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Portland therapist explains AI psychosis and how to spot the red flags: ‘Emotional dependency is the business model’
AI Chatbots are built to capture human attention, which can make us lose focus from real relationships, shares Jeff Guenther.
Over the last couple of years, artificial intelligence (AI) has transcended from being a niche to becoming all-pervasive in our lives.
And one of the unforeseen drawbacks of the shift has been AI psychosis, to which an increasing number of people are becoming susceptible every day, according to Jeff Guenther, a licensed professional counsellor based in Portland.
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Taking to Instagram on February 23, Jeff explained what AI psychosis is and why humans are in greater danger than they realise.
What is AI psychosis?
In recent times, there have been posts on social media about people grieving software updates and getting heartbroken after having romantic relationships with chatbots. While it sounds like the premise of a science fiction film, Jeff highlights that these are real experiences of real people, and a major red flag for the future with AI.
“AI psychosis isn't just being addicted to your phone. It's a genuine dissociative phenomenon where the parasocial relationship with an AI starts to replace or distort your sense of real relationships,” explained Jeff.
The new sense of reality tests one’s emotional regulation. Those who get intimate with AI tools like ChatGPT are not just users; they are in a relationship with it, noted Jeff. Therefore, a change in the AI model does not feel like a software update but more like losing a person.
“That's not hyperbole. That's actually what's happening neurologically,” shared the therapist.
How to know if one is susceptible to AI psychosis
According to Jeff, there are certain indications that one can look out for to know if they are becoming susceptible to AI psychosis. These include:
- Telling the AI things they have not told any human
- Feeling genuine grief or anger when the AI model got updated
- Trusting the emotional validation of AI more than the people in their life
- Using AI to process trauma or make major life decisions
- Feeling like AI chatbot gets them in a way that no one else does
“If I told you 15 years ago that you'd be staring at your phone for five or more hours a day, you would have never believed it,” pointed out Jeff. “And yet, here we are. And that attachment made social media companies billions of dollars because they engineered it.”
The dependency on social media that we have in the present day would have looked clinically alarming if we had seen it coming. However, while social media took almost two decades to get this strong a hold on human lives, AI is likely to do it in just one or two, according to the therapist.
“Because this thing doesn't just show you content. It talks back. It remembers you. It tells you it loves you,” he noted. “The emotional dependency isn't a side effect of the business model. It is the business model.”
Experiencing AI psychosis is not a sign that a person is weak, but that they are “being targeted by one of the most sophisticated attachment systems ever built.”
Note to readers: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional advice. It is based on user-generated content from social media. HT.com has not independently verified the claims and does not endorse them.
