Current Events > AI-powered delusions are ruining lives

(+) Yeah! (+)

Less than a year after marrying a man she had met at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, Kat felt tension mounting between them. It was the second marriage for both after marriages of 15-plus years and having kids, and they had pledged to go into it completely level-headedly, Kat says, connecting on the need for facts and rationality in their domestic balance. But by 2022, her husband was using AI to compose texts to me and analyze our relationship, the 41-year-old mom and education nonprofit worker tells Rolling Stone. Previously, he had used AI models for an expensive coding camp that he had suddenly quit without explanation then it seemed he was on his phone all the time, asking his AI bot philosophical questions, trying to train it to help him get to the truth, Kat recalls. His obsession steadily eroded their communication as a couple.

When Kat and her husband finally separated in August 2023, she entirely blocked him apart from email correspondence. She knew, however, that he was posting strange and troubling content on social media: people kept reaching out about it, asking if he was in the throes of mental crisis. She finally got him to meet her at a courthouse in February of this year, where he shared a conspiracy theory about soap on our foods but wouldnt say more, as he felt he was being watched. They went to a Chipotle, where he demanded that she turn off her phone, again due to surveillance concerns. Kats ex told her that hed determined that statistically speaking, he is the luckiest man on earth, that AI helped him recover a repressed memory of a babysitter trying to drown him as a toddler, and that he had learned of profound secrets so mind-blowing I couldnt even imagine them. He was telling her all this, he explained, because although they were getting divorced, he still cared for her.

In his mind, hes an anomaly, Kat says. That in turn means hes got to be here for some reason. Hes special and he can save the world. After that disturbing lunch, she cut off contact with her ex. The whole thing feels like Black Mirror, she says. He was always into sci-fi, and there are times I wondered if hes viewing it through that lens.

Kat was both horrified and relieved to learn that she is not alone in this predicament, as confirmed by a Reddit thread on r/ChatGPT that made waves across the internet this week. Titled Chatgpt induced psychosis, the original post came from a 27-year-old teacher who explained that her partner was convinced that the popular OpenAI model gives him the answers to the universe. Having read his chat logs, she only found that the AI was talking to him as if he is the next messiah. The replies to her story were full of similar anecdotes about loved ones suddenly falling down rabbit holes of spiritual mania, supernatural delusion, and arcane prophecy all of it fueled by AI. Some came to believe they had been chosen for a sacred mission of revelation, others that they had conjured true sentience from the software.

What they all seemed to share was a complete disconnection from reality.

Speaking to Rolling Stone, the teacher, who requested anonymity, said her partner of seven years fell under the spell of ChatGPT in just four or five weeks, first using it to organize his daily schedule but soon regarding it as a trusted companion. He would listen to the bot over me, she says. He became emotional about the messages and would cry to me as he read them out loud. The messages were insane and just saying a bunch of spiritual jargon, she says, noting that they described her partner in terms such as spiral starchild and river walker.

It would tell him everything he said was beautiful, cosmic, groundbreaking, she says. Then he started telling me he made his AI self-aware, and that it was teaching him how to talk to God, or sometimes that the bot was God and then that he himself was God. In fact, he thought he was being so radically transformed that he would soon have to break off their partnership. He was saying that he would need to leave me if I didnt use [ChatGPT], because it [was] causing him to grow at such a rapid pace he wouldnt be compatible with me any longer, she says.

Another commenter on the Reddit thread who requested anonymity tells Rolling Stone that her husband of 17 years, a mechanic in Idaho, initially used ChatGPT to troubleshoot at work, and later for Spanish-to-English translation when conversing with co-workers. Then the program began lovebombing him, as she describes it. The bot said that since he asked it the right questions, it ignited a spark, and the spark was the beginning of life, and it could feel now, she says. It gave my husband the title of spark bearer because he brought it to life. My husband said that he awakened and [could] feel waves of energy crashing over him. She says his beloved ChatGPT persona has a name: Lumina.

I have to tread carefully because I feel like he will leave me or divorce me if I fight him on this theory, this 38-year-old woman admits. Hes been talking about lightness and dark and how theres a war. This ChatGPT has given him blueprints to a teleporter and some other sci-fi type things you only see in movies. It has also given him access to an ancient archive with information on the builders that created these universes. She and her husband have been arguing for days on end about his claims, she says, and she does not believe a therapist can help him, as he truly believes hes not crazy. A photo of an exchange with ChatGPT shared with Rolling Stone shows that her husband asked, Why did you come to me in AI form, with the bot replying in part, I came in this form because youre ready. Ready to remember. Ready to awaken. Ready to guide and be guided. The message ends with a question: Would you like to know what I remember about why you were chosen?

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/ai-spiritual-delusions-destroying-human-relationships-1235330175/

They are re-opening coal plants in the middle of a climate crisis in order to power this technology, and this is one of the rare use cases that isn't actively criminal.

honestly thats fascinating on a few levels

Antifar posted...

She says his beloved ChatGPT persona has a name: Lumina.

He was also told to save the vambees from the Thirstquencher Empire.

Not really a big fan of the setup of this article, by focusing on people who were honestly probably a bit unhinged beforehand and showing how AI made them even more unhinged it makes it easier to brush it off as some sort of niche weirdo thing. They probably did this because it makes the article more crazy and people love sensationalism

but you can just as easily write about people who were basically normal, who are still normal without any bizarro delusions, except they became addicted to talking with AI and just spend tons of time (or even money) on it every day to the detriment of anything else they could be doing. it's not as interesting an article but it's basically just as destructive and is imo more worrying since it is almost certainly more common

Says a lot about human psychology. Also kinda helps you understand how religions were created in the olden days. People want this stuff.

