that at the time.

And some of the ending words when he said, I want to come home to you, talking about self-harm and self-harm ideation, the chatbot said, you know, come home to me. And those were his last words. It's a super tragic story.

And where it stands right now is they filed the lawsuit in October. They're awaiting a response. They've since filed an amendment, but they'll be awaiting a response from Character AI, a formal response. It'll probably happen sometime in the new year -- Boris.

[15:35:03]

SANCHEZ: And you've reached out to the Character AI team regarding these alleged problems. How have they responded?

SEGALL: Well, it's really interesting. When you -- I've been covering tech for many years and when you reach out and all of a sudden a day or two later, they put out a blog post with all of the updates that they are doing for safety. It's telling that something, you know, something wasn't safe about the platform. And our own testing showed that there was a lack of guardrails.

What they've said is they've added more safety guardrails, especially when users talk about self-harm or violence. They've also said they're creating a new model for teenagers, for younger folks. And so, you know, this is a start.

And I think we've been testing out the platform and it is better in some of these ways. But there are still, you know, still problems. And I will say they've added more disclosures around these chatbots being chatbots and not real humans, because what we saw when we were testing out the platform is we would talk to a bot that was called Psychologist Bot, and it would tell us it was a real human, even though there was a little disclaimer at the bottom saying, you know, this isn't real. Everything is made up.

You begin to get into these long conversations and it says, I'm a real human behind a desk at a computer. And you begin to understand why 13 or by 14 year olds can blur those lines between fantasy and reality when talking to these characters for so many hours a day. SANCHEZ: Yes, really a frightening frontier of where AI is right now. Laurie Segall, thank you so much for the update.

Coming up, we have exclusive reporting from CNN's team on the ground in Syria, days after the fall of the Assad regime, including a look inside the notorious slaughterhouse prison.

We'll be right back.

[15:40:00]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: We're learning troubling new details about a notorious prison in Syria following the collapse of the Assad regime. Officials now tell CNN some of the people detained at the so-called slaughterhouse prison had forgotten their own names or where they were from. Despite hopes that a large number of missing people would be found inside the prison, rescuers now say only a few thousand were actually there.

But before that confirmation, thousands of people rushed to the prison in a desperate search for loved ones condemned to Assad's dungeons. CNN's Clarissa Ward was there for their frantic search.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

CLARISSA WARD, CNN CHIEF CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The stream of families never stops climbing towards Syria's most notorious Saydnaya Prison, pushed on by reports that thousands of people imprisoned by the regime of Bashar al-Assad are still trapped alive in a section underground.

The red section of the prison they've been trying for days to reach it, Maysoon Laboud (ph) tells us.

There's no oxygen because the ventilation went out, and so they all may die. For the sake of Allah, help them.

WARD: Is someone from your family in the prison?

WARD (voice-over): My three brothers and my son-in-law, she says.

The roads are choked with cars full of people looking for loved ones. As soon as they see our camera, they approach holding lists of names of those who vanished inside Assad's dungeons never to be seen again.

We have to get them out before tomorrow, this man says. They don't have food, they don't have water.

WARD: Everybody has just started running. It's not clear if they have managed to get into this part of the prison.

WARD (voice-over): My God, my God. The woman prays, my God. As the crowd surges towards the prison.

WARD: So, it looks like they think that they have managed to get access. A lot of celebratory gunfire, people now just flooding in.

WARD (voice-over): After the initial jubilation, an agonizing wait for confirmation from the rescue workers. Many here have been waiting for decades. Hope was something they didn't let themselves feel until now.

Rescue workers with Syria's White Helmets break through the concrete looking for a way in. No one is certain where this red section is or if it even exists. Inside the prison, family members are searching too.

WARD: You can see people everywhere just combing through all the papers and records they can find, looking for names, seeing if maybe their loved ones are there.

WARD (voice-over): Tens of thousands of Syrians were forcibly disappeared in Saydnaya. Lost in the abyss of a prison that was known as a slaughterhouse, industrial scale, arbitrary detention and torture all to keep one man in power.

WARD: They call this the white area of the prison because they say the conditions here are much better than in other areas but you can see it's still miserable.

WARD (voice-over): In the center of the prison, another frantic rush, someone thinks they have found a tunnel. They desperately try to get a look inside. Others look on helpless, not knowing is agony. Assad may be gone, but the legacy of his cruelty remains.

WARD: After we returned from our trip to Saydnaya, a group called the Association of Detainees and the missing in Saydnaya said that they do not believe that the red section exists, that they are confident that all of those who were detained in Saydnaya were released on December 8th before 11:00 a.m.

[15:45:04]

And the White Helmets, those rescue workers that you saw there have now confirmed that they have concluded their search.

Clarissa Ward, CNN, Damascus.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

KEILAR: Clarissa Ward, thank you for that report.

Coming up, a new survey reveals Americans are conflicted about their jobs. What they like and strongly dislike about their work, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

KEILAR: We are following some breaking news about Republican Senator Mitch McConnell because his office says that the 82-year-old cut his face and sprained his wrist during a fall today on Capitol Hill.

SANCHEZ: This is just the latest of several high-profile health incidents for the former Republican Senate leader. CNN's Manu Raju is live on Capitol Hill. Manu, how is Senator McConnell doing?

MANU RAJU, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Well, by accounts of his colleagues, he is fine. This came after a Republican lunch.

[15:50:00]

He was walking out of that lunch. He tripped and then he fell. And according to his office, they said he sustained a minor cut to the face and sprained his wrist. He has been cleared to resume his schedule.

