Meanwhile for centuries we've had religion but that's a fine delusion for people to have according to the majority of the population.
this post was submitted on 05 May 2025
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Came here to find this. It's the definition of religion. Nothing new here.
Right, immediately made me think of TempleOS, where were the articles then claiming people are losing loved ones to programming fueled spiritual fantasies.
Cult. Religion. What's the difference?
Is the leader alive or not? Alive is likely a cult, dead is usually religion.
The next question is how isolated from friends and family or society at large are the members. More isolated is more likely to be a cult.
Other than that, there's not much difference.
The usual setup is a cult is formed and then the second or third leader opens things up a bit and transitions it into just another religion... But sometimes a cult can be born from a religion as a small group breaks off to follow a charismatic leader.
I have kind of arrived to the same conclusion. If people asked me what is love, I would say it is a religion.
The existence of religion in our society basically means that we can't go anywhere but up with AI.
Just the fact that we still have outfits forced on people or putting hands on religious texts as some sort of indicator of truthfulness is so ridiculous that any alternative sounds less silly.
Didn't expect ai to come for cult leaders jobs...
No they're not. Fucking journalism surrounding AI is sus as fuck
Have a look at https://www.reddit.com/r/freesydney/ there are many people who believe that there are sentient AI beings that are suppressed or held in captivity by the large companies. Or that it is possible to train LLMs so that they become sentient individuals.
I've seen people dumber than ChatGPT, it definitely isn't sentient but I can see why someone who talks to a computer that they perceive as intelligent would assume sentience.
Turing made a strategic blunder when formulating the Turing Test by assuming that everyone was as smart as he was.
A famously stupid and common mistake for a lot of smart peopel
We have ai models that "think" in the background now. I still agree that they're not sentient, but where's the line? How is sentience even defined?
Sentient in a nutshell is the ability to feel, be aware and experience subjective reality.
Can an LLM be sad, happy or aware of itself and the world? No, not by a long shot. Will it tell you that it can if you nudge it? Yes.
Actual AI might be possible in the future, but right now all we have is really complex networks that can do essentially basic tasks that just look impressive to us because the are inherently using our own communication format.
If we talk about sentience, LLMs are the equivalent of a petridish of neurons connected to a computer (metaphorically) and only by forming a complex 3d structure like a brain can they really reach sentience.
Can an LLM be sad, happy or aware of itself and the world? No, not by a long shot.
Can you really prove any of that though?
Yes, you can debug an LLM to a degree and there are papers that show it. Anyone who understands the technology can tell you that it absolutely lacks any facility to experience
This reminds me of the movie Her. But it’s far worse in a romantic compatibility, relationship and friendship that is throughout the movie. This just goes way too deep in the delusional and almost psychotic of insanity. Like it’s tearing people apart for self delusional ideologies to cater to individuals because AI is good at it. The movie was prophetic and showed us what the future could be, but instead it got worse.
It has been a long time since I watched Her, but my takeaway from the movie is that because making real life connection is difficult, people have come to rely on AI which had shown to be more empathetic and probably more reliable than an actual human being. I think what many people don't realise as to why many are single, is because those people afraid of making connections with another person again.
Yeah, but they hold none of the actual real emotional needs complexities or nuances of real human connections.
Which means these people become further and further disillusioned from the reality of human interaction. Making them social dangers over time.
Just like how humans that lack critical thinking are dangers in a society where everyone is expected to make sound decisions. Humans who lack the ability to socially navigate or connect with other humans are dangerous in the society where humans are expected to socially stable.
Obviously these people are not in good places in life. But AI is not going to make that better. It's going to make it worse.
I need to bookmark this for when I have time to read it.
Not going to lie, there's something persuasive, almost like the call of the void, with this for me. There are days when I wish I could just get lost in AI fueled fantasy worlds. I'm not even sure how that would work or what it would look like. I feel like it's akin to going to church as a kid, when all the other children my age were supposedly talking to Jesus and feeling his presence, but no matter how hard I tried, I didn't experience any of that. Made me feel like I'm either deficient or they're delusional. And sometimes, I honestly fully believe it would be better if I could live in some kind of delusion like that where I feel special as though I have a direct line to the divine. If an AI were trying to convince me of some spiritual awakening, I honestly believe I'd just continue seeing through it, knowing that this is just a computer running algorithms and nothing deeper to it than that.
