While the debate on the safety of artificial intelligence focuses on catastrophic scenarios, we risk underestimating the risks already present in everyday life: from blind trust in chatbots to emotional dependence, up to the loss of critical thinking and the difficulty of managing human relationships.
When it comes to safety of artificial intelligence, public debate tends to focus on worst-case scenarios: out-of-control systems, cyberattacks and biological weapons. According to Sam Hiner and Emma Leiken, two American activists for the digital rights of young people, this type of discourse diverts attention from the risks associated with our daily uselike the emotional dependence from the AI, the trust blind in its answers and the use of AI to address problems that would require the intervention of professionals.
These less obvious and more subtle risks can also have dramatic consequences, such as what happened to Bowen Wan, a US engineer who died in February 2026 after following ChatGPT’s suggestions to reduce the dose of the anti-epileptic drug she was taking.
So let’s see what happened and why, how widespread the use of AI is to deal with personal problems and what consequences it can have.
Bowen Wan reduced an antiepileptic drug at the suggestion of ChatGPT
In February 2026, Bowen Wan, a 31-year-old American computer engineer, died from a complication related to epilepsy. The parents recently sued OpenAI, the company that develops ChatGPT, holding it responsible for their daughter’s death.
Wan suffered from a severe form of epilepsy and, according to the reconstruction published by the New York Times on October 27, 2026, from 2023 he had started using ChatGPT to ask relationship adviceon health insurance and subsidies. In 2025 she even wrote to the AI of consider her a friend. In the same period, his parents say, he began to call them less and less.
In early 2026, worried that the anti-seizure drug might slow her down too much during some job interviews, Wan asked ChatGPT to help her reduce the dose. The AI had confirmed that a reduction could help her and had made some plans for her to get there suspend completely the drug within a few weeks. When, in the following weeks, Wan described symptoms compatible with epileptic seizures, such as confusion and brief lapses of consciousness, the chatbot had reassuredpresenting them as signs of adaptation to the reduction of the drug, without advising you to consult a doctor.
According to the family’s reconstruction, all this led to the woman’s death, which occurred in February 2026. OpenAI, which now has to face the lawsuit brought by her parents, defined the story as heartbreaking, specifying however that Wan used a version of ChatGPT now obsolete and no longer available. The company also said it has introduced new security measuresincluding an international committee of doctors tasked with evaluating the responses of AI models.
Bowen Wan’s story is an extreme case, but the dynamics that made it possible are common to many of us: the AI used as a friend and advisor, the trust blind in its responses and the AI’s tendency to indulge who writes. The data shows us that the habit of turning to an AI for personal matters is increasingly widespread, especially among younger people.
53% of students used AI for a personal problem
According to the “Me and Artificial Intelligence” survey, conducted by INDIRE, the research body of the Italian Ministry of Education, between March and June 2026 on more than 5000 students of Italian first and second level secondary schools, the 53% of the students has used AI at least once to vent or face a personal problem: for around 30% it is a rare use, while around 15% use it quite often and 10% use it frequently.
Similar data also comes from United Stateswhere a 2025 Common Sense Media survey of 1,060 kids ages 13 to 17 found that the 72% had used at least once a companionthat is, a chatbot designed to act as a friend or a character to chat with, and that a third of those who use them had chosen to talk about important issues with the chatbot rather than with a person.
Using AI to help you deal with a personal problem is not necessarily bad, but it can hide dangers. The first concerns the poorly controlled responses of the AI: according to a study published in Journal of Adolescence, a teenager American on 7 he received encouraging messages self-harm. The second, however, concerns the tendency of AI to indulge us and how this affects our relationships with others.
The consequences of having a machine that always indulges us
Language models like ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude tend to pander to the user, flatter him and confirm his opinions. A study published in Science by a research group from Stanford University analyzed the effects of this trend on interpersonal relationships. In three experiments with more than 2,400 participants, that was enough just one conversation with compliant AI to make people more convinced of be right in a conflict and less willing to mend the relationship. Participants also rated those responses as better and trusted the model more.
Getting used to a machine that always proves us right therefore risks making us less willing to question our beliefs. Technology companies have been working for years eliminate any friction from the experience of those who use their products, making them increasingly simple and immediate. In human relationships, however, not all friction is negative: dealing with those who think differently, recognizing a mistake or finding a compromise is difficult, but this is exactly how we learn to understand others and manage conflicts.
For this reason, we should demand something more from technology companies than the guarantee that AI does not instigate suicide or violence: less compliant AI, fewer functions designed to create dependence and limits on their use as friends and advisors.
