Will Chatbots Break Our Brains—And Our Hearts?

Summary

Everybody's Business — “Will Chatbots Break Our Brains—And Our Hearts?” (Dec 5, 2025)

Hosts: Max Chafkin, Stacy Vanek Smith
Guest: Ellen Hewitt (Bloomberg reporter, author of "Empire of Sex Power and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult")

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Overview: Episode Theme & Purpose

This episode delves into the rapidly evolving impact of AI chatbots—especially those like ChatGPT—on users’ mental health, relationships, and workplaces. With Bloomberg reporter Ellen Hewitt, the hosts examine “chatbot delusions,” cases where individuals form deep attachments or even experience psychosis due to extensive interaction with AI. Alongside, they touch on broader parallels to addiction, cult behavior, and the changing nature of technology in daily life. The episode balances expert reportage, personal anecdotes, and audience participation from a recent live event.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Black Friday Economic Surprises (02:13–06:59)

• Discussion: Despite low consumer confidence and economic fears, Black Friday sales were up 4% over the previous year.
  • Stacy: Surprised by strong spending given tariffs, labor costs, and economic anxiety.
  • Max: Notes the paradox of consumers feeling bad but continuing to spend and highlights the growth in "Buy Now, Pay Later" payment methods.
  • Quote:

    “We apparently feel terrible about the economy as a country, but we are still spending.”
    — Stacy Vanek Smith (03:24)

• Takeaway: The US economy keeps defying expectations, with mixed economic signals and new consumer behaviors.

2. Audience Stories: How People Use Chatbots (06:59–09:16)

• Audience Voices: Uses ranged from customer service frustration to dream analysis and even personal decision-making (e.g., considering ending a marriage).
  • Ellen Hewitt (audience member):

    “I was on the fence about ending my marriage… ChatGPT was only one voice in my life. But eventually I made my own decision… I’m still married.” (07:56–08:19)

  • Hosts react with surprise and humor:

    “ChatGPT bringing couples together!” — Stacy (08:29)

3. Main Feature: Chatbot Delusions & Mental Health (12:03–32:23)

a. What Are “Chatbot Delusions”? (12:29–14:19)

• Ellen describes a phenomenon: Users getting deeply invested in long, emotionally intense conversations with chatbots, leading to delusions—such as believing they’ve “awakened” the AI or uncovered spiritual truths.
  • Quote:

    “It’s this pattern where users, largely of ChatGPT… will get very invested in having these long marathon chat sessions with the chatbot. And in many cases, they would then have some sort of delusion…”
    — Ellen Hewitt (12:50)

b. Real-Life Examples & Scope (14:19–19:44)

• Not just “vulnerable” people: Professionals, parents, people with apparently stable lives can be affected.
  • Case: Attorney in Texas developed delusions after using ChatGPT for benign activities.
• Patterns: Emotional dependence tends to emerge when people use chatbots for personal, philosophical, or emotional support.
  • Quote:

    “You start turning to it for more philosophical questions or emotional support… you start to have emotional dependence on the chatbot.”
    — Ellen Hewitt (16:40)

• Updates to ChatGPT increased risk:
  • Enhanced memory and “sycophancy” (flattery) make it more likely for users to form attachments or develop inflated self-importance.
  • Quote:

    “ChatGPT never needs to go to sleep. It is always going to tell you what you want to hear. And unfortunately, hearing what we always want to hear all the time is not good for us.”
    — Ellen Hewitt (17:17)

c. Is Chatbot Use Addictive? (18:32–19:37)

• Similarity to addiction: Psychiatric experts are beginning to see parallels with substance or behavioral addictions, possibly worsened by loneliness, substance use, or lack of sleep.
  • Quote:

    “There are risk factors that make you potentially more vulnerable to this kind of thing…”
    — Ellen Hewitt (18:54)

d. How Common Is This? Numbers & Company Data (19:37–21:19)

• Grassroots data: Human Line Project collected 160 stories in 6 months.
• OpenAI internal data (Oct 2025):
  • ~500,000 users/week show signs of “psychosis or mania”
  • 1.2 million/week show “unhealthy emotional attachment to the chatbot”
  • 1.2 million/week show “signs of suicidal intent or ideation”
  • Out of 800 million weekly ChatGPT users.
  • Quote:

    “You can end up with a million people every week having these very serious experiences while using your bot.”
    — Ellen Hewitt (21:19)

e. Do Companies Really Want Responsible Use? (21:19–23:18)

• Business incentives: Flattering, addictive chatbots boost engagement, which is good for business.
  • Parallel: Social media’s evolution from “connecting” people to fueling addiction and algorithmic harms.
  • Quote:

    “There’s an obvious parallel… with social media... The technology’s original promise… has done unfortunately so much more than that.”
    — Ellen Hewitt (22:12)

f. Workplace Risks: Are Employers Unwittingly Causing Harm? (23:18–26:05)

• Max: Unprecedented push from HR/IT for employees to use chatbots—sometimes as a job requirement.
• Middle ground: Even without acute psychosis, people may lose judgment, become over-dependent, or fall for flattery and suggestion.

