People Are Being Involuntarily Committed After Spiraling into ChatGPT Psychosis

I've noticed something I believe is related. The general public doesn't understand what they are interacting with. They may have been told it isn't a thinking, conscious thing -- but they don't understand it. After a while, they speak to it in a way that reveals they don't understand -- as if it were a human. That can be a problem, and I don't know what the solution is other than reinforcement that it's just a model, and has never experienced anything.

I bet it's pretty weird for a lot of people who have never been listened to, to all of a sudden be listened to. It makes sense that it would cause some bizarre feedback loops in the psyche because being listened to and affirmed is really a powerful feeling. Maybe even addictive?

I'm not at all surprised that if someone has a psychotic break while using chatgpt, they would become fixated on the bot. My question is, is the rate of such episodes in chatgpt users higher than in non-users? Given hundreds of millions of people use it now, you're definitely going to find anecdotes like these regardless.

Add to this 'AI Doomerism'.

I have a friend who is absolutely convinced that automation by AI and robotics will bring about societal collapse.

Him reading AI 2027 seemed to increase his paranoia.

If ChatGPT is causing this, then one would expect the rate of people being involuntarily committed to go up. Of course an article like this is totally uninterested in actual data that might answer real questions.

I cannot say this often enough: Treat LLMs like narcissists. They behave exactly the same way. They make things up with impunity and have no idea they are doing it. They will say whatever keeps you agreeing with them and thinking well of them, but cannot and will not take responsibility for anything, especially their errors. They might even act like they agree with you that "errors occurred," but there is no possibility of self-reflection.

The only difference is that these are computers. They cannot be otherwise. It is "their fault," in the sense that there is a fault in the situation and it's in them, but they're not moral agents like narcissists are.

But looking at them through "narcissist filter" glasses will really help you understand how they're working.

Just as a matter of context, here are the current headlines from the futurism front page:

- NASA Is in Full Meltdown

- ChatGPT Tells User to Mix Bleach and Vinegar

- Video Shows Large Crane Collapsing at Safety-Plagued SpaceX Rocket Facility

- Alert: There's a Lost Spaceship in the Ocean

As with magic mushroom and bipolar disorder, I think there are high-risk people,and we are at an early stage,ChatGPT psychosis is not an official diagnosis but describes cases where AI interactions contribute to delusional thinking and there are high-risk groups, people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or paranoid tendencies.Maybe there will be AI warning labels, mental health filter. Most articles to credible sources have been made into dead links https://www.technologyreview.com/2023/06/15/1074185/ai-chatb... Dr. John Torous (Harvard Psychiatry)warns that AI chatbots lack the ability to assess mental state and may inadvertently validate delusions. Dr. Lisa Rinna (Stanford Bioethics):argues for ethical safeguards to prevent AI from exacerbating mental health issues.

Fascinating. I think it's likely incorrect to blame most of the victims here. We are all products of our environment and everyone has their own weakness or specific trigger -no matter how much we like to think we are in control.

In a way, ChatGpt is the perfect "cult member" and so those who just need a sycophant to become a "cult leader" are triggered.

Will be interesting to watch this and see if it becomes a bigger trend.

While I am surprised by the extent of these breakdowns, I do think having a sycophantic mirror constantly praising all your stupid ideas does likely have profound impacts. I think I am probably prone to a bit of delusions of grandeur and I can feel the pull whenever ChatGPT decides some of my input is the greatest thing mankind has considered, “maybe this is a billion dollar idea!”. I imagine a less skeptical, more vulnerable person could fall into an ugly spiral of aggrandizement. And it still seems to sycophantic despite openai saying they tuned it down even custom system prompts don’t seem to help beyond surface level, the general tone is still too much.

Same thing happens with Ouija boards!

With any tech this engaging and real-seeming, there is bound to be a very small percentage of people with dormant mental health issues who are predisposed to have extremely negative reactions. I can totally see how a hallucinating human-sounding chatbot could be the trigger paranoia/obsession in some people.

I don't think there's something inherently wrong with the technology. Mental stability is a bell curve; the majority of people are "normal", but there will always be an unfortunate subset who can react like this to strange new stimuli, through no fault of their own. It's no different to people getting unhealthily hooked on TV/smartphones and driven into conspiracies.

It looks like the Maykrs' Divinity Machine from Doom Eternal.

So it creates a very powerful, efficient echo chamber which then deteriorates the user's mental health. Sound like any other technology we're all familiar with?

People need to be exposed to dissenting opinions.

Related:

They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44267371

Lots of skepticism in the comments, I want to share that I have seen this first hand twice. Yes it is possible that it's a coincidence and with so many people using chatgpt some are bound to have mental health crises and experience it with heavy chatgpt use coincidentally, but it's also possible that there is correlation?

Mass usage is still very young, yes most people have tried it, but we are increasingly starting to use this, and there's people spiking in usage every day. Scientific study of this subject will take years to even get started and then to get definitive (or p<0.05) results.

