I liked the term “AI mania” as replacing most instances of “AI psychosis” and “Claude Code Mania” as a variant that made me go “oh, yeah I’ve totally had Claude Code mania.”
A few distinctions I think are worth tracking, in rough clusters:
Overuse AI Addiction AI Mania
Epistemic Capture AI Mania AI Reality Bubbling (Sycophancy) AI Abdication AI Atrophy
Relational Capture AI Mis-anthropomorphism AI Seduction
I think each of these has mild forms that probably most people have, and more extreme forms.
I guess overuse and epistemic capture are kinda descriptive of mania, but I think they’re consequences of something else. (I don’t think you were trying to make the ultimate comprehensive true name classification of course.) I think getting more sense of the something else might help people handle it better. In the case of AI mania, it might be something involving “I suddenly expect all my intentions / ideas / plans to be feasible, which makes me extremely optimistic about everything and/or feeling very high opportunity cost about everything so I’m compelled to keep using the thing and also all my ideas are popping themselves up more strongly because they are excited that they could be easily implemented and that’s abnormal / too much ideas popping up”.
It also feels inseparably related to the shape of the “not AGI” moments—LLM’s somehow not being able to grasp writing style, taste, and intention, hitting manual implementation guardrails on something like “build a $1M business please” and the contrast of being able to quickly make limited-usecase tools and the gaps of how many aspects of serious work are still not yet automated.
I think it’s more about differences in models over time. With GPT 4o, etc., I think the key mode of failure looked more like people developing these weird cult-like quasi-mystical relationships with the AI, anthropomorphizing it, etc. This looked a lot like “psychosis.” Now, I think the mode of failure looks more like “see Claude Code is really cool, that means I can do anything!” This looks more like “mania.” So I think both are true, just of different eras.
I liked the term “AI mania” as replacing most instances of “AI psychosis” and “Claude Code Mania” as a variant that made me go “oh, yeah I’ve totally had Claude Code mania.”
A few distinctions I think are worth tracking, in rough clusters:
Overuse
AI Addiction
AI Mania
Epistemic Capture
AI Mania
AI Reality Bubbling (Sycophancy)
AI Abdication
AI Atrophy
Relational Capture
AI Mis-anthropomorphism
AI Seduction
I think each of these has mild forms that probably most people have, and more extreme forms.
I guess overuse and epistemic capture are kinda descriptive of mania, but I think they’re consequences of something else. (I don’t think you were trying to make the ultimate comprehensive true name classification of course.) I think getting more sense of the something else might help people handle it better. In the case of AI mania, it might be something involving “I suddenly expect all my intentions / ideas / plans to be feasible, which makes me extremely optimistic about everything and/or feeling very high opportunity cost about everything so I’m compelled to keep using the thing and also all my ideas are popping themselves up more strongly because they are excited that they could be easily implemented and that’s abnormal / too much ideas popping up”.
It also feels inseparably related to the shape of the “not AGI” moments—LLM’s somehow not being able to grasp writing style, taste, and intention, hitting manual implementation guardrails on something like “build a $1M business please” and the contrast of being able to quickly make limited-usecase tools and the gaps of how many aspects of serious work are still not yet automated.
I think it’s more about differences in models over time. With GPT 4o, etc., I think the key mode of failure looked more like people developing these weird cult-like quasi-mystical relationships with the AI, anthropomorphizing it, etc. This looked a lot like “psychosis.” Now, I think the mode of failure looks more like “see Claude Code is really cool, that means I can do anything!” This looks more like “mania.” So I think both are true, just of different eras.