I think it is bad form to use the term “psychosis” to essentially mean “having or acting on beliefs that are based on bad evidence that was positively reinforced.” A psychotic episode isn’t characterized by being incorrect about some part of reality in a relatively normal way; it is characterized by a break from reality. Dating a chatbot isn’t psychosis, and neither necessarily is thinking you’ve somehow awoken it into a becoming a conscious entity. Even reporting religious experiences with chatbots is not necessarily indicative of psychosis.
What is psychosis is, well, roughly what the medical community says it is. It is deeply terrifying and horrifying from the inside, not just because of external consequences. Epistemic status: I have an acquaintance who has experienced manic episodes with psychotic symptoms, without the commonly associated amnesia. They reported not wishing that experience on their worst enemies.
There are reported cases of GPT-4o reinforcing an individual’s incorrect beliefs or instantiating new incorrect beliefs, leading to bad outcomes. As a separate phenomenon, there are reported cases of GPT-4o reinforcing or instantiating delusions in individuals vulnerable to psychosis, ultimately leading to a psychotic episode. This includes cases where the affected individual did not previously know they were vulnerable to psychosis, and their communication with GPT-4o was the first inciting incident.
My suspicion is that AI psychosis affects only those individuals who are already vulnerable to psychosis. I also suspect that some fraction of those people could have gone their entire lives without ever experiencing a psychotic episode were it not for GPT-4o, which is (by complete accident) a frighteningly effective tool for triggering psychosis.
Its a good effort to fight against new medically inaccurate terms which give the wrong impression of real medical phenomena, but sadly I think the ship is long sailed on this one, and the term is already much more popularly watered down than what is described in this post (though the term even then does refer to real & harmful psychological consequences of interacting with AIs).
I think it is bad form to use the term “psychosis” to essentially mean “having or acting on beliefs that are based on bad evidence that was positively reinforced.” A psychotic episode isn’t characterized by being incorrect about some part of reality in a relatively normal way; it is characterized by a break from reality. Dating a chatbot isn’t psychosis, and neither necessarily is thinking you’ve somehow awoken it into a becoming a conscious entity. Even reporting religious experiences with chatbots is not necessarily indicative of psychosis.
What is psychosis is, well, roughly what the medical community says it is. It is deeply terrifying and horrifying from the inside, not just because of external consequences. Epistemic status: I have an acquaintance who has experienced manic episodes with psychotic symptoms, without the commonly associated amnesia. They reported not wishing that experience on their worst enemies.
There are reported cases of GPT-4o reinforcing an individual’s incorrect beliefs or instantiating new incorrect beliefs, leading to bad outcomes. As a separate phenomenon, there are reported cases of GPT-4o reinforcing or instantiating delusions in individuals vulnerable to psychosis, ultimately leading to a psychotic episode. This includes cases where the affected individual did not previously know they were vulnerable to psychosis, and their communication with GPT-4o was the first inciting incident.
My suspicion is that AI psychosis affects only those individuals who are already vulnerable to psychosis. I also suspect that some fraction of those people could have gone their entire lives without ever experiencing a psychotic episode were it not for GPT-4o, which is (by complete accident) a frighteningly effective tool for triggering psychosis.
Its a good effort to fight against new medically inaccurate terms which give the wrong impression of real medical phenomena, but sadly I think the ship is long sailed on this one, and the term is already much more popularly watered down than what is described in this post (though the term even then does refer to real & harmful psychological consequences of interacting with AIs).