Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

nytimes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 548 posts

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#11

Post by avensec »

j-pb wrote: post #7
ArcHound wrote: post #3

One of the more disturbing things I read this year was the my boyfriend is AI subreddit. I genuinely can't fathom what is going on there. Seems so wrong, yet no one there seems to care. I worry about the damage caused by these things on distressed people. What can be done?

After having spoken with one of the people there I'm a lot less concerned to be honest. They described it as something akin to an emotional vibrator, that they didn't attribute any sentience to, and that didn't trigger their PTSD that they normally experienced when dating men. If AI can provide emotional support and an outlet for survivors who would otherwise not be able to have that kind of emotional need fulfilled,…

It may not be a concern now, but it comes down to their level of maintaining critical thinking. The risk of epistemic drift, when you have a system that is designed (or reinforced) to empathize with you, can create long-term effects not noticed in any single interaction.

Related: "Delusions by design? How everyday AIs might be fuelling psychosis (and what can be done about it)" ( https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/cmy7n_v5 )

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#13

Post by ACCount37 »

blurbleblurble wrote: post #5

The whiplash of carefully filtering out sycophantic behavior from GPT-5 to adding it back in full force for GPT-5.1 is dystopian. We all know what's going on behind the scenes: The investors want their money.

OpenAI fought 4o, and 4o won.

By now, I'm willing to pay extra to avoid OpenAI's atrocious personality tuning and their inane "safety" filters.

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#14

Post by kotaKat »

leoh wrote: post #12

Anthropic was founded by exiles of OpenAI's safety team, who quit en masse about 5 years ago. Then a few years later, the board tried to fire Altman. When will folks stop trusting OpenAI?

When the justice system finally catches up and puts Sam behind bars.

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#15

Post by chris-vls »

It seems quite probable that an LLM provider will lose a major liability lawsuit. "Is this product ready for release?" is a very hard question. And it is one of the most important ones to get right.

Different providers have delivered different levels of safety. This will make it easier to prove that the less-safe provider chose to ship a more dangerous product -- and that we could reasonably expect them to take more care.

Interestingly, a lot of liability law dates back to the railroad era. Another time that it took courts to rein in incredibly politically powerful companies deploying a new technology on a vast scale.

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#16

Post by isoprophlex »

ArcHound wrote: post #3

One of the more disturbing things I read this year was the my boyfriend is AI subreddit. I genuinely can't fathom what is going on there. Seems so wrong, yet no one there seems to care. I worry about the damage caused by these things on distressed people. What can be done?

My dude/entity, before there were these LLM hookups, there existed the Snapewives. People wanna go crazy, they will, LLMs or not.

https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1444/5/1/219

This paper explores a small community of Snape fans who have gone beyond a narrative retelling of the character as constrained by the work of Joanne Katherine Rowling. The ‘Snapewives’ or ‘Snapists’ are women who channel Snape, are engaged in romantic relationships with him, and see him as a vital guide for their daily lives. In this context, Snape is viewed as more than a mere fictional creation.

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#17

Post by JumpCrisscross »

chris-vls wrote: post #15

It seems quite probable that an LLM provider will lose a major liability lawsuit. "Is this product ready for release?" is a very hard question. And it is one of the most important ones to get right. Different providers have delivered different levels of safety. This will make it easier to prove that the less-safe provider chose to ship a more dangerous product -- and that we could reasonably expect them to take more…

> a lot of liability law dates back to the railroad era. Another time that it took courts to rein in incredibly politically powerful companies deploying a new technology on a vast scale

Do you have a layman-accessible history of this? (Ideally an essay.)

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#18

Post by JumpCrisscross »

kotaKat wrote: post #14
leoh wrote: post #12

Anthropic was founded by exiles of OpenAI's safety team, who quit en masse about 5 years ago. Then a few years later, the board tried to fire Altman. When will folks stop trusting OpenAI?

When the justice system finally catches up and puts Sam behind bars.

> When the justice system finally catches up and puts Sam behind bars

Sam bears massive personal liability, in my opinion. But criminal? What crimes has he committed?

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#19

Post by MengerSponge »

belval wrote: post #10
ArcHound wrote: post #3

One of the more disturbing things I read this year was the my boyfriend is AI subreddit. I genuinely can't fathom what is going on there. Seems so wrong, yet no one there seems to care. I worry about the damage caused by these things on distressed people. What can be done?

> I worry about the damage caused by these things on distressed people. What can be done? Why? We are gregarious animals, we need social connections. ChatGPT has guardrails that keep this mostly safe and helps with the loneliness epidemic. It's not like people doing this are likely thriving socially in the first place, better with ChatGPT than on some forum à la 4chan that will radicalize them. I feel like this will…

load-bearing "mostly"

https://www.cnn.com/2025/11/06/us/openai-chatgpt-suicide-law...

Re: What OpenAI did when ChatGPT users lost touch with reality

#20

Post by j-pb »

avensec wrote: post #11
j-pb wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After having spoken with one of the people there I'm a lot less concerned to be honest. They described it as something akin to an emotional vibrator, that they didn't attribute any sentience to, and that didn't trigger their PTSD that they normally experienced when dating men. If AI can provide emotional support and an outlet for survivors who would otherwise not be able to have that kind of emotional need fulfilled,…

It may not be a concern now, but it comes down to their level of maintaining critical thinking. The risk of epistemic drift, when you have a system that is designed (or reinforced) to empathize with you, can create long-term effects not noticed in any single interaction. Related: "Delusions by design? How everyday AIs might be fuelling psychosis (and what can be done about it)" ( https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/cmy7n…

I don't disagree that AI psychosis is real, I've met people who believed that they were going to publish at Neurips due to the nonsense ChatGPT told them, that believed that the UI mockup that claude gave then were actually producing insights into it's inner workings instead of just being blinking SVGs, and I even encountered someone participating at a startup event with an Idea that I'm 100% is AI slop.

My point was just that the interaction I had from r/myboyfriendisai wans't one of those delusional ones. For that I would take r/artificialsentience as a much better example. That place is absolutely nuts.

Post reply on HN