{"id":896622,"date":"2026-10-27T18:00:14","date_gmt":"2026-10-27T18:00:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/896622\/"},"modified":"2026-10-27T18:00:14","modified_gmt":"2026-10-27T18:00:14","slug":"elon-musk-says-he-has-cyber-psychosis-do-you-too-arwa-mahdawi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/896622\/","title":{"rendered":"Elon Musk says he has \u2018cyber psychosis\u2019. Do you too? | Arwa Mahdawi"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the least surprising news you\u2019ll hear all week, Elon Musk has said he\u2019s not entirely right in the head. \u201cI\u2019ve got a little bit of cyber psychosis,\u201d the world\u2019s richest and most irritating man explained during an event <\/a>this month. \u201cMaybe a lot actually.\u201d Musk added that, over \u201cvarious points this year\u201d, he\u2019s had \u201cAI or SI psychosis probably half a dozen times\u201d. SI, in case you missed the super-important memo, stands for \u201csuperintelligence<\/a>\u201d and it\u2019s what Donald Trump wants everyone to call AI now, for reasons too stupid to explain.<\/p>\n

While the phrase SI is still being used 0nly by weaselly tech bros desperate for Trump\u2019s approval, you\u2019ll probably have heard the term \u201cAI psychosis<\/a>\u201d bandied around a lot. On the most serious level, it refers to delusional thinking<\/a> induced or exacerbated by sycophantic chatbots. People who have ploughed their life savings into a ridiculous business idea, for example, because computer code told them they were the next Jeff Bezos. But the phrase has also been used more jokingly to describe overexuberance around artificial intelligence, and that seems to be how Musk was using it. The comments about his self-diagnosed bouts of cyber psychosis came as the tech mogul waxed lyrical about how great AI music videos have become, and how he believes artificial intelligence now \u201cunderstands beauty and harmony\u201d.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t know if Musk gushing over the beauty and harmony of AI slop is down to cyber psychosis or possibly his widely reported enthusiasm<\/a> for the benefits of ketamine and psychedelics. But I can tell you that large swathes of Silicon Valley are dangerously high on their own supply of AI bullshit. And the sickness is rapidly spreading to the populace. So, I\u2019m taking it on myself to help you spot a couple of signs that demonstrate someone has become over attached to AI or grown too credulous when it comes to the puffery around the industry.<\/p>\n

A sudden cigarette habit is one of the more unusual signals something is afoot. This month, Palantir chief technology officer Shyam Sankar told CBS<\/a> that numerous AI researchers \u201chave started smoking as a way of signaling to other researchers\u201d that they believe AI is going to cure cancer soon. Sankar provided no data to back up this extraordinary claim, which he said was emblematic of \u201cthis mass psychosis, social delusion\u201d around AI. But tech executives don\u2019t need to prove things any more, do they? They just make grandiose statements<\/a> and watch the investor dollars roll in.<\/p>\n

Another signal your brain may have been fried by AI? An inability to interact with your small children without the help of a large language model. \u201cI cannot imagine having gone through figuring out how to raise a newborn without ChatGPT,\u201d OpenAI CEO and new dad Sam Altman said<\/a> on Jimmy Fallon last year. Try to imagine, Sam! People have been doing it for a while. Earlier this year, Altman also informed us that AI is a great way to bond with your kids. \u201ccool use case of chatgpt work i heard last night: connect your family calendars and explain your kids\u2019 interests,\u201d Altman tweeted<\/a>. \u201cevery morning for the drive to school, have it make a podcast that talks about one kid\u2019s soccer game that afternoon, one kid\u2019s upcoming birthday, some news, etc.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Altman\u2019s parenting tip didn\u2019t land well with normies, Marissa Mayer probably appreciated it. Mayer made her name (and tons of money) as the first female engineer at Google and the CEO of Yahoo; now she\u2019s flogging an AI assistant called Dazzle. In a new interview with the New York Times<\/a>, Mayer told a story about how, when her daughter Marielle was turning 10, her teacher wanted three bullet points about what made Marielle special. Mayer \u201cfelt overwhelmed\u201d, and asked Dazzle for help. \u201cIt came back and was like, your daughter is empathetic, creative and an animal lover,\u201d Mayer told the Times. I don\u2019t know how much AI Kool Aid Mayer has drunk, but it\u2019s clearly enough to have made her believe asking AI for insights about your kid is sweet, not downright dystopian.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I do not have the cure for AI psychosis. But as the gold rush continues, let me point you to a sobering reality check from American asset management firm Apollo Global Management. \u201cDespite massive investments and widespread hype \u2026 [AI] has delivered zero financial payoff to corporate America outside of tech,\u201d stated an insight it published on Saturday<\/a>. While AI is obviously a transformative technology, I suspect we\u2019re in the middle of a bubble that\u2019s about to burst. After all the mass exuberance, we\u2019re due a very nasty comedown.<\/p>\n

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters<\/a> section, please click here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In the least surprising news you\u2019ll hear all week, Elon Musk has said he\u2019s not entirely right in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":896623,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":["post-896622","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896622","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896622"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896622\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/896623"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896622"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896622"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896622"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}