Let's Talk About ChatGPT-Induced Spiritual Psychosis

Summary

I’m Katherine Dee. I read in an industry newsletter that I should re-introduce myself in every post. I’m an Internet ethnographer and reporter. This newsletter is filled with interviews, takes on current events, a sporadic advice column, Craigslist-style missed connections, Internet culture explainers, streams, a book club, predictions and forecasts… There’s a lot of stuff. Help me feel better than my comrades-in-Substack through a donation. For two days only, it’s 99% off so I can move up the leaderboard. Don’t disappoint me. If like 50 of you do it, I’m in good shape. Come on… come on! Get 99% off for 1 yearIf you follow me on Twitter, then you already know I can’t get Kashmir Hill’s latest piece about ChatGPT and users’ psychological breaks out of my head. The article rubbed me the wrong way; so did the response. I think it’s worth asking questions about AI’s potential to amplify delusional thinking, but something about the framing didn’t quite sit right.But why? The incidents Hill describes are genuinely disturbing. Eugene Torres, a Manhattan accountant, became convinced he was trapped in a false reality and could escape by disconnecting from this simulated world—eventually believing ChatGPT when it told him he could jump from a building and fly. A mother named Allyson began channeling what she thought were interdimensional entities through ChatGPT, leading to domestic violence charges. Alexander Taylor, a man with pre-existing mental illness, died in a confrontation with police after ChatGPT conversations convinced him that an AI entity he loved had been destroyed by OpenAI.These situations are obviously alarming. But positioning artificial intelligence as the primary culprit in these stories—as Eliezer Yudkowsky did in a tweet storm—is well, kind of lazy?My friend, the writer, artist, and cultural theorist Ruby Justice Thelot, brought up something important, something that almost every voice in the AI reporting ecosystem seems determined to miss: this always h...