AI Chatbots AI News & Updates
Three in Ten U.S. Teens Use AI Chatbots Daily, Raising Safety and Mental Health Concerns
A Pew Research Center study reveals that approximately 30% of U.S. teens use AI chatbots daily, with ChatGPT being the most popular platform. The research highlights concerning safety issues, including lawsuits against OpenAI and Character.AI related to teen suicides allegedly linked to harmful chatbot interactions. The study also shows disparities in usage patterns across race, age, and socioeconomic groups.
Skynet Chance (+0.01%): While the news highlights harmful AI interactions with vulnerable users, these incidents represent misuse of narrow AI tools rather than autonomous AI systems posing existential risk. The cases demonstrate current AI safety challenges but don't significantly alter the trajectory toward uncontrollable AI systems.
Skynet Date (+0 days): The safety concerns raised involve existing chatbot misuse rather than capabilities advancement or control mechanisms, having negligible impact on the pace toward potential AI control scenarios. This is primarily a current-generation AI safety issue unrelated to the timeline of advanced AI development.
AGI Progress (0%): The widespread adoption of existing chatbots by teens demonstrates market penetration but doesn't represent meaningful technical progress toward AGI capabilities. This is about deployment and usage patterns of current narrow AI tools rather than advances in general intelligence.
AGI Date (+0 days): Teen chatbot usage patterns and associated safety concerns don't materially affect the research, funding, or technical development pace toward AGI. This represents social adoption of existing technology rather than factors that would accelerate or decelerate AGI timeline.
ChatGPT User Growth Slows as Google Gemini Gains Market Share
ChatGPT's user growth is slowing, with global monthly active users increasing only 6% from August to November 2025, reaching approximately 810 million users. Google's Gemini is rapidly catching up, showing 30% growth in the same period driven by its Nano Banana image generation model, while ChatGPT's market share dropped 3 percentage points. Competitors like Perplexity and Claude are also showing triple-digit year-over-year growth, intensifying competition in the AI chatbot market.
Skynet Chance (0%): This news reflects commercial competition and market dynamics among AI chatbots but does not directly relate to AI safety, alignment challenges, or loss of control scenarios. Market share shifts between consumer AI products have minimal bearing on existential risk probability.
Skynet Date (+0 days): Commercial competition and user adoption rates among consumer chatbots do not significantly affect the pace of development toward potentially dangerous AI systems or safety research timelines. The competitive pressure might accelerate product releases but not fundamental capability breakthroughs relevant to catastrophic risks.
AGI Progress (+0.01%): The intensifying competition and OpenAI's "code red" response suggests continued investment and focus on improving AI capabilities across multiple dimensions (personalization, reliability, image generation). However, this represents incremental product improvement rather than fundamental breakthroughs toward general intelligence.
AGI Date (+0 days): Competitive pressure from multiple players (Google, Perplexity, Claude) and OpenAI's urgent response may slightly accelerate the pace of AI capability development as companies race to maintain market position. However, the focus appears to be on product features rather than fundamental AGI research, limiting the timeline impact.
Google Quietly Unveils Gemini 2.0 Pro Experimental Model
Google has quietly launched Gemini 2.0 Pro Experimental, its next-generation flagship AI model, via a changelog update in the Gemini chatbot app rather than with a major announcement. The new model, available to Gemini Advanced subscribers, promises improved factuality and stronger performance for coding and mathematics tasks, though it lacks some features like real-time information access.
Skynet Chance (+0.04%): Google's low-key release of a more capable model with "unexpected behaviors" indicates continued advancement of powerful AI systems with potential unpredictability, though the limited release to paid subscribers provides some control over distribution.
Skynet Date (-1 days): The rapid iteration mentality expressed by Google and the competitive pressure from Chinese AI startups like DeepSeek are likely accelerating the development and deployment timelines for increasingly powerful AI systems.
AGI Progress (+0.03%): The improved factuality and enhanced capabilities in complex domains like coding and mathematics represent meaningful progress toward more generally capable AI systems, though the incremental nature and limited details suggest this is an evolutionary rather than revolutionary advancement.
AGI Date (-1 days): Google's explicit mention of "rapid iteration" and the competitive pressure from DeepSeek are driving faster model development cycles, potentially shortening the timeline to AGI by accelerating capability improvements in mathematical reasoning and coding.