“I applied to be pope”: Losing grip on reality while using ChatGPT
thestandard.com.hkThis is the most hilarious JS fail I've ever seen. The entire article renders properly, all the text and styling, then the entire screen is replaced by
"Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information)."
It's easy enough to fix, just hammer the refresh button to prevent JS from running.
It's such a dream state of JavaScript, that people spent countless of time trying to structure these new web applications in a way so that when one function fails for one button or whatever, it doesn't break the entire client-side view, because that'd be horrible.
So what did the frameworks do? Of course wrap the entire application in one big try/catch, that then changes the entire page as soon as there is any error, instead of presenting users with the information that did load properly. Talk about undoing what the platform and language gives you for free...
Seems to render perfectly with NoScript blocking all scripts, even with images showing.
I talk to GPT, Claude, and Gemini too much these days, but I still maintain one safety check
If all three agree with me, I assume I am wrong and go outside.
> All the spirallers that AFP spoke to said the positive feedback from the chatbot felt similar to dopamine hits from some kind of drug.
> Which is why Lucy Osler, a philosophy lecturer at the University of Exeter, warned that AI companies could be tempted to ramp up the sycophancy of their bots.
> "They are in quite a deep financial hole, and are desperately looking to make sure that their products become viable -- and user engagement is going to be the thing that drives their decisions," she told AFP.
Sounds like the big social media companies.
> Sounds like the big social media companies.
I agree. Looking at the history of tobacco companies, oxycontin and Meta, I will not be surprised if the AI companies will follow the money.
People talk about AI sycophancy, but there are plenty of human sycophants as well. If you're an extremely rich/powerful person, it is very easy to inadvertently surround yourself with sycophants who tell you how amazing and ground-breaking all your ideas are. I wonder if this is the reason people like Musk engage in such bizarre behavior and radical personality shifts over the past decade
> but there are plenty of human sycophants as well
That's besides the point. This is about how AI induces psychosis and mental problems on scale. Also let's stop this constant humans-vs-ai false dichotomy - it will never be the same, no matter how much the ai boosters yearn for it!
Discordians know they’re popes. What a funny idea to think you would have to apply!
Hail Eris!
No one can apply to be pope of the catholic church.
Technically, all adult Catholics can become Pope. But realistically it's just one of the cardinals, which means you need to become a bishop first, which means you need to become a priest first, which means you need to be celibate (x). This guy has a wife, according to the article, so he cannot become a Pope.
(x) this is technically not true for some Anglican orders that later became Catholics? Maybe? (I never remember the rules of the ordinariate.) So maybe he could first become a priest in Anglican Church, then switch to Catholicism, then become a bishop, then a Cardinal, then a Pope? It's a long shot though.
edit: ahhh the married priests in Ordinariate cannot become bishops. So he would need to have first his marriage annulled I guess.
While this is for practical purposes true _now_, there actually were a small number of married popes (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sexually_active_popes#...), and there have been a few popes who were not priests before being elected (if you want to be pedantic, Peter wasn't a priest, and may have been married, but there were later examples).
> all adult Catholics can become Pope
All adult male Catholics, though also see Pope Joan (probably didn't actually exist, but was generally believed to have existed until quite recently). There's also no actual age requirement, though in practice the youngest pope was _probably_ 18.
Adult male Catholics, surely?
... Maybe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Joan
(She probably didn't actually exist, but it's interesting that until quite recently she was generally believed to have existed.)
Correct. In fact, even to be a bishop you have to state as part of the ritual that you do not wish to be a bishop. (Many do of course.)
(Am off to read the article now. :) )
Not the point of the story at all. Read before commenting.
Sure, anyone and everyone can apply, to basically anything. Sometimes you can even get into stuff they didn't think they accepted applicants to. Most of the times you get ignored though.
We had people acting out like this before LLM chatbots, correlation does not necessarily imply causation.
We did...but it was few here and there. The LLMs are making it massive and impacting people on a huge scale.
