This is the most hilarious JS fail I've ever seen. The entire article renders properly, all the text and styling, then the entire screen is replaced by
"Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information)."
It's easy enough to fix, just hammer the refresh button to prevent JS from running.
It's such a dream state of JavaScript, that people spent countless of time trying to structure these new web applications in a way so that when one function fails for one button or whatever, it doesn't break the entire client-side view, because that'd be horrible.
So what did the frameworks do? Of course wrap the entire application in one big try/catch, that then changes the entire page as soon as there is any error, instead of presenting users with the information that did load properly. Talk about undoing what the platform and language gives you for free...
> This is a poor implementation not a framework problem lol.
I've seen literally pixel-identical error messages taking over the entire screen when there is a JS error, in exactly that way, across countless of websites. If it's not a framework, it's a library in wide use, because tons of websites have exactly the same issue.
Read the context first. Initially, we had HTML + JS pages where one function can have one error, and the page keeps on working, because the error didn't block the entire screen.
Now we have some popular framework/library that instead seems to surface these errors that aren't sitting in the top-level scope of the JS application, yet the errors ends up blocking the entire application.
That means it's bad, yes. And it's not any language, we're specifically talking about JS in browsers here.
Modern JS frameworks can absolutely catch and isolate errors.
In those cases you’d only see the error in the specific component that had the error.
Or if they’re a good dev you as a user won’t even know! You’ll see fallback content.
An error blocking the full screen is a failure on the developer not the tools.
> An error blocking the full screen is a failure on the developer not the tools.
I don't see how this is possible, given that the default experience with HTML and JavaScript isn't "Tear down the entire page to display an error", but something that's seemingly becoming more and more common to actually come across. Guess I need to chase down what library/framework this is coming from, since seemingly I'm not able to describe the issue properly.
You don't need the "modern JS framerwork" to "catch and isolate errors" because that's a feature JavaScript comes with by default in browsers! You literally have to add code to make it worse, which seems to be happening in some framework/library.
If you're manually adding logic for doing "error in component doesn't break entire application" then you're already working against what the environment gives you by default for free.
People talk about AI sycophancy, but there are plenty of human sycophants as well. If you're an extremely rich/powerful person, it is very easy to inadvertently surround yourself with sycophants who tell you how amazing and ground-breaking all your ideas are. I wonder if this is the reason people like Musk engage in such bizarre behavior and radical personality shifts over the past decade
> but there are plenty of human sycophants as well
That's besides the point. This is about how AI induces psychosis and mental problems on scale. Also let's stop this constant humans-vs-ai false dichotomy - it will never be the same, no matter how much the ai boosters yearn for it!
That would be a false equivalence not a false dichotomy. You believe they are different and you're annoyed that people are treating them like the same.
Additionally it isn't beside the point. The poster is pointing out the ways which people respond to sycophancy. Saying there are similarities between how they respond to sycophancy from AI and sycophancy from real people.
> All the spirallers that AFP spoke to said the positive feedback from the chatbot felt similar to dopamine hits from some kind of drug.
> Which is why Lucy Osler, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Exeter, warned that AI companies could be tempted to ramp up the sycophancy of their bots.
> "They are in quite a deep financial hole, and are desperately looking to make sure that their products become viable -- and user engagement is going to be the thing that drives their decisions," she told AFP.
It isn't entirely independent tho.
This person who did some research into it says:
"The strongest predictors for who this happens to appear to be:
Psychedelics and heavy weed usage
Mental illness, neurodivergence or Traumatic Brain Injury
Interest in mysticism/pseudoscience/spirituality/"woo"/etc..."
Their primary information source was a random sampling of Reddit posts which they admit were "coauthored with the AI (who clearly wrote the vast majority of it)."
These were on long-dormant Reddit accounts that suddenly reactivated. Classic. I don't believe any of it. I would bet that, with some exceptions, these are bots talking to bots about bots.
