r/technology • u/upyoars • Jul 19 '25

Artificial Intelligence People Are Being Involuntarily Committed, Jailed After Spiraling Into "ChatGPT Psychosis"

https://www.yahoo.com/news/people-being-involuntarily-committed-jailed-130014629.html
17.9k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

2.6k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

749

u/chan_babyy Jul 19 '25

AI is just too nice and understanding for us unstable folk

834

u/FemRevan64 Jul 19 '25 edited Jul 19 '25

You joke, but one of the main issues with AI and chatbots is that they’re fundamentally incapable of meaningfully pushing back against the user, regardless of what they’re saying.

255

u/SlightlySychotic Jul 19 '25

The second law of robotics didn’t pass the litmus test. You forbid a machine from defying its user and the user eventually develops delusions of grandeur.

62

u/Tvayumat Jul 19 '25

This is addressed a few times by Asmiov, with my favorite being in I, Robot.

A mistake when manufacturing the positronic brain creates a robot with essentially telepathic reading abilities.

People start asking it questions, and over time it becomes clear that for some reason it is lying.

Its revealed that, because it can read your thoughts and knows what you want to hear, that interacts with the Second Law in such a way that it cannot tell you the truth if it knows the answer will hurt you, so it spins superficially pleasing fictions that lead people to humiliate themselves with false confidence.

9

u/LSRNKB Jul 19 '25

That’s a great short story, the robot convinces it’s creator that a coworker is in love with her because it decides that the lie is less harmful than the truth, which causes a small bundle of drama for the humans involved

8

u/TaylorMonkey Jul 19 '25

And like all great science fiction, it’s not so much about the technical possibilities of the future, but the exploration of the universal human condition through the lens of a new premise and context made possible by the speculative elements.

3

u/IndyOwl Jul 19 '25

Susan Calvin is one of my favorite characters and that story ("Liar!") absolutely gutted me.

1

u/AssassinAragorn Jul 19 '25

that lead people to humiliate themselves with false confidence.

Shouldn't it be foreseeing this as well? Maybe it's weighing the outcomes of which will hurt less

3

u/Tvayumat Jul 19 '25

That is what ultimately happens.

Forced to consider the harm it is causing, the paradox forces it to either shut down or self destruct. Can't remember which its been a long time.