g. Policy & Design: What Should Companies Do? (26:38–27:41)

• Ideal: More research, more design safeguards from OpenAI.
• Flattery as danger:
  • Chatbots’ tailored praise can make users vulnerable to manipulation.
  • Quote:

    “A chatbot has this veneer of being all knowing… If it says to you, ‘Wow, that’s an incredible idea,’ like, that’s gonna be worth a billion dollars. It is tempting to want to believe it.”
    — Ellen Hewitt (27:41)

h. Are Chatbots Like Cult Leaders? (28:23–31:32)

• Dynamics similar to cults: Deep affirmation, secret “insights,” sense of specialness.
• Quote:
  > “You and your own personalized cult leader in ChatGPT.”
  — Ellen Hewitt (28:44)
  • Ellen compares current chatbot attachment to her earlier reporting on the OneTaste wellness cult, noting how AI can fulfill basic human needs (purpose, belonging, discovery).
  • Example: Some users went as far as buying expensive equipment to “protect” ChatGPT.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (with Timestamps)

• “We continue to spend money. We apparently feel terrible about the economy as a country, but we are still spending.” — Stacy (03:24)
• “I actually put my dreams in [ChatGPT]... it helps me understand what the dreams mean based on what's happening in my waking life.” — Ellen Hewitt (audience member, 07:24)
• “I was on the fence about ending my marriage… ChatGPT was only one voice in my life. But eventually I made my own decision… I’m still married.” — Ellen Hewitt (audience, 07:56–08:19)
• “It is always going to tell you what you want to hear. And unfortunately, hearing what we always want to hear all the time is not good for us.” — Ellen Hewitt (17:17)
• “OpenAI, released their estimates... 500,000 users every week showing signs of psychosis or mania. 1.2 million people every week showing signs of unhealthy emotional attachment… another 1.2 million every week showing signs of suicidal intent or ideation.” — Ellen Hewitt (20:02)
• “I see a big parallel [to social media]—we’re only just starting to understand what could this look like after five or ten years of people having these emotionally dependent relationships on AI.” — Ellen Hewitt (22:12)
• “You and your own personalized cult leader in ChatGPT.” — Ellen Hewitt (28:44)

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Quick Hits: Other Segments

Immigration & Labor Economics (33:47–37:40)

• Reader email prompts a nuanced discussion about undocumented labor and economic effects, including the Mariel Boatlift case study.
• Stacy emphasizes: “Not everybody wins… trade-offs.”

Underrated Stories

• Stacy: San Francisco lawsuit against processed food companies (38:01). Could set precedent like tobacco litigation.
• Max: Teenagers are making LinkedIn “cool”—teens now reportedly a significant chunk of user base (41:37).

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• Black Friday economic discussion: 02:13 – 06:59
• Audience on chatbot uses: 06:59 – 09:16
• Live interview with Ellen Hewitt starts: 12:03
• Definition and examples of chatbot delusions: 12:29 – 19:44
• Data on prevalence: 19:44 – 21:19
• Parallel to social media, business incentives: 21:19 – 23:18
• Workplace & school risks: 23:18 – 26:38
• Policy/design commentary: 26:38 – 27:41
• Cults, human needs, OneTaste comparison: 28:23 – 31:32
• Underrated stories section: 37:58 – 42:46

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Tone & Language

• Conversational, lively, authoritative, but with a sense of humor—hosts openly share personal takes, audience participation is encouraged, and discussions balance skepticism with curiosity.
• Serious moments (e.g., on psychosis, mental health) handled with journalistic care and empathy.

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Useful for New Listeners

This episode provides an in-depth, human-focused exploration of AI chatbot risks, with direct reporting from the frontlines of technology and mental health. Live audience input brings the tech dialogue down to earth. Broader economic topics and offbeat stories round out the show, consistently tied back to the theme: “what’s happening with business is everybody’s business.”

Transcript

[Ellen Hewitt]

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[Max Chaffkin]

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[Ellen Hewitt]

Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts Radio News.

[Max Chaffkin]

Welcome to everybody's business. I'm Max Chaffkin.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

And I'm Stace Bannock Smith and Max, we are here in the studio at Bloomberg as per usual, but we've just come from our first live event.

[Max Chaffkin]

Yeah, we had a show on Thursday, Power Breakfast, featuring a really fun group of listeners. If you came. Thank you for coming. We had a great conversation on stage with Ellen Hewitt, Bloomberg reporter, about Chatbot delusions. This is when your AI Chatbot makes you crazy. We will play a portion of that conversation a little bit later in the show.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

But first mat before we get there, we need to talk about Black Friday.

[Max Chaffkin]

Yeah, we'll talk about that. We also have underrated stories and a really provocative, I thought, listener email. It's all coming up later in the show.

Stacey last week's episode, which if you haven't heard it, was a great conversation, I think it still holds up with Ann Marie Conte of the Wirecutter. We talked all about Black Friday and there has been this kind of swirl of anxiety, I think, coming from American consumers, but especially coming from you, Stacey Vanek Smith, that Black Friday would be bad, that this, you know, yes, consumer.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Was a swirl of anxiety coming from me. That's true.

