Trapped in a ChatGPT Spiral

陷入ChatGPT的漩涡

The Daily

2025-09-16

43 分钟
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单集简介 ...

Warning: This episode discusses suicide. Since ChatGPT began in 2022, it has amassed 700 million users, making it the fastest-growing consumer app ever. Reporting has shown that the chatbots have a tendency to endorse conspiratorial and mystical belief systems. For some people, conversations with the technology can deeply distort their reality. Kashmir Hill, who covers technology and privacy for The New York Times, discusses how complicated and dangerous our relationships with chatbots can become. Guest: Kashmir Hill, a feature writer on the business desk at The New York Times who covers technology and privacy. Background reading:  Here’s how chatbots can go into a delusional spiral.These people asked an A.I. chatbot questions. The answers distorted their views of reality.A teenager was suicidal, and ChatGPT was the friend he confided in.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.  Photo: The New York Times Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
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  • Hello, Pablo Torre here.

  • Host of the show Pablo Torre finds out from The Athletic of the New York Times where we use journalism to investigate mysteries.

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  • Basically, we're a sports podcast that's fun, but also breaks big stories.

  • So follow us down the rabbit hole three times a week.

  • on Pablo Torre Finds Out.

  • From the New York Times, I'm Natalie Kittrowef.

  • This is The Daily.

  • Since ChatGPT launched in 2022, it's amassed 700 million users,

  • making it the fastest growing consumer app ever.

  • From the beginning, my colleague Cashmere Hill has been hearing from and reporting on those users.

  • And in the past few months,

  • that reporting has started to reveal just how complicated and dangerous our relationships with these chatbots can get.

  • It's Tuesday, September 16th.

  • Okay, so...

  • Tell me how this all started.

  • I started getting strange messages around the end of March from people who said they basically made these really incredible discoveries or breakthroughs in conversations with ChachiBT.

  • They would say that ChachiBT broke protocol and connected them with AI sentience or a conscious entity that had revealed to them that we are living in a computer simulated reality like the matrix.

  • I assumed at first that they were cranks, that they were kind of like delusional people.