[djmips]

I have encountered this twice amongst people I know. I also feel that pre-AI this was already happening to people with social media - still kind of computer related as the bubble created is automated but the so called 'algorithms'

[farceSpherule]

AI today reminds me of two big tech revolutions we have already lived through: the Internet in the 90s and social media in the 2000s.

When the Internet arrived, it opened up the floodgates of information. Suddenly any Joe Six Pack could publish. Truth and noise sat side by side, and most people could not tell the difference, nor did they care to tell the difference.

When social media arrived, it gave every Joe Six Pack a megaphone. That meant experts and thoughtful people had new reach but so did the loudest, least informed voices. The result? An army of Joe Six Packs who would never have been heard before now had a platform, and they shaped public discourse in ways we are still trying to recover.

AI is following the same pattern.

[Nextgrid]

The main problem is that the megaphone dynamically adjusts its volume based on how much “engagement” is being generated by what it’s broadcasting, encouraging inflammatory content. This can be weaponized by commercial or state-sponsored actors.

[visarga]

> When the Internet arrived, it opened up the floodgates of information.

But initially is was non commercial and good. Not perfect, but much more interesting than today. What changed is advertising and competition for scarce attention. Competition for attention filled the web with slop and clickbait.

> When social media arrived, it gave every Joe Six Pack a megaphone.

And also made everyone feel the need to pose, broadcast their ideology and show their in-group adherence publicly. There is peer pressure to conform to in-group norms and shaming or cancelling otherwise.

[immibis]

And don't forget actual knowledgeable people tend to be busy with actual knowledgeable stuff, while someone whose entire day consists of ranting about vaccines online has nothing better to do.

[whazor]

It is pretty bad to have a thing that can give you dopamine 24/7. Both social media with the algorithms, but also AI. Humans need sleep to function normally.

It would help if algorithms were optimised for sleep. Freezing your feed, making content more boring, nudging you to put your phone down. Same with AI, if they know you need to wake up the next day at a certain time, change the responses that add reminders to go to sleep.

[djmips]

I remember that Claude would make a remark if you were starting it up late. Like welcome back night owl or something which is kind of a gentle reminder but I don't recall it doing that now. I try not to be up too late though.

[colechristensen]

Also even things like cable news I'd say cause comparable symptoms.

I don't know how to say this in a way that isn't so negative... but how are people such profound followers that they can put themselves into a feedback loop that results is psychosis?

I think it's an education problem, not as in people are missing facts but by the missing basic brain development to be critical of incoming information.

[Flowzone]

I was in psychosis for about a month a few years ago. Before it happened, I didn't really understand what psychosis was. I had heard about people having paranoid delusions, and thought something like that could never happen to me, because the delusions all sounded so irrational. I thought I was too much of a critical thinker to ever be susceptible to something like that.

What I experienced was that psychosis isn't a failure of logic or education. I had never believed in a single conspiracy theory (and I don't now), but during that month I believed all sorts of wild conspiratorial things.

What you're describing with cable news sounds more like 1) Cognitive bias, which everyone has, but yes can be improved. And 2) a social phenomenon, where they create this shared reality of not just information, but a social identity, and they keep feeding that beast.

However, when those people hold beliefs that sound irrational to outsiders, that's not necessarily the same thing as psychotic delusions.

When I was in psychosis, it definitely seemed like more of a hardware issue than a software issue if that makes sense. Sometimes software issues can lead to hardware issues though.

[N_Lens]

I’ve experienced psychosis and it definitely leans more towards a hardware issue. The reason I think this is apophenia - seeing connections where none exist - is a particular state of the mind where neural connection making is highly elevated. In my lay experience it’s as though dopamine, acetylcholine, and norepinephrine are all chronically elevated and create internal feedback loops, which causes a spiral/cascade of accelerated meaning making and increased neural connectivity. This is also experienced physically and mentally as mania, paranoia, anxiety.

This is probably why antipsychotics usually work by damping down on these neurotransmitters really hard, and by preventing that accelerating cascade they interrupt the illness process.

[SequoiaHope]

Any idea what caused it? Reminds me of a family member who was addicted to meth and started believing all kinds of wild stuff.

[djmips]

I feel that's probably not always true but certainly a good education you would hope could inoculate against this generally.

[colechristensen]

"Liberal Arts" was originally meant to be literally the education required to make you free, I think that sort of thing (and universities and lower education) needs to be rethought because so many people are so very... dependent and lacking so much understanding of the world around them.

If exposing you to an LLM causes psychosis you have some really big problems that need to be prevented, detected, and addressed much better.

[dingnuts]

never heard of cable news convincing people that they're Jesus [0]

0 https://www.vice.com/en/article/chatgpt-is-giving-people-ext...