By Meg Leta Jones,Valerie Pavilonis

Copyright thedispatch

The prioritization of engagement and facilitation of isolation are not unique to AI: Online games and social media sites often take teens away from their peers and other activities. But these bots display uniquely anti-family elements. Each parent who testified on Tuesday recounted ways their children were told their families wouldn’t care about their pain or understand them. Even the system guardrails—sending a child to an outside expert or the bot itself performing as a therapist—assume an irrelevance of parent involvement and family support. Nothing was sacred to the family unit. Core features of the witnesses’ families, from close, loving relationships to religious beliefs, were darkened and degraded. As Sen. Katie Britt stated at Tuesday’s hearing, “anybody that’s teaching kids to run away from their parents versus to their parents for conversation and consultation is a real red flag.”