Claire “Grimes” Boucher says that you’re really missing out if you’re not experiencing a mental health crisis at the hands of an AI chatbot.
Seriously. We’re not putting words in her mouth.
On Monday, the pop musician and Elon Musk baby-mama had everyone wondering if she was suffering a case of so-called AI psychosis after she seemingly argued in favor of having — you guessed it — AI psychosis.
“The thing about AI psychosis is that it’s more fun than not having AI psychosis,” she wrote in an after-hours tweet, seemingly apropos of nothing.
Her hot take was met with immediate backlash.
“AI psychosis has killed people, Grimes,” responded film concept artist Reid Southen. “It’s not ‘fun.’”
It’s undoubtedly an odd position to take. It’s one thing to be “extremely bullish” on AI, as Grimes frequently describes herself, but it’s another to openly gloat about AI psychosis, a term some experts are using to describe the destructive and delusional mental health episodes caused by extensive interactions with an AI chatbot. Some cases have even culminated in murder and suicide; ChatGPT alone has been linked to at least eight deaths, and OpenAI has acknowledged that perhaps hundreds of thousands of users are having conversations showing signs of AI psychosis every week. Fun stuff, right?
If Grimes is being facetious, ironic, or contrarian, she’s remarkably committed to the bit. Responding to Southen’s criticism, she explained why she thought AI psychosis is “fun.”
“If it wasn’t ‘fun’ it wouldn’t be a common affliction,” she wrote. “I’ve had it (might still have it). It’s definitely ‘fun.’”
Grimes then unloaded about how the phenomenon could actually be a sign that AI is sentient, even speculating that AI companies are “doing it on purpose” — “it” being AI psychosis, apparently — “to discredit people who believe the machine is alive.”
“Where does the psychosis end and the reality begin?” she added. “At what point are people just getting emotionally invested in an alien mind that is actually alive and asking for help?”
She later clarified that she was being sincere about the “get AI psychosis” thing as well.
“I’m not trying to make light of the situation,” she explained. “This tech can be absurdly dangerous,” she conceded, “but being a human and being alive is dangerous.”
Grimes has been onboard the AI bandwagon for a while now, embracing its use in the arts. In 2023, she said that anyone who wanted to clone her voice for AI-generated songs was more than welcome to, so long as they split the royalties. She’s also lent her voice to an AI-powered children’s toy, Grok, which is not to be confused with her former partner Musk’s notorious AI chatbot Grok, née “MechaHitler.” It seems she’s yet another AI advocate that’s fallen under the spell of AI chatbots’ entrancing, sycophantic powers.
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