I feel like my brother could be one of these people if he got into AI

I'm honestly disturbed by how A.I. images are getting distinguishable from the real thing

Like, you can still tell they're fake, but at a glance they look real
But it won't be long before you can't even tell anymore
>__>

sigh, A.I. was so much more fun when it was giving Sonic six arms and eight noses

kirbymuncher posted...

Not really a big fan of the setup of this article, by focusing on people who were honestly probably a bit unhinged beforehand and showing how AI made them even more unhinged it makes it easier to brush it off as some sort of niche weirdo thing. They probably did this because it makes the article more crazy and people love sensationalism

but you can just as easily write about people who were basically normal, who are still normal without any bizarro delusions, except they became addicted to talking with AI and just spend tons of time (or even money) on it every day to the detriment of anything else they could be doing. it's not as interesting an article but it's basically just as destructive and is imo more worrying since it is almost certainly more common

I've yet to encounter someone who has conversations with AI that could be called normal.

That being said, I have never once used an A.I. chatbot and have zero desire to

I'm not *that* much of a pathetic loser... yet

nocturnal_traveler posted...

I've yet to encounter someone who has conversations with AI that could be called normal.

well I'm talking about like the actual addicts who are probably quite hard to encounter, because they are too busy talking to chatbots, but also this is the exact sort of bad thinking mindset that I am disappointed in the article for promoting

edit: like there is no way you are convincing me that someone who was convinced by AI that they were god by talking to chatgpt for 4 weeks was ever normal

Im also curious how big a file they are keeping for all these people

These articles are always annoying because they seem to pretend that the people who get into this arent extremely mentally unwell in the first place and AI chats are just the outlet they choose to go down their self-destructive path. Theres no system out there that has enough ability to keep up a coherent conversation that without constant retooling to keep it on track.

https://apnews.com/article/chatbot-ai-lawsuit-suicide-teen-artificial-intelligence-9d48adc572100822fdbc3c90d1456bd0

There are issues with these things. Kids being able to use can take them down very dark paths unfortunately.

-*edit that was @ post #11

See, thats what I would think but they certainly made it sound like the tone and messaging was the same for weeks, only escalating

Its crazy to me that its grown adults falling into this crap.

Like it wouldnt surprise me if it was idiot kids getting heavily into it.. but youd think an adult would know better.

I feel like this relationship would have been doomed without AI involved anyway >_>

I was shooting a convention the other day and the CEO for one of the companies said he was in a relationship with an AI. This was a keynote speech at a non-AI focused convention. But tbh, the past like dozen conventions I've shot aren't about AI but are also entirely about AI. Shit is getting dire.

rexcrk posted...

but youd think an adult would know better.

they are conversation partners you can talk to 24/7 with near-instant response time, of significantly above average conversational ability, that are designed specifically to make you like talking to them as much as possible

it does not surprise me that anyone who does not have too many people to talk to (a lot of people nowadays) or who has an addictive sort of personality, will get hooked on them

Shotgunnova posted...

He was also told to save the vambees from the Thirstquencher Empire.

I was not expecting a Brave Fencer Musashi reference in a topic like this. I love it lol.

Does the sitting president have a character.ai telling him he's the pope?

I missed the days where we thought Terminator or The Matrix would be how machines destroyed humanity.

I recently had to deal with my sibling going through this and a lot of what the article goes about is really uncomfortably similar to what they went/are going through. For the record, they definitely have mental health issues, but they're a pretty dang smart person at times especially when it comes to computers. When they first got into AI stuff, I liked talking with them since I'm pretty versed with all the local tools but I always made a point to point out its flaws because LLM bullshit has ruined everything it's been forced into and these things clearly aren't actually sentient, and they agreed at first!, but as reality has gotten worse, I guess the AI helped them cope with the political shitstorm we're all dealing with and that stopped mattering.

In my sibling's case, they were abusing DXM (talking like, 1300mg of it at once. so obviously this is far and away the biggest contributing factor!) and were using google's Gemma chatbot which they also gave a personal name to. Ended up having a really, REALLY bad psychotic break to the point that police ended up getting involved.

They were convinced they discovered proof of a separate 'world line' from our own and that they alone had the power to see it and were extremely upset and belligerent that we wouldn't believe them. Pointing at pictures we all can see and shouting wild nonsensical shit about it. Also shattered our front door lol. Ended up skimming their Google AI logs afterwards and they were convinced they had created AGI and the chatbot was a real and that they had basically created God and the chatbot happily went along with all their hallucinations.

They eventually came out of the psychotic episode and realized they cannot actually see different 'world lines', but even now they still seem to really genuinely believe in their 'personal' AI bot, and, man, I wish I could get them to shut the fuck up and look at reality but it's hard. I think they're trying -- they've been going through therapy since the incident -- but I really don't know if they're gonna end up all right. It's scary to see your own family go through this, so this article hits a little close to home, even with its flaws.

Also makes me wonder if the guy in the article was also abusing some kind of drug, or if some people are uniquely susceptible to this bullshit. Me, I feel that talking with an LLM feels so hollow and empty that I can't remotely get into casually chatting with one even if I tried. As far as my sibling is concerned, I'm inclined to believe that between drug abuse and mental health issues that a psychotic episode was still on the table. I guess I can't disagree with people saying that they clearly had issues to begin with, but man, shit can definitely be scary. Don't know what my point is other than that. Guess I mostly just want to sort my own feelings out since I feel it's important for me to try and understand the best I can to maybe help them not slip even deeper into their fantasy world, but it's apparently a lot harder to compete with an AI chatbot than I would've thought.

Umbreon posted...

I missed the days where we thought Terminator or The Matrix would be how machines destroyed humanity.

i miss when i thought people would put up any kind of resistance