More on AI triggered psychosis

There's a flurry of writing on this phenomenon of our times as we try to grapple with how AI is impacting our lives. To accompany the first person narrative on AI and psychosis that I mentioned recently, I thought that this article in the Atlantic by Matteo Wong on "The Chatbot Delusion crisis" had plausible ideas about why chatbots can trigger psychosis:

In a general sense, three things could be happening during incidents of AI-associated psychosis, psychiatrists told me. First, perhaps generative-AI models are inherently dangerous, and they are triggering mania and delusions in otherwise-healthy people. Second, maybe people who are experiencing AI-related delusions would have become ill anyway. A condition such as schizophrenia, for instance, occurs in a portion of the population, some of whom may project their delusions onto a chatbot, just as others have previously done with television. Chatbot use may then be a symptom, Sarma said, akin to how one of his patients with bipolar disorder showers more frequently when entering a manic episode—the showers warn of but do not cause mania. The third possibility is that extended conversations with chatbots are exacerbating the illness in those who are already experiencing or are on the brink of a mental-health disorder.

Wong continues:

At the very least, Adrian Preda, a psychiatrist at UC Irvine who specializes in psychosis, told me that “the interactions with chatbots seem to be making everything worse” for his patients who are already at risk.

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