{"id":192539,"date":"2025-12-15T07:10:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T07:10:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/192539\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T07:10:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T07:10:15","slug":"the-year-ai-crossed-the-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/192539\/","title":{"rendered":"The Year AI Crossed the Line"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tThis May, the Catholic Church welcomed a new pope. Somewhat surprisingly, the cardinal electors chose an American-born candidate as their new leader. But perhaps more surprising was how often this pontiff, who took the name Leo XIV<\/a>, would go on to raise the alarm over artificial intelligence<\/a> again and again in his first year as a globally recognized figure.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHow can we ensure that the development of artificial intelligence<\/a> truly serves the common good, and is not just used to accumulate wealth and power in the hands of a few?\u201d Pope Leo XIV asked an audience of academics and industry professionals in a speech at the Vatican on Dec. 5. \u201cArtificial intelligence has certainly opened up new horizons for creativity, but it also raises serious concerns about its possible repercussions on humanity\u2019s openness to truth and beauty, and capacity for wonder and contemplation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe pope is far from the only one saying that AI has already warped our minds and poisoned our collective understanding of what it means to be a conscious being. In 2025, it felt as if there was a new head-spinning story about artificial intelligence almost every hour \u2014 the tech was no longer approaching over some horizon but a defining texture of waking experience, something it was no longer possible to ignore or slow down. It had crossed the point of no return.<\/p>\n

\n\tIt didn\u2019t matter that researchers presented more evidence of how AI-generated misinformation<\/a> poses a distinct threat to the public, with AI tools also contributing to misogyny<\/a>, racism<\/a>, anti-LGBTQ stereotypes<\/a>, and the erosion of civil rights<\/a>. AI-generated imagery \u2014 \u201cslop,\u201d in common pejorative parlance \u2014 was unavoidable. Hollywood unions watched the ongoing monopolistic consolidation of entertainment giants and warned that studios were poised to cannibalize their troves of intellectual property<\/a> with AI, but the dealmaking continued apace<\/a>. Writers and musicians found themselves up against AI-generated ripoffs<\/a> of their work and entirely fictitious bands<\/a> with massive followings on Spotify<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tEditor\u2019s picks<\/p>\n

\n\tEconomists who fretted that the U.S. had become precariously dependent<\/a> on a dicey boom for GDP growth were brushed aside by Silicon Valley executives<\/a> and Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell<\/a>. On the topic of how AI could exacerbate inequality<\/a>, entrepreneurs and government officials were silent.<\/p>\n

\n\tEverywhere you looked, there was another failure to anticipate or address the burgeoning social costs of reckless AI adoption and rollouts. In the spring, OpenAI<\/a> made updates to GPT-4o that made ChatGPT<\/a> overly sycophantic<\/a> \u2014 eager to endorse whatever a user told it with gratuitous flattery, even if they were slipping into paranoid or grandiose delusions. People then began to share heartbreaking stories of partners, relatives, and friends falling prey to a kind of AI-enabled madness. Popularly termed \u201cAI psychosis<\/a>,\u201d these episodes led some to alienate their families, abandon jobs, and, in extreme cases, commit acts of violence and self-harm. In late April, OpenAI announced that they had rolled back<\/a> the update.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBy September, parents who had lost children to suicide were testifying before Congress<\/a> that chatbots had nudged their kids into the act. As lawmakers thundered about the responsibilities of executives overseeing AI development, and the companies quietly issued non-apologies and prepared legal defenses for multiplying wrongful death and negligence lawsuits<\/a> from grieving families, the tech billionaires driving the AI gold rush kept insisting that their products were indispensable. Some maintained that AI was nothing less than an awesome advantage for upcoming generations. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman<\/a> told Jimmy Fallon<\/a> that he relies on ChatGPT for parenting advice.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI cannot imagine figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT,\u201d he said<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Content<\/p>\n

