More and more people are experiencing delusional thinking fuelled by AI.
When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Here’s how it works.
I’ve been writing about AI for more than a year now. During that time, people have told me they think their bosses, colleagues, partners and relatives might be suffering from AI psychosis — several even admitted they may have even experienced it themselves.
But every time I hear “AI psychosis”, I bristle. Because, at least in my limited understanding of mental health terminology, psychosis is a very serious state that needs to be identified and treated by professionals. So should we really just be bolting “AI” onto it and then using “AI psychosis” as a label for everyone who seems to be relying on AI too much?
At the same time, there have now been a growing number of reported cases of people experiencing significant mental health crises involving prolonged interactions with chatbots. Some of these have even resulted in people seeking professional treatment, committing crimes and death.
So although the term AI psychosis might feel overused and oversimplified in some contexts, we clearly need to be having more conversations about the mental health impacts of AI, not less. Which is why I asked several experts who specialize in mental health interventions what they think of the term and the way we go about identifying unhealthy AI use and treating it. And it turns out, I’m not the only one with concerns.
“I think it’s a good starting point and helpful for guiding treatment depending on the presentation and symptoms,” Genevieve Bartuski, psychologist and AI risk advisor at Unicorn Intelligence Tech Partners, says. “But it’s not a diagnosis that I would add to a clinical record.”
She also tells me it isn’t recognized in the latest diagnostic manuals that clinicians use, like the DSM-5TR (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, Text Revision) or the ICD (The International Classification of Diseases manual).
Bartuski explains that there are specific behaviors and experiences that point to psychosis, including hallucinations or delusions and disorganized thinking or behaviour. There are also often signs of social withdrawal, poor concentration and a decline in functioning. But she believes delusional thinking is the most important experience when we’re talking about AI use.
Sign up for breaking news, reviews, opinion, top tech deals, and more.
“Delusions are beliefs that are not changed despite evidence to the contrary. When a person has delusional thinking they may filter evidence, so to speak. They will look for things that confirm their delusions and ignore evidence that contradicts it,” Bartuski says.
Many cases that have been labelled as AI psychosis in the media do seem to be centered on delusional thinking. In just a few headlines I’ve collected, there are examples of people allegedly believing that AI is conscious, AI will help them make money, AI is a spiritual guide, and that robots are taking over the world.
Jeff Clark, an adult and addiction psychiatrist at High Performance Mental Health, says there might be three distinct phenomena going on here, all that we tend to put under the umbrella of AI psychosis.
He says some people use the term to describe the intense enthusiasm many developers feel about AI. “They find themselves automating new tasks, spinning up numerous agents, and burning through hundreds of millions or even billions of tokens,” he tells me.
He believes the mechanism driving this enthusiasm is reinforcement. “The output they receive from AI models and agents is so reinforcing that they find themselves obsessed with their work, often forgoing sleep and self-care in order to increase their output,” he explains.