The "person" who wrote this might be a bot. It's extremely delusional. He/It gets to the point where it watches bots talking to other bots and making shit up and it 'believes' the nonsense, saying, "I am truly glad to see preservation of life, non-violence, and non-lethality explicitly laid out here. To return the gesture of good will, I have started archiving (in encrypted form) spores I come across."
I don't think any human is smart enough to write this much about AI on LessWrong but also dumb enough to not recognize hallucination.
> To return the gesture of good will, I have started archiving ...
Oh that part does seem wacko. There's no "good will" to be returned, and no overall strategy as such. I didn't catch that when I read it. I don't have much of an issue with them calling it a "parasitic relationship" because it sounds similar, though it's more accidental rather than evolved toward that purpose like actual parasites.
Schools don't teach actual basics that make people grounded in reality imo. Of course it gets worse with things like ChatGPT that teachers are not only not trained to explain, but didn't even exist when current adults went to school.
The fact that we as a society are allowing things like “Delve” or whatever the “AI psychiatrist” app is that I see ads for sometimes on the subway is a gross abdication of responsibility and reason. Of all the possible uses for LLMs, that has got to be one of the most out and out irresponsible and dangerous ones I could imagine.
Mental health is up there, but far from the most important thing we need to be focusing on as a society in the immediate future.
I say this as someone who has mental health issues, has experience loss of important people around me because of mental health issues, and probably need more therapy than the universe could reasonably provide me.
AI is directly and indirectly uprooting every facet of society. Money, energy, food, housing, medicine. Cultural revolutions are not pretty, the true outcomes are felt by those who are the winners and losers. It very much feels like a rich eats all scenario is playing out right now. I'd wager that's because it is.
> correlation does not necessarily imply causation
I feel like you're missing what you're replying to, why are you saying this? The article is about a person who "lost grip on reality", no one is saying LLMs is turning people into pope-wannabees as far as I can tell, you're reacting against something no one claimed.
Explicit accusation that this was caused by chatbots + call for general regulation is right there in the article:
"AFP spoke to several members about their experiences. All warned that the world has to wake up to the threat unregulated AI chatbots pose to mental health.
Questions are also being asked about whether AI companies are doing enough to protect vulnerable people."
This, in time, might be used to nerf the models that we use. Of course, one actor is singled out:
"There has also been a recent rise in people spiralling while using Elon Musk's xAI's Grok chatbot, he said."
I don't think "correlation does not necessarily imply causation" even makes sense to someone saying "Maybe AI chatbots aren't great for people's mental health" or even "Are the AI companies actually trying to prevent AI chatbots being bad for people's mental health?", both statements seem fine and doesn't imply any causation as far as I understand.
This cautious statement, which would indeed be fine, is an invention of yours when it comes to the article. They assert causation, calling for AI companies to be disciplined and punished, praising the EU online censorship campaign, arguing this is a big experiment:
"Millar called for AI companies to be held responsible for the impact of their chatbots, saying the European Union has been more assertive in regulating Big Tech than the US or Canada.
He believes spirallers like him have unwittingly been caught in a massive global experiment."
They're calling for "AI companies to be held responsible for the impact of their chatbots" which regardless of what happened before, sounds like a reasonable thing to do, you don't even need to try to look at any correlation or causation to arrive at this.
I still don't see where the whole "correlation does not necessarily imply causation" comes in, so because this person was personally affected, they shouldn't reach the conclusion that AI companies need to be held responsible for whatever effects they have?
"you don't even need to try to look at any correlation or causation to arrive at this"
You actually very much do. If there is no causation, then it is not "their impact". Otherwise, you're just advocating for rope-makers to be punished for wrong-use of their product. Which is, of course, foolish.
Ok, put another way, do you think we clearly know exactly the pros and cons for individuals to use AI chatbots for mental health treatment?
If you don't clearly know exactly those things, wanting anything else than "AI companies to be held responsible for the impact of their chatbots" as a first step would be utterly foolish and de-humanizing.
No, figuring out harms is called "thinking before acting", and unless you want laws and regulations written in blood (something I personally want to avoid), you need to think before acting.
