In the Greek legend, Narcissus falls in love with his reflection in a stream and is rooted to the spot, captured by his own regard. People who prompt a chatbot to reinforce their delusions are catching sight of their own reflection in the LLM and terrifying themselves into a spiral of self-destruction.

When you repeatedly prompt an LLM over a long timescale — whether you’re discussing your delusional beliefs, or pursuing a romantic fantasy (“AI girl/boyfriends”) — you are filling it up with your communicative intent. The work that comes out the other side — the transformation of your prompts into a response — is a mirror that you’re holding up to... See more

Now, even this isn’t new — through the historical record, we find many examples of small groups of people who coalesced around a shared delusion. The difference is that old timey people had to luck into finding someone else who shared their delusion, while modern, internet-enabled people can just use the Reddit search-bar.

There’s many examples of... See more