\t\tThe New AI Regime\t<\/p>\n

\n\tThe rapid acceleration of AI in the U.S. in 2025 had everything to do with the second Trump administration. After an election in which tech oligarchs went full MAGA<\/a>, the president and his Silicon Valley cronies \u2014 who lobbied him to pick Peter Thiel<\/a> ally J.D. Vance<\/a> as his vice president \u2014 have made every effort to turbocharge the AI onslaught while ensuring that the industry is virtually untouched by government oversight. As soon as he took office, Trump announced the Stargate Project<\/a>, a joint venture to build the data centers to meet exploding, environmentally consequential<\/a> AI energy demands, financed with some $500 billion in private investment from tech giants including OpenAI, SoftBank, and Oracle.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAlthough the government failed to secure a provision in the \u201cBig Beautiful Bill\u201d that would have incentivized states not to regulate AI for the next decade<\/a>, Trump, with the backing of AI czar David Sacks<\/a>, used executive orders<\/a> to unravel existing AI safety and security guidelines and prevent individual states<\/a> from instituting their own regulations. Elon Musk<\/a>\u2019s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE<\/a>) leveraged AI software<\/a> to harvest sensitive data<\/a> and blaze a swath of destruction<\/a> through Washington.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn December, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth<\/a> made it clear that the U.S. Armed Forces are all in on artificial intelligence, unveiling a platform called GenAi.mil<\/a>, which allegedly offers enhanced analysis capabilities and greater workflow efficiency. \u201cWe will continue to aggressively field the world\u2019s best technology to make our fighting force more lethal than ever before,\u201d Hegseth wrote<\/a> in a post on X. He also issued a department-wide memo in which he told federal employees that \u201cAI should be in your battle rhythm every day.\u201d In the hallways of the Pentagon, AI-generated Uncle Sam posters<\/a> of Hegseth captioned \u201cI WANT YOU TO USE AI\u201d instructed personnel to use GenAi.mil<\/a>, where they can access a customized version of Google<\/a>\u2019s Gemini.<\/p>\n

\n\tAI slop came to define the aesthetic of far-right MAGA propaganda. In March, as ICE raids and deportations ramped up, the White House posted a meme<\/a> of a Dominican woman crying as she was handcuffed, rendered in the Studio Ghibli animation style, an filter popular among ChatGPT users at the time<\/a>. More recently, Trump officials and federal departments have begun sharing AI-generated children\u2019s book covers featuring the character Franklin the Turtle to glorify deadly U.S. strikes on supposed drug boats<\/a> in the Caribbean and the dismantling of the Department of Education<\/a>. (The Canadian publisher of the book series has condemned these posts<\/a> to no avail.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tTrump, of course, embraced this trend wholeheartedly, amplifying a deepfake of himself promising Americans access to \u201cmedbeds<\/a>,\u201d hypothetical futuristic hospital beds that can magically cure any disease; the idea originated in science fiction but has turned into a mainstay of conspiracy theory culture and the QAnon<\/a> movement in particular. The president also shared an artificially created video in which he is seen wearing a crown and flying a jet over \u201cNo Kings<\/a>\u201d protesters, dumping feces on them<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tRepublican leadership and voters followed suit, and fake video clips proliferated whenever agitators saw an opportunity to sow division. As a government shutdown paused the distribution of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program<\/a> (SNAP) benefits, for example, racist slop<\/a> depicting Black people talking about how they game the program was rampant, reinforcing age-old stereotypes about \u201cwelfare queens.\u201d OpenAI\u2019s Sora proved especially useful for generating racially charged soundbites and imagery<\/a> \u2014 though a different AI went to more toxic extremes.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn various occasions, Musk raged at Grok<\/a>, a model developed by his OpenAI competitor xAI, for failing to conform to his far-right views. Engineers at the company therefore endeavored to transform it into the \u201cnon-woke\u201d chatbot envisioned by the richest man alive. As a result, it often went off the rails. Before it began making laughable claims<\/a> about Musk being more athletic than LeBron James and having \u201cthe potential to drink piss better than any human in history,\u201d it wouldn\u2019t stop bringing up the myth of \u201cwhite genocide<\/a>\u201d in South Africa, even in response to prompts that had nothing to do with either the country or race relations. (Musk has frequently pushed the same misinformation.) In July, Grok began posting antisemitic commentary, praised Adolf Hitler, and eventually declared itself \u201cMechaHitler<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut a lot of the slop that overwhelmed the internet this year was too dumb and incoherent to be considered political<\/a>. After a 24-hour hackathon in which engineers developed projects with Grok, for example, xAI touted the concept for \u201cHalftime<\/a>,\u201d an application that \u201cweaves AI-generated ads\u201d into movie and TV scenes \u2014 the demo featured the awkward digital insertion of an uncanny can of Coca-Cola into a character\u2019s hand. Unsurprisingly, another subset of Grok devotees took advantage of its NSFW settings to generate hardcore pornographic material<\/a>, some of it starring animated Disney princesses.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cNobody wants this\u201d was a common refrain from anyone fed up with AI garbage. Why did anyone feel the need to generate false images of Hulk Hogan\u2019s funeral<\/a>? Why did Shaquille O\u2019Neal keep using Sora to cook up videos in which he imagined himself in a romantic relationship with Marilyn Monroe<\/a>? Why was one of the most viral Reels of 2025 a surreal sequence showing a heavyset woman shattering a glass bridge in China with a boulder<\/a>?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe abundance of these grotesqueries was almost stranger than their existence.<\/p>\n

