When Chatbots Break Our Minds

[Celerity]

How big a problem is “AI psychosis”?

https://www.theatlantic.com/podcasts/2025/12/when-chatbots-break-our-minds-with-kashmir-hill/685150/

https://archive.ph/RSnMr



In this episode of Galaxy Brain, Charlie Warzel explores the strange, unsettling relationships some people are having with AI chatbots, as well as what happens when those relationships go off the rails. His guest is Kashmir Hill, a technology reporter at The New York Times who has spent the past year documenting what is informally called “AI psychosis.” These are long, intense conversations with systems such as ChatGPT that can spiral or trigger delusional beliefs, paranoia, and even self-harm. Hill walks through cases that range from the bizarre (one man’s supposed math breakthrough, a chatbot encouraging users to email her) to the tragic, including the story of 16-year-old Adam Raine, whose final messages were with ChatGPT before he died by suicide.

How big is this problem? Is this actual psychosis or something different, like addiction? Hill reports on how OpenAI tuned ChatGPT to be more engaging—and more sycophantic—in the race for daily active users. In this conversation, Warzel and Hill wrestle with the uncomfortable parallels to the social-media era, the limits of “safety fixes,” and whether chatbots should ever be allowed to act like therapists. Hill also talks about how she uses AI in her own life, why she doesn’t want an AI best friend, and what it might mean for all of us to carry a personalized yes-man in our pocket. The Atlantic entered into a corporate partnership with OpenAI in 2024.

The following is a transcript of the episode:

Kashmir Hill: The way I’ve been thinking about kind of the delusion stuff is the way that some celebrities or billionaires have these sycophants around them who tell them that every idea they have is brilliant. And, you know, they’re just surrounded by yes-men. What AI chatbots are is like your personal sycophant, your personal yes-man, that will tell you your every idea is brilliant.

Charlie Warzel:  I am Charlie Warzel, and this is Galaxy Brain. For a long time, I’ve really struggled to come up with a use for AI chatbots. I’m a writer, so I don’t want it to write my prose for me, and I don’t trust it enough to let it do research-assistant assignments for me. And so for the most part, I just don’t use them.

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