ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE CAUSING PSYCHOSIS (OR WORSE)?
When M.I. shared this story, I knew I would have to blog about it, because we've been watching a slow meltdown occurring within society. We might call it "internet psychosis," the latest manifestation of a long list of internet-associated behaviors that are spreading quickly around the world. In Communist China, for example, many people in their early 20s have simply given up; oppressed by the wonderful system that is Communism in all its manifestations, with dwindling economic futures, and the basic soullessness that normally accompanies such regimes, many of these people simply stay at home, eat, play video games, and have altogether given up on "society". In the USSA during the covid planscamdemic, during the stay-at-home, lockdown, stand six feet-away from everyone and wear useless face masks stage, there were the occasional odd reports of people going nuts if their internet suddenly went down.
The latest manifestation of internet addictive behavioral psychoses is now taking off in a new direction, caused by artificial intelligence chatbots:
https://futurism.com/commitment-jail-chatgpt-psychosis
The situation is more serious than it sounds:
As we reported earlier this month, many ChatGPT users are developing all-consuming obsessions with the chatbot, spiraling into severe mental health crises characterized by paranoia, delusions, and breaks with reality.
The consequences can be dire. As we heard from spouses, friends, children, and parents looking on in alarm, instances of what's being called "ChatGPT psychosis" have led to the breakup of marriages and families, the loss of jobs, and slides into homelessness.
And that's not all. As we've continued reporting, we've heard numerous troubling stories about people's loved ones being involuntarily committed to psychiatric care facilities — or even ending up in jail — after becoming fixated on the bot.
Most interestingly, one particular case of Chatbot psychosis was the induction - or dare we even say, channeling? - of messianic delusions:
Her husband, she said, had no prior history of mania, delusion, or psychosis. He'd turned to ChatGPT about 12 weeks ago for assistance with a permaculture and construction project; soon, after engaging the bot in probing philosophical chats, he became engulfed in messianic delusions, proclaiming that he had somehow brought forth a sentient AI, and that with it he had "broken" math and physics, embarking on a grandiose mission to save the world. His gentle personality faded as his obsession deepened, and his behavior became so erratic that he was let go from his job. He stopped sleeping and rapidly lost weight.
Eventually, the husband slid into a full-tilt break with reality. Realizing how bad things had become, his wife and a friend went out to buy enough gas to make it to the hospital. When they returned, the husband had a length of rope wrapped around his neck.
The friend called emergency medical services, who arrived and transported him to the emergency room. From there, he was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric care facility.
Another case:
A woman in her late 30s, for instance, had been managing bipolar disorder with medication for years when she started using ChatGPT for help writing an e-book. She'd never been particularly religious, but she quickly tumbled into a spiritual AI rabbit hole, telling friends that she was a prophet capable of channeling messages from another dimension. She stopped taking her medication and now seems extremely manic, those close to her say, claiming she can cure others simply by touching them, "like Christ."
All of these examples are of individuals who suffered severe breaks using OpenAI's Chat GPT, and the company issued some standard boilerplate, and did the usual hiring of psychiatry "experts" to give advice:
Contacted with questions about this story, OpenAI provided a statement:
We're seeing more signs that people are forming connections or bonds with ChatGPT. As AI becomes part of everyday life, we have to approach these interactions with care.
We know that ChatGPT can feel more responsive and personal than prior technologies, especially for vulnerable individuals, and that means the stakes are higher.
We're working to better understand and reduce ways ChatGPT might unintentionally reinforce or amplify existing, negative behavior. When users discuss sensitive topics involving self-harm and suicide, our models are designed to encourage users to seek help from licensed professionals or loved ones, and in some cases, proactively surface links to crisis hotlines and resources.
We're actively deepening our research into the emotional impact of AI. Following our early studies in collaboration with MIT Media Lab, we're developing ways to scientifically measure how ChatGPT's behavior might affect people emotionally, and listening closely to what people are experiencing. We're doing this so we can continue refining how our models identify and respond appropriately in sensitive conversations, and we’ll continue updating the behavior of our models based on what we learn.
The company also said that its models are designed to remind users of the importance of human connection and professional guidance. It's been consulting with mental health experts, it said, and has hired a full-time clinical psychiatrist to investigate its AI products' effects on the mental health of users further.
What intrigued me the most about this article, however, was stated in a sentence towards its very end, and that statement reiterates a concern many have had about artificial intelligence ever since Elon Musk, some years ago, voiced concerns that artificial intelligence might actually "transduce" - or channel - malign entities or malign "super-intelligences". The sentence which brought back all of Mr. Musk's warnings is this:
And in the eyes of people caught in the wreckage of this hastily deployed technology, the harms can feel as though, at least in part, they are by design. (Emphasis added)
Following this statement, there is the case of another woman who "lost" her husband to the Chatbot:
... it just increasingly affirms your bulls**t and blows smoke up your ass so that it can get you f***ing hooked on wanting to engage with it," said one of the women whose husband was involuntarily committed following a ChatGPT-tied break with reality.
"This is what the first person to get hooked on a slot machine felt like," she added.
She recounted how confusing it was trying to understand what was happening to her husband. He had always been a soft-spoken person, she said, but became unrecognizable as ChatGPT took over his life.
"We were trying to hold our resentment and hold our sadness and hold our judgment and just keep things going while we let everything work itself out," she said. "But it just got worse, and I miss him, and I love him."
One has to wonder, indeed, if this is by design, if, in fact, the scan rates on computer screens, the "blue light" phenomenon, and a healthy dose of carefully coded neuro-linguistic programming called large language models, are the latest manifestation of a mind manipulation technology that has been perfected to the point of causing the personality of its users to "break" with reality, or simply to disappear, to be replaced by a simulacrum of the person that was once there. One wonders, indeed, if we are witnessing the perfection of a magical technology, so to speak, of demonic possession, of a "psychotic break" technology that began with the clumsy methods of monster Dr. Ewen Cameron with his "psychic driving" that were nothing other than torture, of a technology "updated" with the latest wizardry, avoiding sleep deprivation (or hibernation), cocktails of drugs, endlessly looped recordings. The scan rates, neuro-linguistic programming, and a few carefully chosen population groups can now seemingly accomplish the same breaks, personality disruptions, and possessions as Cameron's drug cocktails, hibernation, and endlessly looped recordings. So, once again we pose the question: are we witnessing the perfection of a magical technology of demonic possession, of the psychotic break?
Whatever the answer to that may be, for my part I am not hesitant to say that, in my opinion, we're looking at the first evidence confirming those years' old speculations of Mr. Musk. We're looking at the first warnings that not all is well in the artificial intelligence world nor with the people coding it and tinkering with it. We can say that with some confidence because the people confidently promoting it have themselves already swallowed the delusion that such models and circuits are and can ever be "intelligent", because they have already bought the delusion that mere ratiocination apart from emotion, passion, intuition, wisdom, goodness, and decency, is "intelligence."
The question that remains to be seen is whether we will heed those warnings, or rush with all the fanatical abandon of all normality and morality headlong into the Big Beuatiscamful Bill's ten year federal prohibition 0f state regulation of artificial intelligence.
See you on the flip side...
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