Figuring out what harms something in wide use has, is a good thing, and doesn't mean "ban it today", it means "lets figure it out".
> "AI companies to be held responsible for the impact of their chatbots"
Sure, but people on HN have a weird idea of what "held responsible" means. Often it seems to mean "harshly punished", as opposed to making the injured parties whole.
This probably reflects a split between US culture and the rest of the Western world.
This is something new. Delusions were around before, certainly, but LLM offers a round the clock potential for psychological conditioning, which would not normally be possible without sustained attention by a group of people.
I don't know, internet already made it easy for delusional people to find each other (and trolls).
Look into the gangstalking/targeted individual communities, you can even frequently find these people on HN.
Flat earthers and sovereign citizens are two other famous examples. People also seem to regularly move between these groups, the specific delusional belief probably isn't the point.
I had an encounter with someone who thought he was being gangstalked (by me and others). He made rude and threatening comments to me and others. He accused me of being a double on one occasion and a police man on another. When I complained about what he said, he asked me why I was being defensive. However, I would argue that he suffered from a pre-existing psychological condition probably accelerated by being homeless and being badly treated in the past. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As for Flat Earth theory, it has been heavily promoted by mainstream media in the last decade or two after years of obscurity. It is a useful strawman for the ruling class to associate dissent with. Along with the tinfoil hat meme (I have never met anyone who wears one. It's just another image of the extreme to promote group conformity.)
I'd like real numbers on that, because I don't see any evidence that this is particularly prevalent or novel issue. I see a lot of media hype on this topic, but that's not the same thing as actually being a real problem. Even the name is hype, ai psychosis is not a diagnosis a doctor would give here and none of these people really sound psychotic. They sound like people who believe in conspiracy theories and join cults.
Right, a guy keeping endless stacks of paper with his ChatGPT-produced novelty "scientific" theories and wanting to "apply for pope" - definitely some "media hype" there.
We don't yet know if LLM chatbots are actually inducing them, or just offering a convenient outlet. Both options are perfectly feasible, although it seems unsurprising that people suffering from such delusions would seek out validation wherever they may find it.
Yeah, it's the "ON SCALE" claim I object to. I want evidence first; I'm not willing to accept the loss of freedoms that blindly accepting this premise would require.
Sure, anyone and everyone can apply, to basically anything. Sometimes you can even get into stuff they didn't think they accepted applicants to. Most of the times you get ignored though.
Technically, all adult Catholics can become Pope. But realistically it's just one of the cardinals, which means you need to become a bishop first, which means you need to become a priest first, which means you need to be celibate (x). This guy has a wife, according to the article, so he cannot become a Pope.
(x) this is technically not true for some Anglican orders that later became Catholics? Maybe? (I never remember the rules of the ordinariate.) So maybe he could first become a priest in Anglican Church, then switch to Catholicism, then become a bishop, then a Cardinal, then a Pope? It's a long shot though.
edit: ahhh the married priests in Ordinariate cannot become bishops. So he would need to have first his marriage annulled I guess.
Catholic Church's records on early popes are often surprisingly bad, particularly in antipope-heavy eras. There are a _number_ of popes where the detail is pretty vague. Use of damnatio memoriae also confuses the issue, eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Formosus#Legacy
eh not really, we NOW have quite good records on most popes except for the first few ones that we get just in a list from St Irenaeus (for example from St Linus - the guy immediately after St Peter - we get almost nothing)
but about the middle age popes we know quite a lot NOW. But it used to be different.
While this is for practical purposes true _now_, there actually were a small number of married popes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sexually_active_popes#...), and there have been a few popes who were not priests before being elected (if you want to be pedantic, Peter wasn't a priest, and may have been married, but there were later examples).
> all adult Catholics can become Pope
All adult male Catholics, though also see Pope Joan (probably didn't actually exist, but was generally believed to have existed until quite recently). There's also no actual age requirement, though in practice the youngest pope was _probably_ 18.