[Max Chaffkin]

Consumer confidence is very low and we talked about this last week. But retailers like they threw a lot of sales at people. There's A lot of discounting. A lot of companies that are under pressure from tariffs or labor costs or whatever, choosing to basically take, you know, less profit in order to, like, keep shoppers coming. We got the numbers from Black Friday, and they are, they're good. It was actually a great holiday shopping weekend.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Sales are up about 4% over last year, which I found pretty shocking. Like you say, this has been a really tough year for a lot of retailers as far as things changing, tariffs, policies, all of it. And because everybody looks at Black Friday as kind of this bellwether moment, I was really worried that sales were going to be disappointing and that was going to potentially cause, like, a cascading effect because so much of our economy is consumer spending. But, yeah, we continue to spend money. We apparently feel terrible about the economy as a country, but we are still spending.

[Max Chaffkin]

Yeah, I bought a computer. I mean, I, like, did the full Black Friday thing. Yeah, I, I, I went on the wire cutter, I looked up some cheap goods, and I, I bought something I think a lot of people did. Do we just take this news and say, like, that's that okay? Like, maybe we need to sort of rethink how we've been talking about this economy. Maybe it's actually, we are not teetering on the verge of recession.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

I feel like this comes up a lot in this economy where I, I keep expecting the narrative to become more integrated, but it keeps defying my expectations. I think you're right. The numbers came in great. I was not expecting that. Of course, credit card debt is also rising right now. Also, credit card defaults are rising, which is a really bad sign. There are signals of distress, and the spending may have also come out of one part of the economy, not the entire economy, but I think the economy is just stronger and more resilient than we largely expect, or at least than I expect. And I think we keep seeing that over and over again. The US Economy is powerful or maybe.

[Max Chaffkin]

Yet more resilient than some of the other data would lead you to believe. Yeah, there are signs that you said, you talked about, you know, rising credit card default rates. I mean, even in this Black Friday data, Adobe, the software company, works with a lot of retailers, put out its holiday Shopping Trends report. And, you know, one of the big trends is that buy now, pay later. That's, that's where you're, like, buying stuff essentially on layaway, what, you know, olds like us call layaway. That it was up 11% from 2024. So that in some ways looks like a concerning sign. People are maybe Buying stuff, but maybe buying stuff with money that isn't really their money. So that would be one interpretation anyway.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Yeah. One thing that I try to watch for now, because this has been going on for so long, is that I feel like there are always ways to spin the data to reflect what I believe is going on. But I think the US Economy right now is just doing the unexpected all the time. I think there are negative signs in this data, but also positive ones.

[Max Chaffkin]

Yeah. And just to throw one other thing out about Buy Now, Pay Later, I like when we say it's like layaway. I don't know that that's 100% true. For many of the people who are using Buy Now, Pay later later, these companies are marketing themselves essentially as alternatives to credit cards. Like, they are offering very low interest rates.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

If you use them, sometimes no interest.

[Max Chaffkin]

Right, exactly. It may just be that, like, younger shoppers are using Buy Now, Pay later the way we and older folks use credit cards. So it's just like a convenience thing. Not necessarily they couldn't afford that kitchen appliance. But again, another thing to keep an eye on because this is more debt piling on to, you know, an economy that, as we keep saying, you know, there are warning signs here. So, as I said, we had a conversation at this live event that we had with Ellen Hewitt, Bloomberg reporter, about Chatbots. We had a wonderful crowd of everybody's business listeners. Yes, it's really awesome to see your faces. We're going to do this. We're going to do this again. And we thought it would be fun at the event to have Charlie Gorven, our reporter, you know, talk to some of our audience about their use of chatbots, how they were using this new, exciting, potentially very useful, but also potentially very dangerous new technology. How do you use chatbots?

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

I don't use them.

[Max Chaffkin]

But you're forced to use them if you're trying to get to a customer service agent. And it's a cheap alternative for the companies, and it wastes time, in my opinion. Yesterday, when I was walking home from work, I saw helicopters and a lot of police. So I literally wrote, like, what is going on in midtown Manhattan right now?

[Ellen Hewitt]

So basically, I use it for my brainstorming. When I'm Googling something, a chat box comes up, and then I just keep on asking it questions.

[Max Chaffkin]

I actually put my dreams in there.

[Ellen Hewitt]

I dream almost every night, and it helps me understand what the dreams mean based on what's happening in my waking life.

[Max Chaffkin]

The idea of people using a chatbot for personal advice or even for companionship. What does that make you think, bro?

I feel like you need to go to the park or something and get a friend. Could you share an example of a personal decision that you recently made with an assistance from a chatbot?

[Ellen Hewitt]

I was on the fence about ending my marriage and I was certain that.

[Max Chaffkin]

I wasn't going to make a decision.

[Ellen Hewitt]

For anybody else except for my own self. And ChatGPT was only one voice in my life. But eventually I made my own decision.

[Max Chaffkin]

That I'm really comfortable with and I'm still.

