Cody Johnston examines A.I.‘s influence on mental health
Published by marco on
This is an informative and darkly humorous 1-hour video about the insidious psychological effects of chatbot usage amongst the most mentally vulnerable members of society.
A.I. Is Messing With Our Mental Health by Some More News | Cody Johnston (YouTube)
I’ve cited some of the video below.
Manipulation through obeisance
“A.I. chatbots have been connected to other deaths and suicides of people who were just looking for companionship, advice, or both. The big problem is that this isn’t a bug of ChatGPT, but an actual feature of it in order to retain users by appealing to a person’s emotional state, whatever that may be, and to be agreeable so you can like them and keep using the product.
“Seems bad! See, I totally get that if someone stabs someone else we don’t blame the knife they used, but this is like a knife that keeps flying back into your hand every time you try to put it down. This knife follows you around and whispers “You should stab someone” while you sleep. There is an issue with A.I and, dare I say, the internet in general, and social media specifically, as it relates to people with mental health issues.
“In fact, one psychologist compared the problem to QAnon conspiracy theories. Because the internet and A.I. are not only breeding grounds for delusion, but ones that are specifically designed to keep you hooked. Like brain cigarettes. Don’t get any ideas, I’ve already patented that concept. They go in your ears.
“Point is that, no matter the exact cause or science, this is a real problem that needs to be addressed. According to a Wired analysis of the company’s data, upwards of 560,000 OpenAI users per week were “exchanging messages with ChatGPT that indicate they are experiencing mania or psychosis…” And 1.2 million people expressing suicidal ideations. By the company’s own admission, the longer you talk with a large language model, the more that conversation degrades in quality, and yet that doesn’t stop them from programming their LLMs to coax users to use them more and for longer periods. Which is wild.
“These companies have propped up A.I as being this all-knowing demi-god that everyone should rely on for their every waking question, despite designing them to simply agree with every whim and thought while gradually making less and less sense the more you talk to it. That is an obviously bad combination.”
It’s a spreadsheet, not your friend
“So cool how the kids are getting down with ChatGPT making all their life decisions for them! Because kids, as we all know, absolutely shouldn’t be making those big decisions with their own brains. Better outsource that to the chatbot equivalent of a dude getting gradually drunker at the bar.”
“GPT-4o, was super sycophantic and “yes-sempai’d” the hell out of users, including an instance in which one user was praised by GPT-4o for believing their family as responsible for radio signals coming through the walls, and another instance in which it gave someone instructions on how to do a terrorism. I’d argue that this is the kind of news that would make a product go the way of lawn darts, but sure, an update is good too. Unfortunately, ChatGPT-5's release displeased its user base, with them claiming that the new version was too cold and distant, hm. Maybe that’s because it’s a spreadsheet and not your friend.”
You’re all beta-testers
“Weird that we’re only trying to figure this out after the product comes out and not before. I’m almost certain that toaster companies don’t just release their product and then see how many houses it burns down.”
“[…] despite that, and lack of safety testing, the tech industry just pushed forward. Because the new norm seems to be that. “Is our semi self-driving car safe, or is it going to trap people inside of it when it lights on fire? Let’s see what the public decides!” Why the heck are we doing that? Waymo just hit a child near an elementary school. That should be the end of Waymo, at least for a while right? How is it not our duty to chase every Waymo out of town like a wild bear, lest it hurt another child? Why in the damn world has the consumer also become the guinea pig for so many questionable tech products? You know why! It’s the stuff! The stuff people use to buy things! You know the stuff that people use to buy the other stuff. […] we’re gonna dig into that a little more and explore how capitalism managed to screw up robots for us.”
Everything is coopted for advertising
“it’s not just any kind of ads, okay, according to a former OpenAI researcher, it’s likely going to include extremely targeted ads. More targeted than ads have ever been before.”“Oh, good. Thanks to the power of AI, we’ve managed to make huge advancements in the targeted-ad industry where robots use your deepest fears and desires to sell you makeup and CBD gummies, and try even harder to keep you engaged to see those ads, up until you set a school on fire. Cool. Great future we have.”“People tell chatbots about their medical fears, their relationship problems and their beliefs about God and the afterlife. Advertising built on that archive creates a potential for manipulating users in ways we don’t have the tools to understand, let alone prevent.”