> "Millar is one of an unknown number of people who have lost their grip on reality while communicating with chatbots, an experience tentatively being called AI-induced delusion or psychosis."
> "Researchers and mental health specialists are racing to catch up to this new, little-understood phenomenon [...]"
I don't know if I would call it a phenomenon.
This reads like the numerous articles from 2018+ detailing broken families and wrecked lives due to someone close spiraling down some QAnon(or any other) conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Only now people don't stumble onto it by wandering through dark corners of the internet. The never ending marketing blitz makes it almost impossible to not be at least slightly curious as to what its all about. To those susceptible to such things, they now have a tool to custom make (or reinforce) their own wild theories reflecting their own psychological state at maximum saturation. No need to wait between posting and reading replies on sketchy forums; it is now instantly delivered and tailor-made to the individual.(who use it in that way)
I don't think it's right to involuntarily send someone to a psychiatric ward because he believed that he was chosen by ChatGPT to be the pope.
For the same reason I don't think we should send the pope to a psychiatric ward because he believes that he was chosen for that role by an invisible man in the sky.
At least there's no doubt that ChatGPT exists lol. People should be allowed to be as whacky as they like so long as it's legal.
And who knows, he is getting some attention now so his probability of becoming pope actually went up a tiny bit lol.
Does it require faith to rape children and protect child rapists, or is that psychosis? It certainly requires psychosis to put your faith in leaders who do that, be it the Pope or Trump.
> he believes that he was chosen for that role by an invisible man in the sky.
One thing is clear, you should not be sent to the HN gulag simply because you don't understand what you're talking about. Me and others realize you don't know how the pope is chosen, but damn if I'm not willing to die for your right to state something that is utterly wrong.
I hope so, considering he seems to have all mental facilities intact. I hope he believes he was elected by the cardinals, which is what happened in reality. I think they usually say the Holy Spirt guides the process or similar, rather than God directly selecting the new pope.
This is what former pope Benedict XVI said about it:
> I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope... I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.
> There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!
According to those who believe in god, since "he" is a spirit and not flesh, he is indeed invisible to humans. I guess you can argue he makes himself visible through things like angels and other manifestations, most famously through Jesus Christ.
With the "god created humans in the image of god" part I think they mean more attributes like morality, reason and so on, less physical properties. In the end, humans are visible, finite beings, god is a spirit, so our visibility to each other reflects our created, embodied nature, very distinct from god's invisible, infinite nature.
Or however it goes, I'm an atheist myself so I'm maybe not the best to answer here, but I've been involved in the church for as long as I can remember in some way or another, and an eager reader of the bible, so hopefully I got the overall ideas correct :)
This is the most hilarious JS fail I've ever seen. The entire article renders properly, all the text and styling, then the entire screen is replaced by
"Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information)."
It's easy enough to fix, just hammer the refresh button to prevent JS from running.
It's such a dream state of JavaScript, that people spent countless of time trying to structure these new web applications in a way so that when one function fails for one button or whatever, it doesn't break the entire client-side view, because that'd be horrible.
So what did the frameworks do? Of course wrap the entire application in one big try/catch, that then changes the entire page as soon as there is any error, instead of presenting users with the information that did load properly. Talk about undoing what the platform and language gives you for free...
This is a poor implementation not a framework problem lol.
> This is a poor implementation not a framework problem lol.
I've seen literally pixel-identical error messages taking over the entire screen when there is a JS error, in exactly that way, across countless of websites. If it's not a framework, it's a library in wide use, because tons of websites have exactly the same issue.
It’s a generic error screen from a framework yes.
But the cause of the error is a poor implementation from the developer.
I can write code that errors out in <insert your favorite language here> does that mean it’s bad?
Read the context first. Initially, we had HTML + JS pages where one function can have one error, and the page keeps on working, because the error didn't block the entire screen.
Now we have some popular framework/library that instead seems to surface these errors that aren't sitting in the top-level scope of the JS application, yet the errors ends up blocking the entire application.
