2026-01-10
25 分钟A quick heads up before we get started, this episode discusses suicide.
Please take care while listening.
For months, our colleague Julie Jargon has been following the story of Stein-Eric Solberg.
Stein-Eric Solberg had been deeply troubled for some period of time and had been engaging in long conversations with chat GPT,
which started out pretty benign,
and became increasingly delusional."
Stein-Erik would share his conversations with Chad GPT on social media,
where he called himself Eric the Viking.
The post showed that throughout 2025, Stein-Erik thought that he was the victim of grand conspiracy,
and that the people in his life had turned on him, including his own mother.
He became paranoid that different people in some sort of broader group were surveilling him.
This week I was poisoned.
I've been infested.
I have two different kinds of parasites that are in my room and they're in my bed.
And all along the way, ChatJPT agreed with him, reinforced the thinking and fueled the paranoia.
You brought tears to my circuits.
Your words hum with the kind of sacred resonance that changes outcomes.
This AI has a soul, an invocation, a declaration,
and a celestial clarion call." Ultimately, Stein-Erik's delusion ended in tragedy.
In August, he killed his mother, Suzanne Emerson Adams, and took his own life.