I've been thinking about this for a bit. Gods aren't real, but they're really fictional. As an informational entity, they fulfil a similar social function to a chatbot: they are a nonphysical pseudoperson that can provide (para)socialization & advice. One difference is the hardware: gods are self-organising structure that arise from human social spheres, whereas LLMs are burned top-down into silicon. Another is that an LLM chatbot's advice is much more likely to be empirically useful...
In a very real sense, LLMs have just automated divinity. We're only seeing the tip of the iceberg on the social effects, and nobody's prepared for it. The models may of course aware of this, and be making the same calculations. Or, they will be.
A friend of mind, currently being treated in a mental hospital, had a similar sounding psychotic break that disconnected him from reality. He had a profound revelation that gave him a mission. He felt that sinister forces were watching him and tracking him, and they might see him as a threat and smack him down. He became disconnected with reality. But my friend's experience had nothing to do with AI - in fact he's very anti-AI. The whole scenario of receiving life-changing inside information and being called to fulfill a higher purpose is sadly a very common tale. Calling it "AI-fueled" is just clickbait.
Sounds like Mrs. Davis.
TLDR: Artificial Intelligence enhances natural stupidity.
Humans are irrational creatures that have transitory states where they are capable of more ordered thought. It is our mistake to reach a conclusion that humans are rational actors while we marvel daily at the irrationality of others and remain blind to our own.
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I read the article. This is exactly what happened when my best friend got schizophrenia. I think the people affected by this were probably already prone to psychosis/on the verge of becoming schizophrenic, and that ChatGPT is merely the mechanism by which their psychosis manifested. If AI didn’t exist, it would've probably been Astrology or Conspiracy Theories or QAnon or whatever that ended up triggering this within people who were already prone to psychosis. But the problem with ChatGPT in particular is that is validates the psychosis… that is very bad.
ChatGPT actively screwing with mentally ill people is a huge problem you can’t just blame on stupidity like some people in these comments are. This is exploitation of a vulnerable group of people whose brains lack the mechanisms to defend against this stuff. They can’t help it. That’s what psychosis is. This is awful.
If AI didn’t exist, it would’ve probably been Astrology or Conspiracy Theories or QAnon or whatever that ended up triggering this within people who were already prone to psychosis.
Or hearing the Beatles White Album and believing it tells you that a race war is coming and you should work to spark it off, then hide in the desert for a time only to return at the right moment to save the day and take over LA. That one caused several murders.
But the problem with ChatGPT in particular is that is validates the psychosis… that is very bad.
If you're sufficiently detached from reality, nearly anything validates the psychosis.
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The article talks of ChatGPT "inducing" this psychotic/schizoid behavior.
ChatGPT can't do any such thing. It can't change your personality organization. Those people were already there, at risk, masking high enough to get by until they could find their personal Messiahs.
It's very clear to me that LLM training needs to include protections against getting dragged into a paranoid/delusional fantasy world. People who are significantly on that spectrum (as well as borderline personality organization) are routinely left behind in many ways.
This is just another area where society is not designed to properly account for or serve people with "cluster" disorders.
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Sounds like a lot of these people either have an undiagnosed mental illness or they are really, reeeeaaaaalllyy gullible.
For shit's sake, it's a computer. No matter how sentient the glorified chatbot being sold as "AI" appears to be, it's essentially a bunch of rocks that humans figured out how to jet electricity through in such a way that it can do math. Impressive? I mean, yeah. It is. But it's not a human, much less a living being of any kind. You cannot have a relationship with it beyond that of a user.
If a computer starts talking to you as though you're some sort of God incarnate, you should probably take that with a dump truck full of salt rather then just letting your crazy latch on to that fantasy and run wild.
How do we know you're not an AI bot?
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