In Search Of AI Psychosis
Importance: 5 | # | acx, ai-psychosis
AI psychosis (NYT, PsychologyToday) is an apparent phenomenon where people go crazy after talking to chatbots too much. There are some high-profile anecdotes, but still many unanswered questions. For example, how common is it really? Are the chatbots really driving people crazy, or just catching the attention of people who were crazy already? Isn’t psychosis supposed to be a biological disease? Wouldn’t that make chatbot-induced psychosis the same kind of category error as chatbot-induced diabetes?
I don’t have all the answers, so think of this post as an exploration of possible analogies and precedents rather than a strongly-held thesis. Also, I might have one answer - I think the yearly incidence of AI psychosis is somewhere around 1 in 10,000 (for a loose definition) to 1 in 100,000 (for a strict definition). I’ll talk about how I got those numbers at the end.
Scott conducts a survey (4156 responses - they are asked to estimate psychosis rate among friends and family) and estimates loose psychosis rate at 1 in 10,000 - rate of all people who get pushed to psychosis and a strict rate of 1 in 100,000 - people who showed no signs/risks of psychosis pre-AI-use and get pushed to psychosis.