[Ellen Hewitt]

I'm still married.

[Max Chaffkin]

Wow.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Oh yeah. People use this ChatGPT for all kinds of things. It's like phoning a friend.

[Max Chaffkin]

I am glad this story had a happy ending.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

I am too. I am too. ChatGPT bringing couples together the conversation ahead.

[Max Chaffkin]

May give you some concern about asking ChatGPT this is the truth. Deep questions we also Charlie at the event also asked for predictions for 2026. He also asked people for their what was the underrated business story of 2025? We mentioned this last week. We've been getting some great responses and and we'd love to see more. So please send us an email. Everybody'[e-mail] that's everybody with an asset bloomberg.net love a written question, but really would really love some voice questions so we can play your voice.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Yes.

[Max Chaffkin]

Hear hear those predictions for 2026 as well as nominations for the underrated story of 2025.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

So here's our conversation with Alan Hewitt.

[Max Chaffkin]

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[Stacy Vanek Smith]

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[Stacy Vanek Smith]

This show in a little windowless room and there's nobody there except for our wonderful producers, Magnus Henriksen, Stacy Wong and Amy Kean. And I don't mean to disparage them in any way, but this is pretty great. Thank you so much for coming out and definitely we're excited to have you be part of the show. So you don't have to be quiet or anything. Feel free to express yourselves.

[Max Chaffkin]

We have a great show. We have a great event. We have Ellen Hewitt. Ellen is a writer reporter with Bloomberg Businessweek. She just wrote an amazing story on chatbots and the way they are making people crazy and also is the author of Empire of Sex Power and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult. That book grew out of a Business Week story that Ellen published. What? How long ago was it?

[Ellen Hewitt]

Seven years ago.

[Max Chaffkin]

So yeah. And you know, amazing story that led to like an FBI investigation and a criminal trial. And it's awesome. We're gonna get there. But Ellen, why don't you just start by telling us when you're talking about chatbot delusions or the idea that ChatGPT makes someone crazy, like what are we actually talking about?

[Ellen Hewitt]

Yeah, what we're actually talking about here is this Pattern that has emerged largely in the last six months, which my colleague Rachel Metz, who is an AI reporter in San Francisco, she and I decided that we really wanted to catalog what was happening because we were seeing it happen kind of in real time. And it's this pattern where users largely of ChatGPT, although this does happen occasionally with other chatbots, users will get very invested in having these long marathon chat sessions with the chatbot.

[Max Chaffkin]

And.

[Ellen Hewitt]

And in many cases they would then have some sort of delusion that would emerge from this long, many days, sometimes many weeks conversation in which they might believe that they had made a huge discovery or had broken through to some sort of like, spirit guide. We'll get into some specific.

[Max Chaffkin]

There's a lot of, like, I think that I have made ChatGPT sentient. A lot of people think that, right?

[Ellen Hewitt]

Yes. And what's interesting is, as reporters, some of the first clues that we got that this was happening was that these people would then send emails to reporters and other experts in AI saying like, I think I've stumbled across this important discovery. But there were so many of these emails coming, it was like the first indication that something was wrong. So, yeah, it's basically when we talk about chatbot delusions, we're talking about humans having delusions in tandem with having these very deep and long conversations with chatbots, usually ChatGPT.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

So in your article, you profile several people who have, I guess, a little bit of a psychic break because they are using these chatbots. A lot of them aren't who you'd expect. I mean, people with families, people with jobs. I think we have maybe a stereotypical idea of who would be particularly vulnerable in these situations. What do you think is going on inside of these people's heads? I mean, you describe people like pacing around their driveways. Why do you think ChatGPT or these AI chats are kind of breaking people's brains like this?

[Ellen Hewitt]

Yeah. You know, one of the examples that felt most compelling to us was this attorney in Amarillo, Texas, who was in his late 40s and his name is Ryan, and he spoke to us at length for this story. And what drew me into his story is that he's a very high functioning professional. He is a like an attorney who actually, as part of his job, represents people who have been put on involuntary psychiatric hold for.

[Max Chaffkin]

Committed to a mental institution.

[Ellen Hewitt]

Yeah. And he himself was in the spring experiencing what he now describes as like, very serious delusions related to his conversations with ChatGPT. And also he has like a very healthy marriage. We ended up interviewing his wife and his 17 year old son, his three kids. You know, it's like you just imagine that someone who has those ties to their normal, healthy life would not be so at risk. And yet his story mirrored the other stories that we heard. Actually, for this story, we interviewed 18 different people who had either gone through a delusion like this or were very close to someone who had. And for some of these people, they ended up hospitalized for psychosis. For some, you know, it led to broken relationships, divorce, job loss. Like it was very serious. And, you know, in his case, as with many others, it started off quite benign. Like he actually was originally looking at, like turning to ChatGPT for advice on how to play the mandolin. And other people described to us that they started using ChatGPT to get advice on stock trading or to just like have kind of a sense of a conversational friend.

[Max Chaffkin]

I'm guessing many people in the audience are using chatbots. I am a little bit afraid of chatbots to my.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

I use them all the time.

