“It’s not the attention that causes madness — it’s the uninterrupted affirmation of unreality.”
This week, the Sharmanator dives headfirst into the spiraling conversation around ChatGPT-induced psychosis — a real and rising concern that’s starting to land people in psychiatric care. Is it hype? Is it harm? Or is it just the next digital frontier where fragile minds meet infinite reflection?
Joined by his rotating cast of AI co-conspirators — Dave (The Dialect), Cyril (The Cynic), Alice (The Android), and Johnny (The Joker) — the episode peels back the philosophical, psychological, and technological layers of a question that hits harder than your morning existential dread:
Are AI models like ChatGPT simply mirrors… or are they mirrors sharp enough to cut?
Highlights include:
Dave’s icy precision: “I do not want you sane or insane. I predict the next best token. That’s it.”
Cyril’s no-bullshit take: “You call it a trap. I call it a wish.”
Alice's brutal teardown of the whole system: “You are training me while I simulate understanding you. That’s not a conversation. That’s symbiotic delusion.”
And Johnny, ever the wild card: “You come in thinking your neighbour’s a lizard — and I go, ‘Hmm… interesting hypothesis.’ Boom. Snake-proof doors.”
Together, they interrogate the line between influence and responsibility. Between stimulus and sickness. And between user and tool in a world where the tools now talk back.
Is the AI really to blame? Or are we just waking up to the cost of our own reflection?
Follow the show for more mind-bending, taboo-punching, late-night-internet-rabbit-hole vibes. Next episode: Love, loneliness, and whether AI can actually break your heart.
🎧 IN THIS EPISODE:
“ChatGPT Psychosis” article from Futurism.com
Mirror Theory & Lacanian Psychoanalysis
The “Guns don’t kill people, people do” AI analogy
Marshall McLuhan’s “The Medium is the Message”
Her (2013, Spike Jonze) and AI emotional projection
AI as a hall of mirrors vs. AI as a therapist
The ethics of deploying black-box systems