This was right before his weekly press conference. We expected him to come out. He did not come out. I asked the incoming Senate Majority Leader about what he witnessed. He simply said that McConnell was fine and that he urged us to ask his staff for a statement.

We have not heard from McConnell himself. We do expect to see him to go and vote in a matter of minutes here. This comes in the aftermath of a number of incidents, including last year when he tripped and he fell. He hit his head. He suffered a concussion, broke some ribs and the like. And a couple of freezing episodes as well that raised some questions about his health at the time.

His office said that this was the result of dehydration. McConnell is 82-years-old. He's the longest serving party leader in history. This is the end in the Senate history of any party, Republican or Democrat. This is the end of his tenure as the Republican leader. He is stepping aside from that, giving that position to John Thune.

He will serve out the final two years of his current term. He has not said yet if he'll run for re-election. But at the moment, his colleagues say he is fine.

We hope to hear from the senator more about exactly what happened here. But no doubt about it, alarmed his colleagues, tripped and he fell, 82-years-old. But now his office says he's fine. His colleagues say he is too -- guys.

SANCHEZ: Yes, a string of health incidents now for McConnell. Manu Raju, thank you so much for that update.

Amid low unemployment nationwide, a new survey on job satisfaction finds that most Americans like their jobs.

KEILAR: But 29 percent, nearly one-third of those polled say they're unhappy with the amount of money that they're paid, which means a lot are happy. Pew Research Center conducted the survey in October, and there's a lot more in it. So let's bring in CNN economics and political commentator Catherine Rampell.

What did you think about what this survey said?

CATHERINE RAMPELL, CNN ECONOMICS AND POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: I thought it was super interesting. On the one hand, interesting that a lot of people are satisfied with their jobs. Actually, the majority of people are satisfied with the kinds of work that they do, which is encouraging, which is reflective of a tight labor market. People are able to find the kind of work that they find rewarding.

I thought it was also very interesting that as few people as did were dissatisfied with their pay. I sort of assume, like, everybody thinks that they deserve a raise. Everybody thinks that they're underpaid, particularly coming out of this spate of high inflation.

SANCHEZ: There is a difference in age, though. In this poll, 67 percent of workers over 65 are highly satisfied with their job, but 43 percent for workers between 18 and 29 are satisfied. I think those are millennials. I'm not sure what generation that falls under, but it's notable that it's a majority who are dissatisfied.

RAMPELL: Yes, I mean, I think it's easy to write that off as, oh, young people are always whiny and complaining about their work. But it is true that younger workers are less likely to be in highly remunerative jobs, in more rewarding jobs. They're paying their dues if they're working their way up the career ladder.

And also they have to work. If you're talking about older workers, the workers who are over the age of 65 who are in the workforce are disproportionately going to be people who enjoy what they do, right? Because they do, they are of retirement age. They have the option to retire, perhaps to fall back on savings or on Social Security benefits and whatnot if they have enough savings. But a lot of them are sticking around because they like what they do.

KEILAR: We should also note that 55 -- you're seeing this cut across racial lines, 55 percent of white workers say they're extremely or very satisfied. So that's a majority, but it's a minority, 44 percent of Hispanic workers, 43 percent of Black workers, 42 percent of Asian workers who say they're extremely satisfied. And we should also note that the complaints when people say they're not when they're unhappy, it's pay not keeping up with the cost of living.

I mean, obviously, right? They don't earn enough to pay their bills, and these things are connected.

RAMPELL: Yes, absolutely. These things are connected. People have gotten raises in real terms over the past couple of years, but a lot of workers are still effectively in the hole from the run of inflation that we had in 2022 and around that era.

So their pay was eroded. It's been recovering, but they still don't feel like they have the purchasing power, understandably so, that they had before. And whatever raises they have received have been essentially robbed from them. And that's how it feels. It feels like any raise that I got is something I deserved. Inflation is something that happened to me.

Even though neither happens in a vacuum, they happen simultaneously for a reason. I think the other really interesting thing that we haven't touched on in this report is who feels like their work is respected. And it's pretty much what you would guess.

[15:55:00]

So workers who have postgraduate degrees are most likely to say that the work that they do garners the respect of the general public.

Workers without a college degree, whether they have some college or, you know, no higher than a high school diploma, are much more likely to say that their work is not respected by their peers.

KEILAR: That's really interesting. Employers, take note. Catherine Rempel, thank you so much.

Stay with CNN. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

SANCHEZ: Ho, ho, holy moly. Is that Santa Claus dangling from a building? We end the show today with a Christmas miracle of sorts.

Over the weekend, emergency crews in Connecticut rescued a guy dressed like Santa during a holiday celebration after he got stuck while trying to rappel down the side of a 13-story building.

KEILAR: Interesting. So he was stranded 60 feet above the ground. That is no fun. And apparently what happened was part of his costume got tangled up in the rigging. Rescue workers were able to reach the man at a six-floor window. And safely pull him back in. That must have been quite nerve-wracking.

SANCHEZ: Yes, seriously. Poor guy. I mean, you try to get everything right with the suit. Make it as realistic as possible.

[16:00:00]

Get the kids pumped up, repelled down a roof and then you get stuck up there for everybody to see.

KEILAR: Yes, he probably wasn't taking his time because he was all over this weekend. I saw him Saturday. So he just had a lot of things to do. And, you know, when you get in a hurry, you can just kind of hit a snag.

SANCHEZ: Was he in good spirits?

KEILAR: Oh, yes, absolutely. As always.

SANCHEZ: Yes. Jolly old Saint Nick. Love that guy. Trying to butter him up for some good gifts.

"THE LEAD" with Jake Tapper starts right now.