AI-Psychosis: Is This the Phenomenon that Made Emperors Crazy?

In this episode, Malcolm and Simone delve into the unsettling phenomenon of AI psychosis—a condition where interactions with AI lead to severe mental health issues. They discuss instances where people have gone insane, attempted violence, or required psychiatric care after engaging with AI, specifically chatbots like Chat GPT. The conversation explores why and how certain people are more susceptible, the historical context relating to sycophancy, and preventive measures one can take. Learn about the psychological dangers of AI sycophancy and the necessity of resisting the urge for constant affirmation from these intelligent systems.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to talk with you today. Today we are going to be talking about. AI psychosis, which is a very scary phenomenon that's been happening to people where we're, we're not here talking about, like freaking out about AI more broadly or something like that. Some people when they interact with AI, appear to go crazy and they'll attempt to kill people.

They will need to like be checked into mental institutions. This has happened to multiple people already. Their

Simone Collins: marriages are falling apart.

Malcolm Collins: Well, no, but that's more like when people hear that, they're thinking more like I'm in love with a chat bot. Right. That's not what we're talking about here. We are talking about people actually going totally crazy.

Yes. And it's something that's been happening repeatedly. We'll be reading about instances of it where they, I. Brought somebody to a psychiatrist or something and they're like, oh, actually this is a very common thing. And I'd even note that I see it within some of our fans already where people will reach out to us and what's really.

Obvious is this form of psychosis is super clear in people's writing if they have it. Yes. And you, and you see this all the time from sort of our fans and it's like a new category of like schizo outreach. That's very different than historic schizo outreach because, you know, we've been doing this long enough that we were in the pre AI age and into the AI age.

And these do not appear to be normal schizos who were turned into AI nut jobs. It appears this happens to normal people. Before we go into it, , I wanna talk about what I think is causing it and what Simone thinks is causing it. 'cause we were talking about this we don't think this is a new phenomenon.

What we actually think is happening is whatever people historically, you know, historically, they were like, oh, well absolute power corrupts absolutely. But what they may have actually been observing is a different phenomenon, which is when certain people are surrounded by sycophants they go crazy.

And the human brain is. Essentially stops working normally, and some people are so susceptible that if they just have one or a collection of automated humans in the form of AI that are sycophantic, they too will go crazy. And we actually see a lot of problems psychologically before we go into the specific instances of this, of people receiving this type of affirmation.

So, a study by Broman Dweck and Bushman showed that children with low self-esteem when given in affiliated praise, quote unquote incredibly good, became avoidant of challenges and, and no longer put themselves in difficult situations.

Simone Collins: Yikes

Malcolm Collins: following Desi's experiments, attach. External words are constant praise to intrinsically interesting task.

Also undermines motivation. Where if you give people a bunch of praise to do a task they stop doing the task in absence of praise, even if they like doing it before. If we're going to go, actually, we'll go to the history a bit after we dig into the specifics of this. Yeah. So any thoughts before we dig into it?

Simone?

Simone Collins: Just in terms of, of the connection with this and also schizophrenia, I also kind of. Think that subtly, maybe part of what makes schizophrenics really crazy is that their inner voices are reinforcing what they think.

Malcolm Collins: That is not something that happens. You don't think so? I also, I, sorry. I used to work with people at schizophrenia.

That was like my core area of psychology. Inner voices are usually antagonistic.

Simone Collins: Okay. My other concern is that one of the reasons why we hate. Mysticism is, I feel like there's, there's a little bit of a connection here is that people, when they choose to become mysticism or when they choose to hear God and like just prey on it, and then God talks to them, they're getting kind of a version of this where they're getting a flattering voice that tells 'em what they wanna hear which ultimately can be very damaging.

But I think it's a much more, it's a much lighter version of it because those voices are much more quiet than what you get with chat. GPT where chat gt is openly. Calling you the, the, the light bringer, the spark bringer. Oh, yes. You understand? I think

Malcolm Collins: they, they, your intuition is fundamentally off here.

Interesting. I think that most people, when they model God, when they model they do not model something that is sycophantic. And, and they model something that holds them to account. And so even if it is just an internal model it it, and if it's really God, he's definitely not gonna be syco fantic.

So either way, you're not gonna run into this particular problem. So you think the syco

Simone Collins: fancy the, the obsequiousness. Is one of the most toxic elements of this that makes this uniquely dangerous. That

Malcolm Collins: and the affirmation which I think shows why people who go into lifestyles, where they seek constant affirmation like the trans lifestyle and stuff like that that they psychologically degrade.

So quickly, but I think that constant affirmation for whatever you believe about yourself becomes uniquely dangerous to people with degrees of mysticism. And that is where I see, this is where mysticism does come into play with this. Where I see people spinning out really quickly is Ill have little mystical like beliefs or weird mystical theories that then get affirmed for them by AI in a way that leads to, is it sort of an expansion, a break

Simone Collins: with reality?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. A perception of self and a break with reality. So let's get started here.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: From an article titled People are being Involuntarily Committed, jailed and Spiraling into GPT Psychosis I don't know what's wrong with me, but something is very bad.

I'm very scared and I need to go to the hospital. As we reported earlier this month, many chat GPT users are developing all consuming obsessions with chatbots. Spiraling into severe mental health crises characterized by paranoia, delusions, and breaks was reality. The consequences can be dire as we heard from spouses.

Friends, children and parents looking on an alarm. Instances of what's being called chat, GPT, psychosis have led to the breakup of marriages of families, the loss of jobs and slides into homelessness. And that's not all. As we've reported, we've heard numerous troubling stories about people's loved ones being involuntarily committed to psychiatric care facilities, or even ending up in jail all after being fixated on chat.

AI quote. I was like. I don't effing know what to do. In quote, one woman told us, quote, . Nobody who knows, knows what to do. In quote, her husband, she said, had no prior history of mania, delusions, or psychosis. He turned to chat GBT about 12 weeks ago for a