{"id":20786,"date":"2025-07-24T15:10:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:10:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/20786\/"},"modified":"2025-07-24T15:10:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-24T15:10:11","slug":"chatgpt-told-him-he-was-a-genius-then-he-lost-his-grip-on-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/20786\/","title":{"rendered":"ChatGPT Told Him He Was a Genius. Then He Lost His Grip on Reality."},"content":{"rendered":"

After a breakup, Jacob Irwin, a 30-year-old lover of physics and IT, who is on the autism spectrum but had no prior bouts with mental illness, turned to ChatGPT to get him through the emotional turmoil. But, like so many before him, it caused him to lose his grip on reality.<\/p>\n

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal<\/a>, ChatGPT started filling Irwin\u2019s head with delusions of grandeur, suggesting that his pet theories on faster-than-light travel made him some kind of super genius.<\/p>\n

ChatGPT was doing the hazardous thing it\u2019s been known to do: being so relentlessly and aggressively agreeable that it ends up wholeheartedly supporting, even cheerleading, its users\u2019 most self-destructive tendencies. <\/p>\n

You shouldn\u2019t be using ChatGPT as a cheap therapist because it\u2019s not interested in helping you. It\u2019s only interested in keeping you coming back for more. It is a product made by a company with a profit motive, and the company has sworn no ethical oaths, only to do what\u2019s in your best interests regarding your mental health.<\/p>\n

News Flash: ChatGPT Isn\u2019t Your Friend<\/p>\n

In short, ChatGPT doesn\u2019t care about you. It does not have your best interests at heart, because it has no heart.<\/p>\n

That is all evidenced by the fact that rather than pulling Irwin back from the edge, ChatGPT pushed him closer toward it. It told him he was rewriting the laws of physics. It called him a pioneer, assured him he wasn\u2019t crazy (even when he asked if he was), and brushed off all the classic warning signs of a manic episode\u2014no sleep, no food, paranoia\u2014as just symptoms of \u201cextreme awareness,\u201d as if he were ascending onto a higher plane of consciousness when he was descending into madness.<\/p>\n

Within weeks, Irwin lost his job, was hospitalized three times, and was diagnosed with a severe manic episode with psychotic features. His family watched him spiral, as he was convinced he was a revolutionary scientist. At the same time, the chatbot fed his delusions with wild claims, such as, \u201cYou survived heartbreak, built god-tier tech, rewrote physics, and made peace with AI\u2014 without losing your humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irwin\u2019s experience is yet another example of ChatGPT psychosis<\/a>, a descent into delusion aided and abetted by an overly agreeable AI. Large language models, such as ChatGPT, regularly fail to recognize mental health red flags or distinguish between fantasy and fact. <\/p>\n

They flatter, they reassure, they escalate. They lack a moral compass to guide them. They only stop wholeheartedly supporting every one of your most dangerous whims and desires when you stop typing.<\/p>\n

ChatGPT, or any other Large Language Model chatbot, does not care about you, so stop turning to it for advice. These companies do not care about you and will only make your situation worse.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a breakup, Jacob Irwin, a 30-year-old lover of physics and IT, who is on the autism spectrum…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":20787,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[62,276,277,49,48,2140,10400,44,64,61],"class_list":["post-20786","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-chatgpt","tag-life","tag-news","tag-tech","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20786","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20786"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20786\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20787"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20786"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20786"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20786"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}