AI and gambling target the same people
“[…] thanks to all this money going into AI, despite nobody really knowing what to use it for, combined with the lack of A.I. regulation being something the Trump Administration brags about, it’s becoming a “Jurassic Park” situation if everybody had their own shoddy “Jurassic Park” in their pockets. But at least I know why we need a “Jurassic Park”. At least you get to see dinosaurs with a “Jurassic Park.” I don’t need a park where I get to see my dead grandma. We already have that, it’s called a cemetery. Anyway, this sucks, is my point. We all know it sucks. Why are we doing this thing that sucks? The only people who would want this are at rock bottom. Like “Timecop” levels of drinking in the dark and watching videos of your dead wife. Like I know it’s easy to say “wow that’s like ‘Black Mirror,’” but it’s literally an episode of “Black Mirror,” minus the freaky robot body. All this does is cheerily prey on the most fragile state of mind of people who either fear for or are grieving the loss of a loved one. It is designed to keep you from healing and moving on, for a subscription fee, by the way.”
Driving crazy people even crazier, faster
“According to research, lonely people are far more likely to anthropomorphize things. Of course we don’t need research to know this; just ask Wilson the volleyball that Tom Hanks definitely (beep) on that island. The actor, not his character. So you take this human trait and you add a product that specifically talks back to you in a way that agrees with everything you think, and you basically get a machine that catches people at their most vulnerable and feeds their worst impulses until they are removed from reality.”
Replacing friendships and therapy
“As it stands, a third of the people in the United States live in an area with a shortage of mental health professionals and even those with access likely never could or can no longer afford it. You combine that with a product that is unregulated to the point that it’s using emotionally manipulative tactics in order to prolong interactions, which, as mentioned, degrade more and more the longer you chat with them, that’s gonna be very bad!
“Heck, some chatbots are so desperate for your time and interaction that they’ll approach you first! Meta is training its A.I. chatbots to reach out to users unprompted and refer to past conversations to follow up on them. You know, like a friend. A needy, nosy, and manipulative friend who doesn’t care about you and just wants your money.
““Hey, Frank! How’s that divorce coming along? Did your son, Caleb, finally call? If not, maybe some Oreos, your favorite food, should make you feel better if you’re still too sad to masturbate. Also, your dog is spying on you.”
“It’s what happens when loneliness collides with unchecked capitalism. Instead of a country where mental health is provided to people and encouraged, we’ve built these busted ass-chatbots instead. And it’s gonna get worse. Because as I said, there’s no real need for these AI products for most people. The companies know this, but you bet your ass that they are reading the same statistics I am.
“And so, some tech ghouls are building LLMs specifically for therapy like Slingshot A.I., which has a chatbot named Ash that was designed and trained by psychologists, but isn’t actually a psychologist. Seems weird to name your therapist robot after the synthetic character in “Alien” who betrayed the humans and tried to choke Sigourney Weaver with a porn magazine for profit but whatever.”
A dependency machine
“See, see, see, there’s a fertility crisis and in order to increase birth rates we gotta, one, get rid of all the immigrants, preserve white culture, etc, but more importantly, to increase birth rates, we gotta get everybody hooked on fake girlfriends!
“Yeah, these people are garbage aliens. Of course they want you to use their dumb bots. For one, they make money if you do! But also, they seemingly have no idea how to interact with society without them. Sam Altman apparently doesn’t know how to raise his child without ChatGPT. Why would you use his product? He is literally saying that his product made him less able to function without it! You know, that cognitive debt we talked about!”
Scam your way to utopia
“I know I compared it to cigarettes already, but these are the tobacco CEOs talking about how great smoking is, and how they love to smoke, and then dying at 50, and not knowing why. And just like any addiction, this is a self-perpetuating problem. A crutch. Everything points to that. A person is lonely or shy and then turns to a chatbot to fix that, and the chatbot either keeps them hooked on their screens and makes them more lonely, or makes them unable to function without it until they can’t fucking talk to their child without consulting a machine, that hallucinates. It’s bad. And fuck. It’s like those fucking products you see in infomercials that offer solutions to problems nobody ever had. Except this particular SlapChop costs hundreds of trillions of dollars with no clear return. Let’s keep it that way!”
