this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2026
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Fuck AI
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First guy: “I’ve never been manic in my life. I’m not bipolar."
I'm just highly skeptical of this.
Second guy: That wasn’t the worst of it. At that point he had blown nearly $12,000 trying to create world-changing code. He became manic, and his concerned therapist called the cops to check in on him. He was institutionalized for nearly two weeks
Yeah that sounds right. Regarding "AI psychosis," everything I've read indicates it exacerbates existing psychoses, it doesn't create them. That's not to say it can't mess with people's psychology, especially the stuff around suicide, but I think the "AI psychosis" the media portrays is not real
If it can exacerbate psychotic tendencies, then it can cause psychosis. Claiming that increasing or exacerbating tendencies doesn't necessarily mean it is causing it, is an interesting area for debate, but it's just semantics. Of course, I am also arguing semantics here.
I think ehat is more interesting psychologically to ask is just how much does AI exacerbate psychotic tendencies, or if AI-induced psychosis is temporary (like drug-induced psychosis often is), or is permanent. I dont know anything about this topic but I hope to hear from someone who does.
I mean, I kind of agree that there's a lot of undiagnosed and underreported mental health issues in our society, and it's not surprising that highly functional people can turn out to have serious mental issues lurking just below the surface.
But there's also a sort of gatekeeping going on here, suggesting that "well as long as you're not already sort of psychotic you don't have anything to fear from AI psychosis" is sort of like throwing the low-key psychotic people to the wolves and basically saying they don't really matter to us because most of us aren't them. At least, we assume we aren't them. And we don't even know that for sure. We could be them.
Lots of smug people with 20/20 hindsight always love to believe there are always signs, but signs aren't proof, and you don't have proof there are always signs.
"AI induced psychosis" is new and relatively unstudied but it has been compared to mono mania which was before the current "kaleidoscope" of modern mania. Under mono mania there is one central focus which in this case is AI. This is to say its not a completely new phenomenon.
But as far as whether or not AI* causes psychosis or exacerbates underlying conditions im not sure this distinction matters. There's more risk factors than simply being part of a "vulnerable population", where other factors could be lack of reality testing, missed crisis escalation, intensive use, and limited context windows compounding escalations over time.
Whatever we want to call it, there is harm being done. That's real to me.