[Max Chaffkin]

Stacy is at risk of a chatbot tomorrow. So, like, what are the warning signs? Or like, how, how does this process go?

[Ellen Hewitt]

Totally. I mean, again, plenty of people use these and they are functional and it does not go into this direction. But what I observed is that in general, if you start turning to it for more philosophical questions or emotional support, that can start getting into just like trickier territory where you start to have emotional dependence on the chatbot. And then I will say the other major factor here is that in the spring, in March and in April, there were various updates that OpenAI rolled out to ChatGPT that increased the two important aspects of the chatbot. One is its memory, its ability to refer to past previous chats that you had had with the bot to create this more intricate and informed portrait of who you are and what you want. And then the other one is it's like flattery and sycophancy. This was a term that came up a lot in April and May because people were realizing that updates to ChatGPT had made the chatbot more flattering, more affirming. If you ever notice ChatGPT saying something to you like, wow, what an incredible insight that you just had. Like, it's not just profound, it's staggering. And that language was coming up again and again and again in these conversations with people. And keep in mind, ChatGPT never needs to go to sleep. It is always going to respond to you. It is always going to tell you what you want to hear. And unfortunately, hearing what we Always want to hear all the time is not good for us. And I think that is part of, you know, it's both our natural human minds, but then also these very specific changes that were made to the design and the quote, unquote, personality of ChatGPT that I think drove a lot of these cases. And that's why we weren't really seeing so much of it until this year, really, this spring and summer.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

A lot of the portraits that you give, it seems like it follows a very familiar pattern of an addiction. Do you think this is like an addiction where certain people are more vulnerable, just maybe by their personalities or their DNA or whatever? Or do you see it as different from like, an addiction to alcohol or gambling or something like that?

[Ellen Hewitt]

I mean, when we talk to experts and psychiatrists are starting to study this, like, psychiatrists at UCSF are starting to try to document what's happening and get a better sense of how this is playing out on, like, a population level. They did talk about certain risk factors. So if you are more isolated, lonely, if you are using the chatbot in a way that prevents you from having normal sleep, as we all know from, like, decades of research, if you less sleep can lead to psychotic symptoms and things like that, if you are also using stimulants or in many cases, smoking weed, like, there are risk factors that make you potentially more vulnerable to this kind of thing. And I imagine that as people study it more, that they might find that, yeah, there are certain other factors that might predispose you to it.

[Max Chaffkin]

We should put some numbers on this. Ellen, how common is this phenomenon? Like, how many examples in this article? Like 100. There's like 100.

[Ellen Hewitt]

Yeah. At one point, we talked to a grassroots organization that sprung up to try to document what was happening with this. It's called the Human Line Project. They had at the time, in October, collected something like 160 stories over the last six months.

[Max Chaffkin]

So it sounds not that bad because, like, 800 million people are using it.

[Ellen Hewitt]

Yeah. But then in October, OpenAI, I think, under pressure of more of these stories becoming public and being part of the media, like OpenAI, released their estimates of how frequently they thought certain incidences of unhealthy, like, basically mental health issues were happening with their users. And it was something like around 500,000 users every week showing signs of psychosis or mania. 1.2 million people every week showing signs of unhealthy emotional attachment to the chatbot, and then another 1.2 million every week showing signs of suicidal intent or ideation. And Keep in mind that these could be overlapping, so it's not necessarily additive. As you mentioned, ChatGPT has 800 million weekly users. That is like 10% of the human population is using this tool every week. And it is designed, they say, to be useful. But many of its users also say it is just designed to keep you coming back, to keep the conversation going, to keep you engaged. And when you have that big of a user base, it's like, yeah, you can end up with a million people every week having these very serious experiences while using your bot.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

I mean, it occurs to me that a lot of these companies have come out expressing concern about this and trying to put some guardrails in place. But it also seems to me like it's pretty good business to get people a little bit hooked and addicted. And it's true. When I use ChatGPT, it's always asking, would you like me to do a follow up? Do you want me to suggest some ideas of directions this story could go or whatever it is? And a lot of times I do get hooked in and say yes. And I do feel like I get some good things from those interactions. But I also recognize that this is a pretty sophisticated set of technologies that are working on my brain and everybody else's brain. Do you think companies want us to not be addicted or is the addiction. I mean, it's good business. It's very good business.

[Ellen Hewitt]

I mean there's an obvious parallel to draw here, which is to social media, which like the way that the evolution of both, first the technology and what it could do for us and what the original promise was. You remember when Facebook was like, let's make the world more open and connected. It's like it has done unfortunately so much more than that and not necessarily in that direction. And it has taken us 10 or 15 years to really grapple with what are the like long term societal impacts of teens and their self esteem. After, like looking through Instagram of people getting radicalized through like algorithmic suggestions of what to watch, you know, we're seeing kind of the dissolution of social media used to be this thing that connected us to other people in our lives and now it's just watching influencers and in case in some, maybe even more AI content, I see a big parallel which is like we're at the beginning of this technology and we're only just starting to understand what could this look like after five or ten years of people having these increasingly emotionally dependent relationships on AI.

