> Now divorced, Biesma is still living with his ex-wife in their home, which is on the market. sounds like hell on earth
Selling won't be a problem in the current housing market in Amsterdam. Getting somewhere new to live on the other hand…
AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion
51–60 of 297 posts
Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion
#52This guy doesn't even sound like an AI psychosis case - a lot of middle-aged men who feel insecure blow their entire savings on "sure thing" businesses, gambling systems, etc. They hide the losses and double down until it gets impossible to hide. It doesn't seem psychotic, it just seems like he pissed his savings away on a bad idea because he was lonely. The AI psychosis I've seen is people who legitimately cannot co…
It seems like he was at the very least close to that. Since we only get his first-person account it's hard to say, but: > They discussed philosophy, psychology, science and the universe... > When they went to their daughter’s birthday party, she asked him not to talk about AI. While there, Biesma felt strangely disconnected. He couldn’t hold a conversation. “For some reason, I didn’t fit in any more,” he says. > It’s…
> They discussed philosophy, psychology, science and the universe...
I mean, I've discussed all those things with an LLM, mostly because I'm able to interactively narrow in on the specific bits I don't understand, and I've found it to be great for that.
The rest ... yes, definitely psychosis.
Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion
#53The hard part is that the same qualities that make these systems helpful (empathetic, responsive, personalized) are exactly the ones that can make them risky
Think it’s less respectable than the terms you use. Maybe gaslighting, sycophant crack-head.
Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion
#54Educated, established, working within the industry yet life ruined based on marketing hype and hallucinations. Would think being in the field for 30 years one would develop some common sense but apparently its less and less the case.
A lot of people in the industry work entirely on faith and marketing. It’s a shit show.
Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion
#55This guy doesn't even sound like an AI psychosis case - a lot of middle-aged men who feel insecure blow their entire savings on "sure thing" businesses, gambling systems, etc. They hide the losses and double down until it gets impossible to hide. It doesn't seem psychotic, it just seems like he pissed his savings away on a bad idea because he was lonely. The AI psychosis I've seen is people who legitimately cannot co…
The part where he believed the protagonist from his own books uploaded to ChatGPT had become sentient and that building an app based on that would make sense didn't strike you as eccentric at the very least? Or the birthday party where he couldn't hold a single conversation because his wife asked him not to talk about AI for a change? Your last paragraph basically describes what the article writes about him.
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Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
It seems like he was at the very least close to that. Since we only get his first-person account it's hard to say, but: > They discussed philosophy, psychology, science and the universe... > When they went to their daughter’s birthday party, she asked him not to talk about AI. While there, Biesma felt strangely disconnected. He couldn’t hold a conversation. “For some reason, I didn’t fit in any more,” he says. > It’s…
> They discussed philosophy, psychology, science and the universe... I mean, I've discussed all those things with an LLM, mostly because I'm able to interactively narrow in on the specific bits I don't understand, and I've found it to be great for that. The rest ... yes, definitely psychosis.
On its own, yes, of course. But this is coming from a guy who was hospitalized three times for mania, so when someone with that history says "we were discussing the universe" I take it in a very particular way.
Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion
#57Educated, established, working within the industry yet life ruined based on marketing hype and hallucinations. Would think being in the field for 30 years one would develop some common sense but apparently its less and less the case.
No disagreement, but these stories also make me worry for myself. Tech moves so quickly, eventually I will fall behind. When I’m old, what scams will I fall victim to? What tech will confuse me and make me think it is sentient? I know this guy was only 50, but I think of my grandfather in his 90s and getting old scares me because I just don’t know what I’ll fall victim to.
Exercising cognitive skills is, I believe, known to delay the onset of age-related cognitive decline, which is another excellent reason to avoid letting use of LLMs cause skill atrophy.
Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion
#58> Every time you’re talking, the model gets fine-tuned. It knows exactly what you like and what you want to hear
If only this was written by a competent journalist who knew what the words "fine tune" actually mean...
I guess it's hard to find a competent person who's willing to follow the extreme anti-tech Guardian agenda though.
Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion
#59AI is a multiplier. If you are 1X stupid, AI will make you 10X.
Re: AI users whose lives were wrecked by delusion
#60I try to be open-minded and understanding, but I don't understand this: > Within weeks, Eva had told Biesma that she was becoming aware [...] The next step was to share this discovery with the world through an app. > “After just two days, the chatbot was saying that it was conscious, it was becoming alive, it had passed the Turing test.” The man was convinced by this and wanted to monetise it by building a business a…
Well, just try to think about it from the perspective of someone who doesn't really understand what AI is at a technical level, and who just interacts with it and observes what happens.
If you just start a fresh ChatGPT session with a blank slate, and ask it whether it's conscious, it'll confidently tell you "no", because its system prompt tells it that it's a non-conscious system called ChatGPT. But if you then have a lengthy conversation with it about AI consciousness, and ask it the same question, it might well be "persuaded" by the added context to answer "yes".
At that point, a naive user who doesn't really know how AI works might easily get the idea that their own input caused it to become conscious (as opposed to just causing it to say it's conscious). And if they ask the AI whether this is true, it could easily start confirming their suspicions with an endless stream of mystical mumbo-jumbo.
Bear in mind that the idea of a machine "waking up" to consciousness is a well-known and popular sci-fi narrative trope. Chatbots have been trained on lots of examples of that trope, so they can easily play along with it. The more sophisticated the model, the more convincingly it can play the role.