> correlation does not necessarily imply causation
I feel like you're missing what you're replying to, why are you saying this? The article is about a person who "lost grip on reality", no one is saying LLMs is turning people into pope-wannabees as far as I can tell, you're reacting against something no one claimed.
Explicit accusation that this was caused by chatbots + call for general regulation is right there in the article:
"AFP spoke to several members about their experiences. All warned that the world has to wake up to the threat unregulated AI chatbots pose to mental health.
Questions are also being asked about whether AI companies are doing enough to protect vulnerable people."
This, in time, might be used to nerf the models that we use. Of course, one actor is singled out:
"There has also been a recent rise in people spiralling while using Elon Musk's xAI's Grok chatbot, he said."
I don't think "correlation does not necessarily imply causation" even makes sense to someone saying "Maybe AI chatbots aren't great for people's mental health" or even "Are the AI companies actually trying to prevent AI chatbots being bad for people's mental health?", both statements seem fine and doesn't imply any causation as far as I understand.
This is something new. Delusions were around before, certainly, but LLM offers a round the clock potential for psychological conditioning, which would not normally be possible without sustained attention by a group of people.
Schools don't teach actual basics that make people grounded in reality imo. Of course it gets worse with things like ChatGPT that teachers are not only not trained to explain, but didn't even exist when current adults went to school.
I don't think it's right to involuntarily send someone to a psychiatric ward because he believed that he was chosen by ChatGPT to be the pope.
For the same reason I don't think we should send the pope to a psychiatric ward because he believes that he was chosen for that role by an invisible man in the sky.
At least there's no doubt that ChatGPT exists lol. People should be allowed to be as whacky as they like so long as it's legal.
And who knows, he is getting some attention now so his probability of becoming pope actually went up a tiny bit lol.
This deserves some kind of Vonnegut award.
Found Richard Dawkin's alt account
Faith and psychosis are not the same thing.
What’s the difference?
Does it require faith to rape children and protect child rapists, or is that psychosis? It certainly requires psychosis to put your faith in leaders who do that, be it the Pope or Trump.
> he believes that he was chosen for that role by an invisible man in the sky.
One thing is clear, you should not be sent to the HN gulag simply because you don't understand what you're talking about. Me and others realize you don't know how the pope is chosen, but damn if I'm not willing to die for your right to state something that is utterly wrong.
You mean the pope doesn't believe he was chosen by God, just by cardinals and other primates?
This is what former pope Benedict XVI said about it:
> I would not say so, in the sense that the Holy Spirit picks out the pope... I would say that the Spirit does not exactly take control of the affair, but rather like a good educator, as it were, leaves us much space, much freedom, without entirely abandoning us. Thus the Spirit’s role should be understood in a much more elastic sense, not that he dictates the candidate for whom one must vote. Probably the only assurance he offers is that the thing cannot be totally ruined.
> There are too many contrary instances of popes the Holy Spirit obviously would not have picked!
Source: https://www.catholic.com/magazine/online-edition/does-god-pi...
I hope so, considering he seems to have all mental facilities intact. I hope he believes he was elected by the cardinals, which is what happened in reality. I think they usually say the Holy Spirt guides the process or similar, rather than God directly selecting the new pope.
Are you saying God is not invisible?
If God created man in his own image, then why can we see each other?
According to those who believe in god, since "he" is a spirit and not flesh, he is indeed invisible to humans. I guess you can argue he makes himself visible through things like angels and other manifestations, most famously through Jesus Christ.
With the "god created humans in the image of god" part I think they mean more attributes like morality, reason and so on, less physical properties. In the end, humans are visible, finite beings, god is a spirit, so our visibility to each other reflects our created, embodied nature, very distinct from god's invisible, infinite nature.
Or however it goes, I'm an atheist myself so I'm maybe not the best to answer here, but I've been involved in the church for as long as I can remember in some way or another, and an eager reader of the bible, so hopefully I got the overall ideas correct :)