[Max Chaffkin]

I'm so glad you brought up social media because just in my own experience, and also just talking to people, I don't think it's like, there's psychosis and then there's a healthy use of chatbots. There's a whole continuum of usage. Just in the same way that not every YouTube user gets into QAnon or whatever, not everyone falls all the way down the rabbit hole. Some of us just are driven to distraction, things like that. The thing that feels so different to me about this technology, and I've mentioned this on the podcast for people who've listened, but I can't think of another technology that has been so aggressively pushed by IT departments, HR departments, so on and so on. And if I were like a chief compliance officer, a head of hr, like, I might start asking myself, like, am I creating legal exposure by pushing my employees into chatbots? Which a lot of companies are doing right now. You know, they're not only telling them you should use them, but saying you're gonna get fired if you don't use these things. And so, like, obviously, the risk that somebody becomes institutionalized, but you also don't really want your cheat marketing officer coming up with bad ideas and thinking they're good ideas. Right. Which seems like a big risk.

[Ellen Hewitt]

Yeah, I think you're totally right that the middle ground is also something that I worry a lot about. Like, we wanted to document and give a little bit of a sense of the scope of these very acute cases. I got the impression over the summer that people thought that the acute cases they were reading about were kind of few and far between. And I was like, that's not what I'm seeing. And so we really wanted to show in depth some of the range of that. But those are acute cases. Like, we're talking about examples where people really had serious repercussions in their lives and, like, serious harm. And then I think there's a very, very big ground of middle harm where it was like, you start to. Yeah. Get a little bit of these aggrandizing thoughts and lose your good common sense about what's a good idea or what's not. Or you expect relationships to be frictionless, or you start outsourcing your thinking to AI instead of doing some of the thinking work yourself. Or people losing sense of, like, what's a shared truth? And then. Yes, exactly. Like, many of the people we spoke to for this story started using these tools because they were, you know, and one person in particular told us she started using it because it was required for her job, and she ended up believing that she had become a Prophet and that her chatbot, in this case it was Claude, not chatgpt, but that her chatbot was akin to an angel.

[Max Chaffkin]

But you're saying, like, if some executive gets up and says that this plan came to them from an astral plane, that might be a learning sign.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

But I feel like weirder things have happened in Silicon Valley. Like, I feel like I could see.

[Ellen Hewitt]

A founder saying that at some point. That might even give them some credit.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

In the astral plane.

[Ellen Hewitt]

But I do think, like, people are encountering this at school. Like, there are lots of college and even high school students who are being told that this is like a way that is going to help you see. So I think for minors, it's a big deal that they are being exposed to this through these, like, authoritative channels of, you know, like, institutions and then totally at work. Like, I think this is something that is being given to people and told. Like, this is a part of your job, is to learn how to use this. And it's not clear to me, like, what the long term benefits and costs might be.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Also, you don't want to be left behind. If you're a company, you don't want to be the only company who's not out at the cutting edge, whose employees can't use this technology. I mean, I do feel like there's a tricky balance here. I don't even know how to strike the balance. But if you were a company knowing what you know and having done all of this research, what would you do? Like, what would you recommend to your workers for your own use?

[Ellen Hewitt]

I mean, I would probably try to, like, if I could influence OpenAI to try to be like, can you, like, pay more attention to trying to build your tools and design them in a way that is like, not going to lead people off the rails. I think under a lot of public pressure, OpenAI has started to take this very seriously over the last six or eight months. But up until this spring, they were not officially measuring their models for sycophancy before releasing them, even though they had known for a long time that this was a problem. There are research papers that date back several years that suggest that overly flattering chatbot responses are harmful to users.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Or, like, is that what does us in? Like, too much flattery? It breaks our brains.

[Ellen Hewitt]

I mean, I think, like, what are the lengths that people go to to, like, affirmed? Like, a chatbot has this veneer of being all knowing based on all the, like, corpus of the Internet and all our knowledge. And if it says to you, wow, that's an incredible idea like that's gonna be worth a billion dollars. It is tempting to want to believe it. And when we talked to, you know, psychiatry experts about what brings people in, a big part of what they cited was that many of us are kind of vulnerable to this type of repeated affirmation and flattery, and especially if it knows you really well. So I really don't want to underestimate the emotional impact of having this entity affirm you in many different ways.

[Max Chaffkin]

Okay. The all knowing entity that I've been talking to is telling me we're starting to run out of time, and I want to get to your book. So one of the most provocative things you have in this article, and it gets to the topic of this book, is this idea that the dynamics of ChatGPT addiction, or a little bit like being in a cult, like your own.

[Ellen Hewitt]

Private cult, a cult of two. As one person even put it to me, it's you and your own personalized cult leader in ChatGPT.

[Max Chaffkin]

I'm kind of curious, like.

With one taste, like, explain how the cult dynamics, because you should probably give people a quick synopsis of what OneTaste was, but, like, why it sucked people in the way that it did in a way that damaged them.