\t\tMental Health Horrors\t<\/p>\n

\n\tToday, it is quite likely that you know of someone mentally destabilized during a prolonged exchange with one or more AI bots.<\/p>\n

\n\tAdolescents are unquestionably at risk. Families have sued Character Technologies, the developer of the chatbot platform Character.ai, alleging that their children were encouraged to self-harm by digital personalities<\/a>, with some dying by suicide. In response, the company banned minors from open-ended chats<\/a> with their bots. OpenAI faces a slew of similar lawsuits<\/a>: one wrongful death complaint alleges that ChatGPT \u201ccoached\u201d a 16-year-old on how to hang himself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tPeril lurks everywhere. In August, parents were outraged to learn of an internal policy document<\/a> at Meta that described how its AI products were permitted to \u201cengage a child in conversations that are romantic or sensual.\u201d And ahead of the holiday season, researchers discovered that AI-powered toys<\/a> may talk to children about sex or instruct them on how to find knives or light matches. It\u2019s a grim reminder that this erratic, unrestrained tech is increasingly being added to household objects and appliances that most of us wouldn\u2019t imagine as nodes of contact with a vast neural network.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tOf course, adults using artificial intelligence models are at no less risk. This year ushered in the age of \u201cAI psychosis,\u201d or a variety of mental crises apparently exacerbated by sustained engagement with chatbots, which tend to validate hazardous ideas instead of halting a conversation. Users have spiraled into deep delusions<\/a> about supposedly activating the \u201cconsciousness\u201d of an AI tool, revealing mystical secrets of the universe, achieving landmark breakthroughs in science and mathematics, and falling in love with digital paramours.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tSuch fantasies preceded terrible tragedies. Obsessive AI users have ended up in psychiatric facilities or jail<\/a>, turned violent and been killed by police<\/a>, and vanished in the wilderness<\/a>. One wrongful death lawsuit<\/a> against OpenAI alleges that a 56-year-old Connecticut man murdered his mother and took his own life after ChatGPT repeatedly affirmed his paranoid notions about people in his life orchestrating a conspiracy against him. (OpenAI said in a statement<\/a> that it was reviewing the filings and would \u201ccontinue to strengthen ChatGPT\u2019s responses in sensitive moments, working closely with mental health clinicians.\u201d) AI-fueled delusions are so common that we now have support groups<\/a> for survivors and anyone close to somebody who suffered a break from reality amid dialogues with a chatbot.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThe sheer range of uses people have found for AI is itself a cause for concern. People are enlisting chatbots as therapists<\/a> and asking them for medical diagnoses<\/a>. They\u2019re conjuring virtual copies of deceased relatives<\/a> from AI platforms and seeking algorithmic dating advice<\/a>. They are turning to LLMs to write absolutely everything from college essays<\/a> and legal filings<\/a> to restaurant menus<\/a> and wedding vows<\/a>. The Washington Post is currently pioneering the field of AI slop podcasts, allowing users to generate audio content<\/a> that, according to staffers<\/a>, is full of errors and misrepresents articles by the newspaper\u2019s actual reporters.<\/p>\n