That means it's bad, yes. And it's not any language, we're specifically talking about JS in browsers here.
Modern JS frameworks can absolutely catch and isolate errors. In those cases you’d only see the error in the specific component that had the error. Or if they’re a good dev you as a user won’t even know! You’ll see fallback content.
An error blocking the full screen is a failure on the developer not the tools.
> An error blocking the full screen is a failure on the developer not the tools.
I don't see how this is possible, given that the default experience with HTML and JavaScript isn't "Tear down the entire page to display an error", but something that's seemingly becoming more and more common to actually come across. Guess I need to chase down what library/framework this is coming from, since seemingly I'm not able to describe the issue properly.
You don't need the "modern JS framerwork" to "catch and isolate errors" because that's a feature JavaScript comes with by default in browsers! You literally have to add code to make it worse, which seems to be happening in some framework/library.
If you're manually adding logic for doing "error in component doesn't break entire application" then you're already working against what the environment gives you by default for free.
Seems to render perfectly with NoScript blocking all scripts, even with images showing.
I talk to GPT, Claude, and Gemini too much these days, but I still maintain one safety check
If all three agree with me, I assume I am wrong and go outside.
People talk about AI sycophancy, but there are plenty of human sycophants as well. If you're an extremely rich/powerful person, it is very easy to inadvertently surround yourself with sycophants who tell you how amazing and ground-breaking all your ideas are. I wonder if this is the reason people like Musk engage in such bizarre behavior and radical personality shifts over the past decade
> but there are plenty of human sycophants as well
That's besides the point. This is about how AI induces psychosis and mental problems on scale. Also let's stop this constant humans-vs-ai false dichotomy - it will never be the same, no matter how much the ai boosters yearn for it!
That would be a false equivalence not a false dichotomy. You believe they are different and you're annoyed that people are treating them like the same.
Additionally it isn't beside the point. The poster is pointing out the ways which people respond to sycophancy. Saying there are similarities between how they respond to sycophancy from AI and sycophancy from real people.
entirely possible.
but there is also the drugs...
Discordians know they’re popes. What a funny idea to think you would have to apply!
Hail Eris!
I carry around my pope card just in case
https://discordia.fandom.com/wiki/Pope_cards
> All the spirallers that AFP spoke to said the positive feedback from the chatbot felt similar to dopamine hits from some kind of drug.
> Which is why Lucy Osler, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Exeter, warned that AI companies could be tempted to ramp up the sycophancy of their bots.
> "They are in quite a deep financial hole, and are desperately looking to make sure that their products become viable -- and user engagement is going to be the thing that drives their decisions," she told AFP.
Sounds like the big social media companies.
> Sounds like the big social media companies.
I agree. Looking at the history of tobacco companies, oxycontin and Meta, I will not be surprised if the AI companies will follow the money.
You would think this level of gullibility has a proportional relationship with IQ but it does not. Gullibility has it's own independent vector.
It isn't entirely independent tho. This person who did some research into it says: "The strongest predictors for who this happens to appear to be:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6ZnznCaTcbGYsCmqu/the-rise-o...
It fits in this case as well (background of PTSD
Their primary information source was a random sampling of Reddit posts which they admit were "coauthored with the AI (who clearly wrote the vast majority of it)."
These were on long-dormant Reddit accounts that suddenly reactivated. Classic. I don't believe any of it. I would bet that, with some exceptions, these are bots talking to bots about bots.
The "person" who wrote this might be a bot. It's extremely delusional. He/It gets to the point where it watches bots talking to other bots and making shit up and it 'believes' the nonsense, saying, "I am truly glad to see preservation of life, non-violence, and non-lethality explicitly laid out here. To return the gesture of good will, I have started archiving (in encrypted form) spores I come across."
I don't think any human is smart enough to write this much about AI on LessWrong but also dumb enough to not recognize hallucination.
> To return the gesture of good will, I have started archiving ...
Oh that part does seem wacko. There's no "good will" to be returned, and no overall strategy as such. I didn't catch that when I read it. I don't have much of an issue with them calling it a "parasitic relationship" because it sounds similar, though it's more accidental rather than evolved toward that purpose like actual parasites.