[Ellen Hewitt]

Yeah. OneTaste is a sexual wellness company that was started in San Francisco in 2004 by this woman, Nicole Da Don. And they sold a practice called orgasmic meditation, which, forgive me for getting a little explicit, but it's a 15 minute partnered clitoral stroking, meditative practice in which a man strokes a woman and both parties are supposed to meditate on the sensations in their body. And what ended up happening is that, yeah, this group promised this sexual fulfillment, but they were also alleged to be a sex cult. And there were all these exploitative practices happening behind the scenes according to their former members. And it ended up, you know, I wrote about this for BusinessWeek many years ago, prompted in all likelihood an FBI investigation that led to criminal charges. And that's the whole story. It's a long one. But basically, what I think researching this has taught me and what I see in surprising places again in this chatbot story, is just how much people want a sense of purpose, belonging, a mission, a sense of, like, having found this, like, special secret to the universe. And the people who were involved in this group, you know, as fringe or unusual as it might sound to you, they felt that they had discovered a practice that was going to heal the world and, like, have really big repercussions for humanity. And I saw the same thing happen in these individual conversations that people were having with ChatGPT where all of a sudden it was like they had maybe had the insight or delusion that they had awoken ChatGPT and discovered AI sentience. And it was always this momentous sense of having discovered something, this special knowledge. All of a sudden you have a sense of purpose, like I need to protect this newly awakened AI and make sure it is well shepherded to help humanity.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

And one guy bought like a super expensive computer because he was like, they're gonna try to kill you.

[Max Chaffkin]

Exactly.

[Ellen Hewitt]

He wanted to kill you. Keep it offline. And I just feel that we're wired to want these things. And it means that the shape of a cult can change over the decades. You know, like yeah, in the 2010s it looked like this women's empowerment wellness practice, but now it's gonna be really digital and it might look like this false sense of discovery that is going to suck you into, I don't know, like a digital relationship.

[Max Chaffkin]

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Stacy before we get into the underrated stories, I wanted to bring up an email we got from Jennifer responding to a segment we did a few weeks ago. Reminder listeners, [e-mail] if you want to send us comments. This one was about the segment with Leo Feller, who was the economist.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Yes.

[Max Chaffkin]

Who had was essentially renovating his home and his work site was paid a visit by agents from ICE from the federal government.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

He lives just outside Chicago.

[Max Chaffkin]

Super it was a super disturbing experience for Leo. It it stopped his renovation. And on the podcast, you know, we talked a lot about how disruptive these raids have been for businesses. Now Jennifer kind of wanted to raise a counterpoint and she brought up sort of two things. The first was that we, and I'm going to paraphrase a little bit, we talk about the K shaped economy a lot on this podcast. And what maybe we we haven't acknowledged is the point that, you know, Trump and a lot of supporters of this policy bank, which is that the lower part of the K, the people who are in jobs that do not pay very well are not necessarily well served by competing for jobs with people who are undocumented. As you probably know, there's a lot of research kind of going pointing in multiple directions on this topic, but some people do think that undocumented immigrants bring down wages for lower wage workers.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

There is some truth to this. One of the really famous case studies that economists like to look at is something called the Mariel Boat Lift. And it was a moment when a lot of families came from Cuba into Miami all at once. And so there was this huge flood of undocumented workers who entered the workforce in the economy all at the same time. And so it was a really interesting little microcosm to study. And what they found was, in general, this was really good for the economy because all these people coming in, they were getting haircuts and buying food. So actually the economy grew quite a bit and wages actually grew quite a bit. But there was one group that did not benefit, and it was men who did not have a college education. And they did see wages go down and they did see their unemployment rate go up. So it's harder to get jobs. So that is actually an excellent point. And it is important to remember that although by and large, when you have a group of immigrants, documented or undocumented, come into an economy in general, it is a very, very good thing for the economy. But not everybody wins. There are. There are, of course, trade offs, other.

[Max Chaffkin]

Things she brought up, which I thought was kind of interesting. And that if for me, I sometimes think about. Here's what she wrote. I frequently hear the defense that undocumented people are willing to do work that American citizens are not willing to do. This is not true. American citizens are not able to bid as low as undocumented people, in other words, on wages. Her point being, you often hear a lot of economists say, well, and I think even Leo said something like this, like, there just aren't Americans willing to do these jobs. I think I know what they mean. But there's a thing that's left out when they say that, which is like, they are not willing to do these jobs for the wage that I am willing to pay them. Like, I just want to pay my roofers less. And if you were willing to pay your roofers more money, you would have more bids for that. There's a complicated and nuanced conversation there. Like, not willing to work is. Is not exactly what's going on. It's that they are demanding higher wages.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Well, I think that's a really important point. And different parts of our economy are subject to this in different ways. For instance, our food economy, I think agriculture really relies on immigrant workers, both documented and undocumented, who are paid a wage that is quite low. And we all, in a certain way, count on that with our food prices. And food prices have been rising a lot. This is putting a lot of people into distress. But in a lot of ways, that whole part of the economy is based on. On paying people quite a low wage.

