Whether using chatbots for childcare or taking up smoking, a new affliction is sweeping through the tech world. Here are the signs
In the least surprising news you’ll hear all week, Elon Musk has said he’s not entirely right in the head. “I’ve got a little bit of cyber psychosis,” the world’s richest and most irritating man explained during an event this month. “Maybe a lot actually.” Musk added that, over “various points this year”, he’s had “AI or SI psychosis probably half a dozen times”. SI, in case you missed the super-important memo, stands for “superintelligence” and it’s what Donald Trump wants everyone to call AI now, for reasons too stupid to explain.
While the phrase SI is still being used 0nly by weaselly tech bros desperate for Trump’s approval, you’ll probably have heard the term “AI psychosis” bandied around a lot. On the most serious level, it refers to delusional thinking 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 “understands beauty and harmony”.
