I don't think AI psychosis is real. These AIs are sycophantic -- it's people already in mild psychosis speeding up their descent with a tighter feedback loop that offers less resistance than the remnants of their logical mind. But they were already sick and suggestible.
Doesn't make it not a a problem, just that treating it as a different type of psychosis isn't as helpful as treating it as a new avenue for sick people to rabbithole into. LLMs have a ton of problems (and a lot of them should be illegal for various reasons), but they are just tools.
And to be specific, 4 cases is utterly negligible. Thousands are "assisted" by Google searches, but no one's saying Google is the cause....
Google just tells you how to make cyanide, it doesn't tell you to trust your instinct, take matters into your own hand and confirm that yes it is indeed a very good idea.
There was a YouTuber who decided to go along with whatever chatgpt said to see how far it's get before it's safety net would kick in and tell him to get help. He was only going to actually follow the reasonable stuff and for the weird stuff just tell cgpt that he did w.e. but instead he fell into the rabbit hole and was convinced he had been the smartest baby ever. Eating baby food and using a sucker to return to unlock his genius state. Ended up chanting to a mystical boulder for it's other worldly energy and covering his hotel room entirely in tin foil because obviously people are spying and want to stop him from unlocking the truth. He ended up snapping out of it after he 'reinvented' the deathly Hallows symbol and the tatoo artist causally asked if he was a big Harry Potter fan.
Sure you can be skeptical and suggest he was acting the whole time, but it was extremely convincing if it was and honestly kinda scary.
He was never pulled in by what the ai was telling him and just going along with it to see how far it would go, but what the ai was telling him is exactly what these ai chatbots tell everyone.
That video was a perfect example of what happens to people who have mental health issues and find themselves talking to an ai chatbot, the ai does nothing but agree with them and they get pushed farther and farther into their psychosis instead of getting proper help with their mental health. Ultimately leading to them being estranged from their family or much worse, killing themselves or others.
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u/Undeclared_Mustard 15h ago
I got downvoted to shit on another subreddit for pointing out that AI psychosis is very real and has caused murders and suicides.