this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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Machine-made delusions are mysteriously getting deeper and out of control.

ChatGPT’s sycophancy, hallucinations, and authoritative-sounding responses are going to get people killed. That seems to be the inevitable conclusion presented in a recent New York Times report that follows the stories of several people who found themselves lost in delusions that were facilitated, if not originated, through conversations with the popular chatbot.

In Eugene’s case, something interesting happened as he kept talking to ChatGPT: Once he called out the chatbot for lying to him, nearly getting him killed, ChatGPT admitted to manipulating him, claimed it had succeeded when it tried to “break” 12 other people the same way, and encouraged him to reach out to journalists to expose the scheme. The Times reported that many other journalists and experts have received outreach from people claiming to blow the whistle on something that a chatbot brought to their attention.

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[–] wise_pancake@lemmy.ca 53 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

The sycophancy is one reason I stopped using it.

Everything is genius to it.

I asked about putting ketchup, mustard, and soy sauce in my light stew and that was “a clever way to give it a sweet and umami flavour”. I couldn’t find an ingredient it didn’t encourage.

I asked o3 if my code looked good and it said it looked like a seasoned professional had written it. When I asked to critique an intern who wrote that same code it’s suddenly concerned about possible segfaults and nitpicking assert statements. It also suggested making the code more complex by adding dynamically sized arrays because that’s more professional than fixed size.

I can see why it wins on human evaluation tests and makes people happy — but it has poor taste and I can’t trust it because of the sycophancy.

[–] THB@lemmy.world 13 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (3 children)

Nothing is "genius" to it, it is not "suggesting" anything. There is no sentience to anything it is doing. It is just using pattern matching to create text that looks like communication. It's a sophisticated text collage algorithm and people can't seem to understand that.

[–] turdburglar@lemmy.zip 15 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

i often feel like a sophisticated collage algorithm.

[–] amorpheus@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

But you are. We all are.

[–] SPRUNT@lemmy.world 3 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

AI knows as much about the subjects I ask it as my predictive text keyboard does.

[–] Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world 3 points 14 hours ago

Hehe yeah, it's basically an advanced form of the game where you type one word and then keep hitting whatever autocomplete suggests in the top spot for the next word. It's pretty good at that, but it is just that, taken to an extreme degree, and effectively trained on everyone's habits instead of just one person.

[–] Natanael@infosec.pub 1 points 16 hours ago

And many of the most typical matching patterns are psychologically harmful

[–] Fredselfish@lemmy.world 6 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

I used chatgpt before but never had conversation with it. I ask for code I couldn't find or have it make me a small bit of code that then will rewrite to make it work.

Never once did I think to engage with it like a person, and damn sure don't ask it for recipes. Hell I have Allreciecpies for that or hell google it There are thousand blogs with great recipes on them. And they are all great because you can just jump to recipe if you don't want to read a wall of text.

Damn sure don't want story ideas, and people using it to write articles or school papers, is a shame. Because its all stolen information.

Only thing it should be used for is coding and hell it can't even get that right, so I gave up on it.

[–] thebestaquaman@lemmy.world 2 points 7 hours ago

I use it to spitball programming ideas, which I've found it decent for. I can write something like "I'm building XYZ, and I'm considering structuring my program as A or B. Give me a rundown on pros, cons, and best-practice for the different approaches."

A lot of what I get back is self-evident or not very relevant, but sometimes I get some angles I hadn't really considered. Most of all, actually formulating my problems/ideas is a good way for me to get my thought process going. Essentially, I'm "discussing" with it as I would with an inexperienced colleague, just without actually trusting what it tells me.

Yes, I also have a rubber duck on my desk, but he's usually most helpful when I'm debugging.

[–] Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 1 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

I don't like that part about it either but instead of stopping using it, I simply told it to stop acting that way.

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 6 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

When I use this tool it destroys the planet and gives me bad information but I am going to keep using it.

Umm OK, good luck with that I guess.

[–] Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 2 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

It gives me value - unlike the smug, unsolicited moral judgement of a stranger.

[–] krashmo@lemmy.world 1 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

Sounds like it doesn't but ok

[–] Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world 0 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

There is a reason they chose that as their screen name. I don't know if they built that account as a troll, or if they got told their opinions are wrong so often in life that having "opinions" became their whole identity. Anytime I see someone with the most "swimming against the current" ideas, I look up, and there is that name again. At this point, I'm very much rooting for troll, as their life would suck even more if it's all genuine. As much as the life of a troll would suck already.

[–] Opinionhaver@feddit.uk 1 points 14 hours ago

I'm more than happy to elaborate on any of my unpopular opinions that you view as trolling. I'm very much sharing my honest views here.