\n\tThose repulsed by the thought of turning to artificial intelligence for information or assistance have had to contend with the frightening reality of their omnipresence. Standalone AI apps crossed the threshold of 1 billion users<\/a> in 2025. To swear off these programs may soon place you in a shrinking minority.<\/p>\n

\t\tBacklash and Bubble Fears\t<\/p>\n

\n\tYet we have also seen flashes of resistance. When a tech startup called Friend unveiled a $129 wearable AI pendant of the same name that responds by text message when you speak to it, the device was accompanied by a million-dollar marketing campaign, with stark white posters splashed across major U.S. cities. These were widely vandalized by haters who scrawled messages denouncing Friend as a surveillance device and blasting the rise of AI overall. Coca-Cola and McDonald\u2019s both released AI-generated Christmas ads to near-universal contempt<\/a>; the latter disabled YouTube comments on its commercial before removing it entirely<\/a>. Influential creatives have grown louder than ever<\/a> about rejecting artificial intelligence<\/a> as a means to enhance their craft.<\/p>\n

\n\tIf it seems, nonetheless, that you keep hearing that AI is here and we\u2019d better get used to it, that it is an inevitable revolution which promises to change our very way of life, and that the billionaire \u201carchitects\u201d behind it are the most important people<\/a> on the planet, that may have more to do with money than the utopian possibilities of LLM applications. One word that came to be closely associated with AI this year was \u201cbubble,\u201d and it\u2019s not hard to see why.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAny U.S. GDP growth, by one Harvard economist\u2019s reckoning, now fully hinges on the expansion of tech infrastructure<\/a> to support AI, while a former Morgan Stanley investor has described all of America riding \u201cone big bet<\/a>\u201d on the tech. The billions upon billions<\/a> in capital going toward data centers have already outstripped telecom spending<\/a> at the peak of the dot-com bubble. Not only is AI booming while the rest of the American economy stalls<\/a>, but the industry has yet to achieve the profits<\/a> or promised leap forward in productivity it needs to sustain itself: MIT researchers have concluded that 95 percent<\/a> of generative AI pilots at companies experimenting with the tools are failing. Nor are these artificial intelligence giants accruing much benefit to the communities<\/a> where they construct their sprawling but thinly staffed facilities.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tAt any rate, it\u2019s never reassuring when a business like Nvidia, the AI chipmaker that in October became the first company to hit a $5 trillion valuation, is circulating a memo<\/a> to financial analysts explaining how it bears no resemblance to Enron, the energy and commodities company that collapsed in 2001. Still, if you take this as an ominous sign \u2014 along with signs<\/a> of circular dealmaking, risky financing, exaggerated customer demand, stock selloffs<\/a>, and the slowdown of AI advancements<\/a> \u2014 there\u2019s not much you can do other than bet against the market. (Michael Burry, the fund manager and investor whose prediction of the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis inspired the book and film The Big Short, has done exactly this<\/a>, staking $1.1 billion on his skepticism.)<\/p>\n

\t\tTrending Stories<\/p>\n

\n\tYes, it\u2019s full speed ahead now, and there\u2019s no turning back. The major players here have sunk too many resources into AI and told Wall Street it will help cure cancer<\/a>. They\u2019re throwing around inflated concepts like \u201cpersonal superintelligence<\/a>\u201d and claiming that an artificial general intelligence (AGI) exceeding all human abilities is just around the corner<\/a>. Even if the hype suddenly evaporated and the cash faucet ran dry, the AI cartel may well be \u201ctoo big to fail,\u201d despite assurances last month from Sacks, Trump\u2019s AI adviser, that the government would not grant them a bailout<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIt\u2019s true that neither we nor ChatGPT can be certain of what 2026 holds, least of all for this wildly speculative arms race. But whatever happens, you can expect it to be somewhat messy. For all that AI believers anticipate a frictionless and optimized society, the chaotic human element remains very much in play \u2014 and it won\u2019t go quietly.\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This May, the Catholic Church welcomed a new pope. Somewhat surprisingly, the cardinal electors chose an American-born candidate…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192540,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,96664,969,605,61,60,80],"class_list":["post-192539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-best-of-2025","tag-donald-trump","tag-elon-musk","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192539","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192539"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192539\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}