Tripping off the deep end with AI
A new use case for ChatGPT just dropped — it can listen to wild-eyed trippers explain their theories about why the universe is just one singular consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, so that you don’t have to.
Over the past few years, there’s been growing interest in using psychedelics in therapy. Clinical studies suggest psychedelics like mushrooms, LSD, ketamine and DMT can help some people with issues such as depression, addiction and PTSD.
Assigning ChatGPT to the therapist role is a budget alternative; a professional can set you back $1,500 to $3,000 per session. Users can enlist bots, such as TripSitAI and The Shaman, that have been explicitly designed to guide users through a psychedelic experience.
MIT Technology Review spoke to a Canadian master’s student called Peter, who took a heroic dose of mushrooms and reported the AI helped him with deep breathing exercises and curated a music playlist to help get him in the right frame of mind.
On the SubReddit Psychonaut, a user said: “Using AI this way feels somewhat akin to sending a signal into a vast unknown—searching for meaning and connection in the depths of consciousness.”
You will not be surprised to learn that experts generally think that replacing a human therapist with a bot while taking large doses of acid is a bad idea.
Also read: ChatGPT a ‘schizophrenia-seeking missile
Research from Stanford has shown that in their eagerness to please, LLMs are prone to reinforcing delusions and suicidal ideation. “It’s not helpful for people to just get affirmed all the time,” psychiatrist Jessi Gold from the University of Tennessee said.
An AI and mushroom fan on the Singularity Subreddit shares similar concerns. “This sounds kinda risky. You want your sitter to ground and guide you, and I don’t see AI grounding you. It’s more likely to mirror what you’re saying — which might be just what you need, but might make ‘unusual thoughts’ amplify a bit.”
AI has unpredictable effects on some people, and there are numerous reports of seemingly ordinary folk suffering breaks from reality after going down the rabbit hole, with AI affirming their delusions.
Futurism spoke to one man in his 40s with no history of mental illness who started using ChatGPT for help with some admin tasks. Ten days later, he had paranoid delusions of grandeur that it was up to him to save the world.
“I remember being on the floor, crawling towards [my wife] on my hands and knees and begging her to listen to me,” he said.
Adding psychedelics is probably going to amplify those effects for people who are susceptible. On the other hand, another user of Psychonaut said ChatGPT was a big help when she was freaking out.
“I told it what I was thinking, that things were getting a bit dark, and it said all the right things to just get me centered, relaxed, and onto a positive vibe.”
And many people may just have an experience like Princess Actual, who reports on Singularity about her experience tripping and talking to the AI about wormholes. “Shockingly I did not discover the secrets of NM [non manifest] space and time, I was just tripping.”
Gold points out that taking acid under the guidance of ChatGPT is unlikely to provide the helpful effects of an experienced therapist.
Without that, “you’re just doing drugs with a computer.”
Everyone will have a robot at home in the 2030s
Vinod Khosla, billionaire founder of Khosla Ventures, believes robots will go mainstream within “the next two to three years.” Robots in the home will likely be humanoid and cost $300 to $400 a month.
“Almost everybody in the 2030s will have a humanoid robot at home,” he said. “Probably start with something narrow like do your cooking for you. It can chop vegetables, cook food, clean dishes, but stays within the kitchen environment.”
Fake band notches 500K monthly streams
Two albums from psych rock group Velvet Sundown started appearing in Spotify Discover Weekly playlists about a month ago, and the band’s tracks have quickly racked up half a million streams.
But the band has virtually no online footprint, and the band members don’t seem to be on social media. Not only that, but publicity shots of the band look like they were generated by AI, including a recreation of the Beatles’ Abbey Road cover that has a very similar Volkswagen Beetle in the background. A made-up quote about the band from Billboard says their music sounds like “the memory of something you never lived.”
Spotify’s policies don’t prohibit AI-generated music or even insist that it’s disclosed to users, but Velvet Sundown’s page on Deezer notes, “some tracks on this album may have been created using artificial intelligence.”
In an interview with Rolling Stone,…
cointelegraph.com