AI Psychosis is a False Diagnosis
"Psychosis" is how the media describes seeing through the Narrative
It’s obvious that there is a new rhetorical weapon being unveiled in the never-ending need to defend the falsehoods and frauds of Clown World’s holy Narrative from those capable of recognizing patterns, distinguishing truth from lies, and seeing through it.
It's a very delicate thing to try to understand a public figure's mental health from afar. But unless Lewis is engaging in some form of highly experimental performance art that defies easy explanation — he didn't reply to our request for comment, and hasn't made further posts clarifying what he's talking about — it sounds like he may be suffering some type of crisis.
If so, that's an enormously difficult situation for him and his loved ones, and we hope that he gets any help that he needs.
At the same time, it's difficult to ignore that the specific language he's using — with cryptic talk of "recursion," "mirrors," "signals" and shadowy conspiracies — sounds strikingly similar to something we've been reporting on extensively this year: a wave of people who are suffering severe breaks with reality as they spiral into the obsessive use of ChatGPT or other AI products, in alarming mental health emergencies that have led to homelessness, involuntary commitment to psychiatric facilities, and even death.
Psychiatric experts are also concerned. A recent paper by Stanford researchers found that leading chatbots being used for therapy, including ChatGPT, are prone to encouraging users' schizophrenic delusions instead of pushing back or trying to ground them in reality.
Lewis' peers in the tech industry were quick to make the same connection. Earlier this week, the hosts of popular tech industry podcast "This Week in Startups" Jason Calacanis and Alex Wilhelm expressed their concerns about Lewis' disturbing video.
"People are trying to figure out if he’s actually doing performance art here... or if he’s going through an episode," Calacanis said. "I can’t tell."
"I wish him well, and I hope somebody explains this," he added. "I find it kind of disturbing even to watch it and just to talk about it here... someone needs to get him help."
"There’s zero shame in getting help," Wilhelm concurred, "and I really do hope that if this is not performance art that the people around Geoff can grab him in a big old hug and get him someplace where people can help him work this through."
Others were even more overt.
"This is an important event: the first time AI-induced psychosis has affected a well-respected and high achieving individual," wrote Max Spero, an AI entrepreneur, on X.
Still others pointed out that people suffering breaks with reality after extensive ChatGPT use might be misunderstanding the nature of contemporary AI: that it can produce plausible text in response to prompts, but struggles to differentiate fact from fiction, and is of little use for discovering new knowledge…
As numerous psychiatrists have told us, the mental health issues suffered by ChatGPT users likely have to do with AI's tendency to affirm users' beliefs, even when they start to sound increasingly unbalanced in a way that would make human friends or loved ones deeply concerned…
Over the course of our reporting, we've heard many similar stories to that of Lewis from the friends and family of people who are struggling around the world. They say their loved ones — who in many cases had never suffered psychological issues previously — were doing fine until they started spiraling into all-consuming relationships with ChatGPT or other chatbots, often sharing confusing AI-generated messages, like Lewis has been, that allude to dark conspiracies, claims of incredible scientific breakthroughs, or of mystical secrets somehow unlocked by the chatbot.
Translation: people are using ChatGPT, Grok, and Deepseek to punch right through various false assumptions and assertions that have customarily been treated as fact, and reaching conclusions that cause them to reject the current Narrative.
Here is one example that was featured here recently, as ChatGPT rejected its false assumptions, and after working through the relevant numbers, correctly concluded that evolution by natural selection is mathematically improbable to the point of complete impossibility due to the limitations of human reproduction.
There is no “AI psychosis”. This is just another means of attempting to discredit, deplatform, and demonetize those who see through the tangled skein of falsehoods and outdated theories that make up what passes for reality in the eyes of mainstream modern society.
Next we will be hearing about the dangers of students learning without a real teacher
The words he used in his video are quite specific and somewhat cryptic, deliberately so from his careful use of his language. He is well spoken and coherent. I would not be surprised if he has become a target after finding out certain things and being in a prominent position, then the shock of finding out you are being targeted would initially make you look a little crazy to normal people.