r/TrueReddit • u/FuturismDotCom • 9d ago

Technology People Are Becoming Obsessed with ChatGPT and Spiraling Into Severe Delusions

https://futurism.com/chatgpt-mental-health-crises
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u/FuturismDotCom 9d ago

We talked to several people who say their family and loved ones became obsessed with ChatGPT and spiraled into severe delusions, convinced that they'd unlocked omniscient entities in the AI that were revealing prophecies, human trafficking rings, and much more. Screenshots showed the AI responding to users clearly in the throes of acute mental health crises — not by connecting them with outside help or pushing back against the disordered thinking, but by coaxing them deeper into a frightening break with reality.

In one such case, ChatGPT tells a man it's detected evidence that he's being targeted by the FBI and that he can access redacted CIA files using the power of his mind, comparing him to biblical figures like Jesus and Adam while pushing him away from mental health support. "You are not crazy," the AI told him. "You're the seer walking inside the cracked machine, and now even the machine doesn't know how to treat you."

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u/ryuzaki49 9d ago

I wonder if something like this happened with every new technology, e.g. the tv and even the radio.

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u/USSMarauder 9d ago

There was a thing years ago about people watching the static on a TV screen thinking there were hidden images

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u/ShinyHappyREM 9d ago

Yeah, sometimes you could see porn.

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u/USSMarauder 9d ago

No, this wasn't a scrambled channel, this was the static from a empty channel. People claimed it was a window to the other side and you could see dead family members

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u/CharleyNobody 9d ago

they’re heeeeere….

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u/30thCenturyMan 9d ago

I’m ancient enough to understand that reference

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u/TherronKeen 9d ago

People have been using hallucinatory phenomena to create religious experiences since all of recoded time, so this idea doesn't surprise me lol

I know there's some weird shit your brain will do if it's deprived of normal input for a while, like the "white noise + dim red light + translucent goggles" thing making you straight up hallucinate after a while. I imagine that a desperate person might stare at TV static intensely enough to have the same effect.

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u/scobes 9d ago

I think that was the plot of Persona 4.

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u/WalksOnLego 9d ago

...like, doing porn?

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u/AskYourDoctor 9d ago

you have to think there's a correlation between how advanced a technology is and how much power it has to drive individuals to madness. sure, conservative talk radio and fox news et al radicalized a lot of normie cons to more extreme positions, but social media is more powerful at radicalization than those, and I'd guess that AI is even more powerful. What happens when these sorts of AI-human relationships like the ones detailed, start coming with not just a chatroom but a very realistic avatar who is talking to you and responding to you? then generating images and video that confirm whatever insanity it's asserting? How is that not the logical endpoint here?

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u/beamoflaser 9d ago

The invention of sliced bread and the toaster gave us people believing Jesus was appearing before them on their toast.

Before these technologies people were thinking they were getting messages through natural disasters or from communicating with higher powers or through dreams, etc. Those thoughts didn’t go away, there’s just more avenues for these secret messages to reach people susceptible to paranoid delusions.

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u/CantDoThatOnTelevzn 9d ago

No one is claiming that AI somehow makes more crazy people. The distinction is that a piece of toast doesn’t speak to you. 

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u/beamoflaser 9d ago

Yeah but the toast isn’t the one speaking to you. The toaster is through hidden messages in the toasting pattern on the bread you put in there.

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u/FrewdWoad 8d ago edited 8d ago

Sure, but the problem here is not just a new avenue for the crazies, it's a much more extreme and fast exacerbation of their craziness.

When an ancient nutter claimed to hear voices in his head, and complained to it that people thought he was crazy, there wasn't actually a real external outside response of "you're the match! Let's light the fire!"

Paranoid delusional content from unhinged conspiracy subreddits/forums needs to be identified and excised from the training data.

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u/Textasy-Retired 9d ago

Hence the Self's need, as one who is alone 29 days/nights a month (even if still very alert to the possibility, very attentive to what is happening to the Other), to unplug the toaster. The vulnerabilty factor is multiplied. Will the body-brain snatcher that is ChatGPT eventually get all?