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In Search of AI Psychosis

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Re: In Search of AI Psychosis

#81

Post by andoando »

mk_stjames wrote: post #38
rep_lodsb wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>while trying to warn that it's stuck in a loop, hence using swirl emojis and babbling about recursion in weird spiritual terms That explanation itself sounds fairly crackpot-y to me. It would imply that the LLM is actually aware of some internal "mental state".

It's actually not; there has been a phenomenon that Anthropic themselves observed with Claude in self-interaction studies that they coined 'The “Spiritual Bliss” Attractor State'. It is well covered in section 5 of [0]. >Section 5.5.2: The “Spiritual Bliss” Attractor State > The consistent gravitation toward consciousness exploration, existential questioning, and spiritual/mystical themes in extended interactions was…

I think a pretty simple explanation is that the deeper you go into any topic the closer you get to metaphysical questions. Ask why enough and you eventually you get to what is reality, how can we truly know anything, what are we, etc.

It's a fact of life rather than anything particular and about llms

Re: In Search of AI Psychosis

#82

Post by ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 »

kelnos wrote: post #71
throwaway314155 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then he's not a very good one. https://web.archive.org/web/20210215053502/https://www.nytim...

That's essentially a retaliatory hit piece the NYT printed because they were mad that Scott deleted his website because the NYT wanted to doxx him. Not saying there's no merit to the article, but it should be looked upon skeptically due to that bias.

> NYT wanted to doxx him

NYT wanted to report on who he was. He doxxed himself years before that (as mentioned in that article). They eventually also reported on that (after Alexander revealed his name, seeing that it was going to come out anyway, I guess), which is an asshole thing to do, but not doxxing, IMO.

Re: In Search of AI Psychosis

#83

Post by murderfs »

alganet wrote: post #80

The author has a hypothesis and it's looking for evidence, instead of looking at evidence to draw a hypothesis. It's bad thinking.

What? That is the exact opposite of bad thinking, looking at evidence to draw a hypothesis is also known as p-hacking. There's a reason that there's been a push towards preregistration of hypotheses for scientific studies.

Re: In Search of AI Psychosis

#84

Post by fallous »

jedharris wrote: post #76
solid_fuel wrote: post #15

The comparison to social media is an apt one. I have been told directly, by relatives, that the city I live in was burned to the ground by protests in 2020. Nevermind that I told them that wasn't true, never mind that I sent pictures of the neighborhood still very much being fine. They are convinced because everyone they follow on facebook repeats the same thing.

This is an example that supports Scott's point that people don't have world models. The people who "believe" this don't wonder how stock market continues to operate now that NYC is a wreck. Etc. I wonder in what sense they really do "believe". If they had a strong practical reason to go to a big city, what would they do?

I'm not sure that you can reach the conclusion that "people don't have world models" based on beliefs that do not fully integrate with such a model. We too often try to misapply binary truth requirements to domains in which there exists at least a trinary logic, if not a greater number of logic truths.

If I meet a random stranger, do I trust them or distrust them? The answer is "both/neither," because a concept such as "trust" isn't a binary logic in such a circumstance. They are neither trustworthy nor untrustworthy, they are in a state of nontrustworthiness (the absence of trust, but not the opposite of truth).

World models tend to have foundational principles/truths that inform what can be compatible for inclusion. A belief that is non-compatible, rather than compatible/incompatible, can exist in such a model (often weakly) since it does not meet the requirements for rejection. Incomplete information can be integrated into a world model as long as the aspects being evaluated for compatibility conform to the model.

Requiring a world model to contain complete information and logical consistency at all possible levels from the granular to the metaphysical seems to be one Hell of a high bar that makes demands no other system is expected to achieve.

Re: In Search of AI Psychosis

#86

Post by musictubes »

p_j_w wrote: post #36
bbor wrote: post #23

So is QAnon a religion? Awkward question, but it’s non-psychotic by definition. Not to anyone who has ever discussed it... Is this psychosis? The answer has to be no A lot of really confident talk without even a passing attempt to define the central term :(

People like to do a lot of not well justified hand waving. Author is not exempt from this.

The author is a practicing psychiatrist and is very well versed in what can be considered psychosis.

Re: In Search of AI Psychosis

#87

Post by anon84873628 »

achierius wrote: post #17

> We see that the nightmare scenario - a person with no previous psychosis history or risk factor becoming fully psychotic - was uncommon, at only 10% of cases. Most people either had a previous psychosis history known to the respondent, or had some obvious risk factor, or were merely crackpots rather than full psychotics. It's unfortunate to see the author take this tack. This is essentially taking the conventional…

One of the questions that sets up the premise of the article in the first paragraph is, "Are the chatbots really driving people crazy, or just catching the attention of people who were crazy already?"

That's why he's honing in on that specific scenario to determine if chatbots are uniquely crazy-making or something. The professional psychiatrist author is not unaware of the things you're saying. They're just not the purpose of the survey & article.

Re: In Search of AI Psychosis

#88

Post by lmm »

ZYbCRq22HbJ2y7 wrote: post #82
kelnos wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's essentially a retaliatory hit piece the NYT printed because they were mad that Scott deleted his website because the NYT wanted to doxx him. Not saying there's no merit to the article, but it should be looked upon skeptically due to that bias.

> NYT wanted to doxx him NYT wanted to report on who he was. He doxxed himself years before that (as mentioned in that article). They eventually also reported on that (after Alexander revealed his name, seeing that it was going to come out anyway, I guess), which is an asshole thing to do, but not doxxing, IMO.

> NYT wanted to report on who he was.

They wanted to report specifically his birth/legal name, with no plausible public interest reason. If it wasn't "stochastic terrorism" (as the buzzword of the day was) then it sure looked a lot like it.

> He doxxed himself years before that

Few people manage to keep anything 100% secret. Realistically private/public is a spectrum not a binary, and publication in the NYT is a pretty drastic step up.

Re: In Search of AI Psychosis

#89

Post by alganet »

murderfs wrote: post #83
alganet wrote: post #80

The author has a hypothesis and it's looking for evidence, instead of looking at evidence to draw a hypothesis. It's bad thinking.

What? That is the exact opposite of bad thinking, looking at evidence to draw a hypothesis is also known as p-hacking. There's a reason that there's been a push towards preregistration of hypotheses for scientific studies.

I believe you are wrong.

Let's say I believe in dragons, and I start interpreting any evidence as dragon evidence. Furthermore, I start only looking for evidence that could be connected to dragons. It's bad thinking.

The opposite is the good thinking. You look at evidence without searching for anything specific, then you make a hypothesis on what is going on.

Searching for evidence of chatbot-induced psychosis is settling on a cause before looking at evidence. It's obvious that is wrong.

For example, the survey the author did should not have asked if anyone close "had shown signs of AI psychosis". The question is already biased from the start.

The article explores the popular idea that talking to a chatbot can induce psychosis. This paints a picture of a person talking to an AI chatbot and going insane. Then it proceeds to say it's a rare case, therefore shutting down possibilities that this could lead to an epidemic. However, by doing this, the article discourages the reader to think of other possible scenarios (like unaware interaction with AI-produced content) leading to psychological issues.

Re: In Search of AI Psychosis

#90

Post by codr7 »

AI is right about many things, impressively so.

And people want to be special; to find meaning, purpose beyond the daily grind.

The result wasn't very difficult to predict, more likely one of the driving forces behind the push.

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