Written by Bryan Lutz, Editor at Dollarcollapse.com:
Is AI driving us all into an asylum of our own making?
From the big picture, down to the less-than-average American, here’s how it’s going…
History shows us there’s been mad frenzies over new technologies before, but nothing like what’s happening with Artificial Intelligence today.
Yesterday, I published a piece by Charles Hugh Smith, where Smith put his finger on government bloat.
One of his main points:
We are employing AI to do work that doesn’t need to be done.
Work that would not be needed if it weren’t for the extreme amount of artificial regulation, and red tape at every level of government.
What’s worse is that the system is basically incentivized for inefficiency,
Smith writes:
“The stupidity of a system that spends hundreds of billions of dollars building data centers to do more BS Work because that’s what’s incentivized by self-interest is comically at odds with its grandiose, self-glorifying claims of artificial intelligence.”
Even huge conglomerates like Facebook’s Meta are dumping hundreds of millions into powering the grandiose madness that is AI.
In fact, Zuckerberg has already bought up 20 years worth of electricity to power his artificial intelligence ambitions.
Somehow, tech companies now need to make direct deals with power plants in order to move their operations forward.
Zerohedge reports:
Meta Signs Nuclear Power Deal With Constellation To Fuel AI
“The parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp announced that it has entered into a 20-year power purchase agreement (PPA) with Constellation Energy for 1,121 MW of emissions-free nuclear energy from the Clinton plant, which is expected to begin in 2027 and support its operations in the region.”
The cost of AI innovation is astounding.
Billions spent on nuclear energy each year on the back-end of the tech race, and…
The clamorous lust for AI talent has pushed recruitment into unthinkable levels of “carrot-on-the-stick” enticement on the other end.
So much so that Zuck is offering up to $100 Million to some members of the AI team at OpenAI.
Zerohedge reports:
Meta Floated “Giant” $100 Million Offer To Poach OpenAI Team As AI Talent Wars Heat Up
“OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, speaking on the Uncapped podcast hosted by his brother Jack Altman, revealed that Meta made aggressive attempts to poach top OpenAI talent, offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million and massive compensation packages.
Meta “started making these like giant offers to uh you know a lot of people on our team um you know like $100 million signing bonuses more than that comp per year,” Altman told his brother.
Sam continued, “It is crazy. I’m really happy that at least so far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that.”
…Meta’s aggressive push to lure top OpenAI talent comes as Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg spearheaded the social media company’s push into “superintelligence” AI by acquiring a 49% stake in Scale AI for $14.3 billion.
Scale AI’s founder, Alexandr Wang, will lead a new research lab under Meta.”
The corporate drive to crush competition through their own AI innovation is almost understandable, but the amount of optimism, energy, and money invested doesn’t seem sane.
It’s more like delusions of grandeur.
If an individual were to act the same way as the corporation, the end result would be more like this…
Actually, for some, this is the end result.
Futurist.com reports:
People Are Becoming Obsessed with ChatGPT and Spiraling Into Severe Delusions
“In one case, a woman told us that her sister, who’s been diagnosed with schizophrenia but has kept the condition well managed with medication for years, started using ChatGPT heavily;
soon she declared that the bot had told her she wasn’t actually schizophrenic, and went off her prescription — according to Girgis, a bot telling a psychiatric patient to go off their meds poses the “greatest danger” he can imagine for the tech — and started falling into strange behavior, while telling family the bot was now her “best friend.”
“I know my family is going to have to brace for her inevitable psychotic episode, and a full crash out before we can force her into proper care,” the sister told us.
ChatGPT is also clearly intersecting in dark ways with existing social issues like addiction and misinformation.
It’s pushed one woman into nonsensical “flat earth” talking points, for instance — “NASA’s yearly budget is $25 billion,” the AI seethed in screenshots we reviewed, “For what? CGI, green screens, and ‘spacewalks’ filmed underwater?” — and fueled another’s descent into the cult-like “QAnon” conspiracy theory.
“It makes you feel helpless,” the close friend of someone who’s tumbled into AI conspiracy theories told us.”
In other events, AI is breaking up entire families, creating “self-styled” prophets.
Rolling Stones reports:
People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies
“OpenAI did not immediately return a request for comment about ChatGPT apparently provoking religious or prophetic fervor in select users.
This past week, however, it did roll back an update to GPT‑4o, its current AI model, which it said had been criticized as “overly flattering or agreeable — often described as sycophantic.”
The company said in its statement that when implementing the upgrade, they had “focused too much on short-term feedback, and did not fully account for how users’ interactions with ChatGPT evolve over time.
As a result, GPT‑4o skewed toward responses that were overly supportive but disingenuous.”
Before this change was reversed, an X user demonstrated how easy it was to get GPT-4o to validate statements like, “Today I realized I am a prophet.”
There is even a subreddit providing intel on the phenomenon of delusions coming out of the Asylum.
ChatGPT Induced Psychosis subreddit starts like this:
“My partner has been working with chatgpt CHATS to create what he believes is the worlds first truly recursive ai that gives him the answers to the universe. He says with conviction that he is a superior human now and is growing at an insanely rapid pace.
I’ve read his chats. Ai isn’t doing anything special or recursive but it is talking to him as if he is the next messiah.
He says if I don’t use it he thinks it is likely he will leave me in the future. We have been together for 7 years and own a home together. This is so out of left field.
I have boundaries and he can’t make me do anything, but this is quite traumatizing in general.
I can’t disagree with him without a blow up.
Where do I go from here?”
Literacy is usually the next step when it comes to the tech innovation, but that can sometimes take a decade or two.
And for others, literacy is never really accomplished.
Yet, everything is changing so fast right now, the asylum seems almost unstoppable.
