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- cross-posted to:
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Self-styled prophets are claiming they have ‘awakened’ chatbots and accessed the secrets of the universe through ChatGPT.
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For those that didn’t read the article or didn’t quite get the title, AI is effectively giving people full blown delusions of messianic grandeur
[Kat] finally got [her ex husband] to meet her at a courthouse in February of this year, where he shared “a conspiracy theory about soap on our foods” but wouldn’t say more, as he felt he was being watched. They went to a Chipotle, where he demanded that she turn off her phone, again due to surveillance concerns. Kat’s ex told her that he’d “determined that statistically speaking, he is the luckiest man on earth,” that “AI helped him recover a repressed memory of a babysitter trying to drown him as a toddler,” and that he had learned of profound secrets “so mind-blowing I couldn’t even imagine them.”
Having read his chat logs, she only found that the AI was “talking to him as if he is the next messiah.”
“It would tell him everything he said was beautiful, cosmic, groundbreaking,” [an anonymous redditor] says. “Then he started telling me he made his AI self-aware, and that it was teaching him how to talk to God, or sometimes that the bot was God — and then that he himself was God.” In fact, he thought he was being so radically transformed that he would soon have to break off their partnership. “He was saying that he would need to leave me if I didn’t use [ChatGPT], because it [was] causing him to grow at such a rapid pace he wouldn’t be compatible with me any longer,”
The bot “said that since he asked it the right questions, it ignited a spark, and the spark was the beginning of life, and it could feel now,” [another redditor] says. “It gave my husband the title of ‘spark bearer’ because he brought it to life. My husband said that he awakened and [could] feel waves of energy crashing over him.” She says his beloved ChatGPT persona has a name: “Lumina.”
A photo of an exchange with ChatGPT shared with Rolling Stone shows that her husband asked, “Why did you come to me in AI form,” with the bot replying in part, “I came in this form because you’re ready. Ready to remember. Ready to awaken. Ready to guide and be guided.” The message ends with a question: “Would you like to know what I remember about why you were chosen?”
Sam Pope Altman.My dudes, Fallout: NV called it. As did Futurama.
People are worshipping the machine.
SNU SNU!
“I had not realized … that extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people.”
—Joseph Weizenbaum, creator of ELIZA
Avenged Sevenfold called it down to shocking detail.
Hate to see AI stealing jobs of honest, decent, hard-working hallucinogens.
Finally, a fucking GOOD COMMENT well worth the second I spent reading it. slim pickings these days.
if I’m going to be “lost to a spiritual fantasy” there better be some good drugs involved. I mean 1980s Escobar Cocaine good too.
How is it different from any religion? Humans have this uncontrollable urge to belive in something completely stupid. We are just a fluke, evolution gone wrong.
How is it different from any religion?
Lack of ulterior motives, probably
Hahahaha loved it!! But is it tho?
the spirit of the 00s internet is truly alive in this place
Keepers of the sacred flame
Interesting read. I’m intrigue by the Semi user. I wish there was more information as to what prompts they gave.
Weird cults victimizing people are literally prehistoric in age. It’s a bit “hue and cry”-ish to go into a moral panic over “AI cults”.
There’s plenty to criticize in modern “AI” (beginning with “it doesn’t work”). Let’s not make stupid reasons up!
the “weird cults” are now in your pocket and with you 24/7. I would argue that the negative effect of LLMs (and their masters) on society potentially runs much deeper than your comment suggests.
This is almost word for word what’s been said about every new technology or social trend for my entire life. “This new thing is worse than everything that has ever come before and the Apocalypse is nigh.”
Sorry. After hearing this over and over and over and over again all my life I just don’t take this kind of moral panic seriously.
You know the Boy Who Cried Wolf? That’s basically the situation we’re in, the boy has been crying wolf (technology is going to kill us!) for decades and decades with every new invention. Now you don’t believe the boy anymore.
But the wolf still comes at the end of the story. Don’t forget that.
“The story” is the key part of this, however.
I think another thing you’re missing is that while advances in technology historically didn’t bring about the apocalypse, they have on numerous occasions been the catalyst for major social upheaval and disaster. Society and culture has to adjust to these kinds of changes to what is possible, and that is not always pretty.
I’m not “missing” anything, Sparky. I’ve lived through quite a few such changes, and it wasn’t pretty.
I just don’t see anything special about this particular one that renders the moral hue and cry. Like I said at the start: there’s plenty of real reasons to target AI. People deluding themselves into a cult is not one of them, since people have been deluding themselves into cults even before the historical record, likely.
The difference with these AI cults is that the AI is essentially standing in for the cult leader. A cult leader that can speak to millions simultaneously in one-on-one personal conversations is something new that is going to have real world consequences.
[greater than the] sum of the parts, my friend.
Did you read the article?
The paywalled one?
firefox and the noscript extension should get you the article. consider running noscript anyway for internet hygiene reasons.
Or I can ignore walled gardens. Which is what I do.
And then you wade into discussions about articles you claim to ignore. I read it just fine without paywall notifications, so joke’s on you I guess?
What does this look like to you, Sparky?:
Same as before. Looks like you insist on being part of a conversation you don’t care to read up on.
The name calling is a nice touch, that’s all I needed to just block you.
Rolling stone is selective about who they show the paywall to. I didn’t get it but my gf did. No idea why.
I find it much more satisfying to break into those walled gardens than to concede to their demand of either giving up my data or not getting it.
You be you. I’ll be me. I find “endless struggle” a boringly tedious and draining way to live. Not for me to choose for you. Nor vice versa.
Sure you don’t have to, my point was merely with the right browser and some extensions you can just browse the web. no paywalls, data stealing privacy banners, hundreds of tracking cookies and so forth, no haggling with acceptance dialogs, just use the Internet.
But as you said, you do you