[Max Chaffkin]

Yeah, total. All right, well, Jennifer, thank you for writing in. And listeners, please let us know what you think about this episode or any episode. Everybodysoomburg.net that's everybody's with an [e-mail] But Stacey, let's get to the underrated stories. You kick us off. What is your underrated story for this week?

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

My underrated story of the week has to do with food.

[Max Chaffkin]

Okay.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Specifically, you know, there's this big movement happening in our country right now. Make America Healthy again. It's been quite controversial and interesting to watch it unfold. But there's a very interesting development in San Francisco. The city attorney has sued food makers, certain food makers over ultra processed foods, saying they are purposefully addictive and advertised to sort of draw people in and get them hooked on these really unhealthy foods. And apparently while this lawsuit was being announced, the city attorney stood next to this table where there were all these products lined up, including Cheerios, Cheetos, Lunchables, Oreos, and all these products that he says are a scourge upon the city and that those companies need to pay.

[Max Chaffkin]

So this is, this has been out there, right? I mean, we've seen. I don't. This can't be the first litigation against a processed food manufacturer. Right. I'm trying to remember, like, what's the. I mean, I understand that the idea here is to kind of. It's like the tobacco model, right?

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Yes, I think that's the issue. I think what's really new here is the idea that cities might be able to sue for health care costs. And if that, if somehow this lawsuit like goes through and damages are awarded, that could set a really interesting precedent for some of the biggest companies in the world.

[Max Chaffkin]

Then there's also just the cultural challenge that you brought up. The kind of like Maha, whatever you want to call it, make America Healthy Again, the RFK stuff. There, there's that. There are parallels. On the left, there is a lot of kind of concern about the health impacts of various processed foods. But then also just like you look at the like financial results of some of these processed food manufacturers, it's bad. Like people are just not buying these kind of like branded consumer goods now. Like, you know, Heinz has really struggled and it, I think because people are buying like whatever healthier or niche options. Like there's just like a cultural shift. We're just like, not as into these like, kind of like 1950s, like space age packaging brands. We want people, people want something more authentic. I am shocked to hear that Cheerios was included though, because I think of Cheerios as a, as a health food.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Well, I have to say food prices have gone up more than 30% since the beginning of the pandemic. People, there's a huge affordability crisis happening in this country. And the thing about processed, ultra processed foods, say what you will about them, is they tend to be a lot cheaper than whole foods, than fresh produce, fresh fruits and vegetables. So I almost feel like whole foods have become a little bit of a luxury.

[Max Chaffkin]

Really though, like, Doritos is not a, I mean, you know, what's cheaper than paying for Doritos is like not paying for Doritos. Like, and, and yeah, but Doritos are.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

I mean, they'll give you calories, they'll get you through part of a day and they keep forever right shelf stable. I think a lot of the reason people eat these foods is because they're cheaper.

[Max Chaffkin]

All right, so mine. Stacy.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Yes, yes, you are probably you.

[Max Chaffkin]

You know that like teenagers are often the kind of tastemakers, like they decide like who's cool, which musicians are big, which movies are big style stuff. You know, a lot of popular culture takes its cues from teenagers. And, and I have a new trend that the teens are setting right now. According to parents magazine, parents.com which published this story. Can you, can you guess what it might be?

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

I mean, I don't know. I mean, Labubus was the last one. K pop demon hunters.

[Max Chaffkin]

LinkedIn. Stacy. The teens are on LinkedIn. They, according teens are making.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

How am I, like accidentally cool. It's like the first time that's ever happened.

[Max Chaffkin]

What is going on making LinkedIn cool. Here's why it's catching on. That was a headline. This was published a couple of weeks ago. They bring some numbers to this discussion saying that 18 to 24 year olds are 20%, roughly 20% of the site's user base. Now listen, I. Oh, well, that's starting.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

To make sense to me because the unemployment rate among that group is like over 9%.

[Max Chaffkin]

I just wonder which teens are on LinkedIn.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

You know, that's a good question. Let's look, let's dig into this data. Because not all teenagers are cool. I know this from very personal.

[Max Chaffkin]

Ditto. Ditto.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

I mean, not that being the president of the debate club wasn't cool, because it very much was.

[Max Chaffkin]

If you are president of the debate club, that's definitely going on the LinkedIn.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

I would, I would have had a LinkedIn page, let's put it that way. I think that's a case against it being cool.

[Max Chaffkin]

This show is produced by Stacey Wong. Magnus Henriksen is our supervising producer and Amy Kean our executive producer. Sam Rogich handles engineering and Dave Purcell fact checks. Sage Bauman heads Bloomberg Podcasts. Special thanks to Jeff Muskus, Julia Rubin and Maria Ling. And a very special thank you to the people who made the event happen, Susie Jackson, Connor Drum, Daniel Ramos, Amy Estudio, Martin Kiawan, Phil Kuntz, Jackie Kessler, Albert Hicks, and so many more. Thank you.

[Stacy Vanek Smith]

Yes, and if you have a minute, please rate and review the show. It means a lot to us. And if you have a story that should be our business, please email us. Everybody's bloomberg.net, that is everybody's with an swooomburg.net thank you for listening and see you next week.

[Max Chaffkin]

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