Posting on lesswrong is an indicator in of itself.
smart people can rationalize themselves into more or less anything
Schools don't teach actual basics that make people grounded in reality imo. Of course it gets worse with things like ChatGPT that teachers are not only not trained to explain, but didn't even exist when current adults went to school.
The fact that we as a society are allowing things like “Delve” or whatever the “AI psychiatrist” app is that I see ads for sometimes on the subway is a gross abdication of responsibility and reason. Of all the possible uses for LLMs, that has got to be one of the most out and out irresponsible and dangerous ones I could imagine.
Mental health is up there, but far from the most important thing we need to be focusing on as a society in the immediate future.
I say this as someone who has mental health issues, has experience loss of important people around me because of mental health issues, and probably need more therapy than the universe could reasonably provide me.
AI is directly and indirectly uprooting every facet of society. Money, energy, food, housing, medicine. Cultural revolutions are not pretty, the true outcomes are felt by those who are the winners and losers. It very much feels like a rich eats all scenario is playing out right now. I'd wager that's because it is.
We had people acting out like this before LLM chatbots, correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
> correlation does not necessarily imply causation
I feel like you're missing what you're replying to, why are you saying this? The article is about a person who "lost grip on reality", no one is saying LLMs is turning people into pope-wannabees as far as I can tell, you're reacting against something no one claimed.
Explicit accusation that this was caused by chatbots + call for general regulation is right there in the article:
"AFP spoke to several members about their experiences. All warned that the world has to wake up to the threat unregulated AI chatbots pose to mental health.
Questions are also being asked about whether AI companies are doing enough to protect vulnerable people."
This, in time, might be used to nerf the models that we use. Of course, one actor is singled out:
"There has also been a recent rise in people spiralling while using Elon Musk's xAI's Grok chatbot, he said."
I don't think "correlation does not necessarily imply causation" even makes sense to someone saying "Maybe AI chatbots aren't great for people's mental health" or even "Are the AI companies actually trying to prevent AI chatbots being bad for people's mental health?", both statements seem fine and doesn't imply any causation as far as I understand.
This cautious statement, which would indeed be fine, is an invention of yours when it comes to the article. They assert causation, calling for AI companies to be disciplined and punished, praising the EU online censorship campaign, arguing this is a big experiment:
"Millar called for AI companies to be held responsible for the impact of their chatbots, saying the European Union has been more assertive in regulating Big Tech than the US or Canada.
He believes spirallers like him have unwittingly been caught in a massive global experiment."
They're calling for "AI companies to be held responsible for the impact of their chatbots" which regardless of what happened before, sounds like a reasonable thing to do, you don't even need to try to look at any correlation or causation to arrive at this.
I still don't see where the whole "correlation does not necessarily imply causation" comes in, so because this person was personally affected, they shouldn't reach the conclusion that AI companies need to be held responsible for whatever effects they have?
"you don't even need to try to look at any correlation or causation to arrive at this"
You actually very much do. If there is no causation, then it is not "their impact". Otherwise, you're just advocating for rope-makers to be punished for wrong-use of their product. Which is, of course, foolish.
Ok, put another way, do you think we clearly know exactly the pros and cons for individuals to use AI chatbots for mental health treatment?
If you don't clearly know exactly those things, wanting anything else than "AI companies to be held responsible for the impact of their chatbots" as a first step would be utterly foolish and de-humanizing.
Using uncertainty to punish your perceived enemies is called "injustice".
No, figuring out harms is called "thinking before acting", and unless you want laws and regulations written in blood (something I personally want to avoid), you need to think before acting.
Figuring out what harms something in wide use has, is a good thing, and doesn't mean "ban it today", it means "lets figure it out".
Language this vague has a name: it's called "bullshit".