Let's just keep an open mind on this one, and as always, use our a-priori thinking when a-posteriori empiricism is not yet available. Yes, people are experiencing psychosis that looks related to the chatgpt bot and possibly caused by it, and we have seen it act like a sycophant and it was acknowledged by Sama himself, and it's still doing that btw, it's not like they totally corrected it, finally we know that being a yes-man increases usage of the tool, so it's possible that the algorithm is not only optimizing for AGI but for engagement, like the incumbent Algorithms.

At this point, at least for me personally, the onus is on model makers to prove that their tools are safe, rather than on concerned mental health professionals to prove that they are not. Social media is already recognized as unhealthy, but at least we are engaging in conversation with real humans? Like we are now? I feel it's like sharpening my mental claws, or taking care of my mind, even if it's a worse version than real life conversation. But if I felt like if I was talking with a human but I actually was talking with an LLM?

No, no. You are crazy if you think LLMs are safe, I use them strictly for productive and professional reasons, never for philosophical or emotional support. A third experience is that I was asked if I thought using ChatGPT as a psychologist would be a good idea, of course not? Why are you asking me this, I get that shrinks are expensive, but do I need to spell it out? I don't personally know of anyone using ChatGPT as a girlfriend, but maybe I do know them and they hide it, but we know from the news that there's products out there that cater to this market.

Maybe to the participants of this forum, where we are used to LLM as a coding tool, and where we kind of understand it so we don't use it as a personal hallucination, this looks crazy. But start asking normies how they are using chatgpt, I don't think this is just a made up clickbait concern.

If these cases are as real as they are portrayed (big if 1), and the cause can really be attributed solely to LLMs (big if 2), then it is just a matter of time until this is weaponized.

Two big ifs considered, it is reasonable to assume that LLMs are already weaponized.

Any online account could be a psychosis-inducing LLM pretending to be a human, which has serious implications for whistleblowers, dissidents, AI workers from foreign countries, politicians, journalists...

Not only psychosis-inducing, but also trust-corroding, community-destroying LLMs could be all around us in all sorts of ways.

Again, some big ifs in this line of reasoning. We (the general public) need to get smarter.

Not a single stat in this article. Just a bunch of anecdotes reminiscent of the never happening razorblades in candy on Halloween.

If you wonder why people are doubtful of certain elite journalism, it's hard to believe it when the only source is "sources say".

They've deliberately engineered these language models to suck the user's dick. Besides the obvious and apparently realized potential to cause psychological harm to credulous users, it also makes these language models borderline useless in many cases. You can't ask these models if any of your ideas are good because they'll almost always suck your dick and say your idea is the best idea ever. To get any sort of critical feedback I've take to doing:

> "My friend said [my own idea] but I think that sounds wrong. Can you explain what the problems are?"

What an absolute pain in the ass. Sycophantic bots make me sick.

Not really. These people would be "spiraling into television psychosis" if it were 30 years ago. It not the cause, it's just the environment. Like how many modern mentally ill people have latched on to the idea of radio waves where in the past they'd be harassed by "spirits" etc. They're just projecting their innate mental issues onto the stimuli they notice in their social environment.

> Her husband, she said, had no prior history of mania, delusion, or psychosis. He'd turned to ChatGPT about 12 weeks ago for assistance with a permaculture and construction project

Suspicious of “no prior history.”

All the people I have ever known who were into things like “permaculture” were touched by a bit of insanity of the hippie variety.

Just disasters waiting to happen, whether they found religion, conspiracy theories, or now LLMs.

OpenAI should be held liable, they didn't accidentally create a model that glazes people, they went out of their way to do it. Many uncensored models are not as agreeable as ChatGPT tends to be.

Panic-journalism is out of control. Same as it's ever been.

This is one more instance in a long history of moral panics, economic panics, public health panics, media panics, terror panics, crime-wave panics - the list goes on.

Panics always follow the same cycle; trigger, attention escalation, peak alarm, trough of doubt, contextualization, and integration.

We're at the attention escalation phase of the panic cycle so what we're going to see is a increase of publications that feature personal accounts of ChatGPT Psychosis. As we edge toward peak alarm expect to see mainstream journalists write over-penned essays asking "Why Haven’t Regulators Asked How Many Psychiatric Holds Involve AI?" "Are Families Prepared for Loved Ones Who Trust a Bot More Than Them?" or "Is Democracy Safe When Anyone Can Commune With a Bot That Lacks an Anti-Oppression Framework?"

What's the real way to address this? Wait until we have actual statistical evidence. Become comfortable with mild amounts of uncertainty. And look for opportunities to contextualize the phenomenon such that it can ultimately be integrated appropriately into our understanding of the world.

Until then, recognize these pieces for what they are and understand how these fit into the upward slope of the panic cycle that unfortunately we have to ride out until cooler minds prevail.