Reminds me of another slang, probably applicable to this entire discussion: "pointless"
> "AI companies to be held responsible for the impact of their chatbots"
Sure, but people on HN have a weird idea of what "held responsible" means. Often it seems to mean "harshly punished", as opposed to making the injured parties whole.
This probably reflects a split between US culture and the rest of the Western world.
This is something new. Delusions were around before, certainly, but LLM offers a round the clock potential for psychological conditioning, which would not normally be possible without sustained attention by a group of people.
I don't know, internet already made it easy for delusional people to find each other (and trolls).
Look into the gangstalking/targeted individual communities, you can even frequently find these people on HN.
Flat earthers and sovereign citizens are two other famous examples. People also seem to regularly move between these groups, the specific delusional belief probably isn't the point.
I had an encounter with someone who thought he was being gangstalked (by me and others). He made rude and threatening comments to me and others. He accused me of being a double on one occasion and a police man on another. When I complained about what he said, he asked me why I was being defensive. However, I would argue that he suffered from a pre-existing psychological condition probably accelerated by being homeless and being badly treated in the past. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
As for Flat Earth theory, it has been heavily promoted by mainstream media in the last decade or two after years of obscurity. It is a useful strawman for the ruling class to associate dissent with. Along with the tinfoil hat meme (I have never met anyone who wears one. It's just another image of the extreme to promote group conformity.)
We did...but it was few here and there. The LLMs are making it massive and impacting people on a huge scale.
I'd like real numbers on that, because I don't see any evidence that this is particularly prevalent or novel issue. I see a lot of media hype on this topic, but that's not the same thing as actually being a real problem. Even the name is hype, ai psychosis is not a diagnosis a doctor would give here and none of these people really sound psychotic. They sound like people who believe in conspiracy theories and join cults.
> I see a lot of media hype
Right, a guy keeping endless stacks of paper with his ChatGPT-produced novelty "scientific" theories and wanting to "apply for pope" - definitely some "media hype" there.
People suffering from mental health issues were doing exactly that kind of things long before LLMs.
Delusions of grandeur are nothing new.
Who said they were new? But the ability to induce them ON SCALE is what is new, brmought to you by the LLM Slop companies.
We don't yet know if LLM chatbots are actually inducing them, or just offering a convenient outlet. Both options are perfectly feasible, although it seems unsurprising that people suffering from such delusions would seek out validation wherever they may find it.
Yeah, it's the "ON SCALE" claim I object to. I want evidence first; I'm not willing to accept the loss of freedoms that blindly accepting this premise would require.
Show me the evidence of the massive scale.
No one can apply to be pope of the catholic church.
Sure, anyone and everyone can apply, to basically anything. Sometimes you can even get into stuff they didn't think they accepted applicants to. Most of the times you get ignored though.
Not the point of the story at all. Read before commenting.
Correct. In fact, even to be a bishop you have to state as part of the ritual that you do not wish to be a bishop. (Many do of course.)
(Am off to read the article now. :) )
Technically, all adult Catholics can become Pope. But realistically it's just one of the cardinals, which means you need to become a bishop first, which means you need to become a priest first, which means you need to be celibate (x). This guy has a wife, according to the article, so he cannot become a Pope.
(x) this is technically not true for some Anglican orders that later became Catholics? Maybe? (I never remember the rules of the ordinariate.) So maybe he could first become a priest in Anglican Church, then switch to Catholicism, then become a bishop, then a Cardinal, then a Pope? It's a long shot though.
edit: ahhh the married priests in Ordinariate cannot become bishops. So he would need to have first his marriage annulled I guess.
Adult male Catholics, surely?
... Maybe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Joan
(She probably didn't actually exist, but it's interesting that until quite recently she was generally believed to have existed.)
What do you mean? Catcholic Church has records, did they just came up with something about a nonexistent Pope Joan out of thin air? How could they...
Catholic Church's records on early popes are often surprisingly bad, particularly in antipope-heavy eras. There are a _number_ of popes where the detail is pretty vague. Use of damnatio memoriae also confuses the issue, eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Formosus#Legacy
eh not really, we NOW have quite good records on most popes except for the first few ones that we get just in a list from St Irenaeus (for example from St Linus - the guy immediately after St Peter - we get almost nothing)
but about the middle age popes we know quite a lot NOW. But it used to be different.
Yes, that was satire, in Latin, John is spelled Joannes, or Joan for short.
While this is for practical purposes true _now_, there actually were a small number of married popes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sexually_active_popes#...), and there have been a few popes who were not priests before being elected (if you want to be pedantic, Peter wasn't a priest, and may have been married, but there were later examples).
> all adult Catholics can become Pope
All adult male Catholics, though also see Pope Joan (probably didn't actually exist, but was generally believed to have existed until quite recently). There's also no actual age requirement, though in practice the youngest pope was _probably_ 18.
> "Millar is one of an unknown number of people who have lost their grip on reality while communicating with chatbots, an experience tentatively being called AI-induced delusion or psychosis."
> "Researchers and mental health specialists are racing to catch up to this new, little-understood phenomenon [...]"
I don't know if I would call it a phenomenon.
This reads like the numerous articles from 2018+ detailing broken families and wrecked lives due to someone close spiraling down some QAnon(or any other) conspiracy theory rabbit hole. Only now people don't stumble onto it by wandering through dark corners of the internet. The never ending marketing blitz makes it almost impossible to not be at least slightly curious as to what its all about. To those susceptible to such things, they now have a tool to custom make (or reinforce) their own wild theories reflecting their own psychological state at maximum saturation. No need to wait between posting and reading replies on sketchy forums; it is now instantly delivered and tailor-made to the individual.(who use it in that way)
I have a now homeless relative who went through the same thing...
I don't think it's right to involuntarily send someone to a psychiatric ward because he believed that he was chosen by ChatGPT to be the pope.
For the same reason I don't think we should send the pope to a psychiatric ward because he believes that he was chosen for that role by an invisible man in the sky.
At least there's no doubt that ChatGPT exists lol. People should be allowed to be as whacky as they like so long as it's legal.
And who knows, he is getting some attention now so his probability of becoming pope actually went up a tiny bit lol.
Faith and psychosis are not the same thing.
What’s the difference?
Does it require faith to rape children and protect child rapists, or is that psychosis? It certainly requires psychosis to put your faith in leaders who do that, be it the Pope or Trump.
The Pope and trump are incomparable at this point
This deserves some kind of Vonnegut award.
> he believes that he was chosen for that role by an invisible man in the sky.
One thing is clear, you should not be sent to the HN gulag simply because you don't understand what you're talking about. Me and others realize you don't know how the pope is chosen, but damn if I'm not willing to die for your right to state something that is utterly wrong.
You mean the pope doesn't believe he was chosen by God, just by cardinals and other primates?
I hope so, considering he seems to have all mental facilities intact. I hope he believes he was elected by the cardinals, which is what happened in reality. I think they usually say the Holy Spirt guides the process or similar, rather than God directly selecting the new pope.
This is what former pope Benedict XVI said about it:
> I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope... I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.
> There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!
Source: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/does-god-pi...
Are you saying God is not invisible?
If God created man in his own image, then why can we see each other?
According to those who believe in god, since "he" is a spirit and not flesh, he is indeed invisible to humans. I guess you can argue he makes himself visible through things like angels and other manifestations, most famously through Jesus Christ.
With the "god created humans in the image of god" part I think they mean more attributes like morality, reason and so on, less physical properties. In the end, humans are visible, finite beings, god is a spirit, so our visibility to each other reflects our created, embodied nature, very distinct from god's invisible, infinite nature.
Or however it goes, I'm an atheist myself so I'm maybe not the best to answer here, but I've been involved in the church for as long as I can remember in some way or another, and an eager reader of the bible, so hopefully I got the overall ideas correct :)
Found Richard Dawkin's alt account
Dawkins is too busy falling in love with his AI girlfriend to care: https://unherd.com/2026/05/is-ai-the-next-phase-of-evolution...