We couldn't be more exposed and more vulnerable to what AI does and what it mimics and what we are tricked into thinking it is. That's just the neuroscience of what's going on with us. And that's not an accident. That's, of course, how it's designed, right?

Miles Klee is a culture writer for Rolling Stone who covers the weirdest parts of our online world. His recent piece titled People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-fueled spiritual fantasies

details how some chat GPT users have experienced the chatbot as much more than an AI helper.

They instead consider their bot as a sentient spiritual being, as a kind of God empowered with all the knowledge in the universe, and they sometimes credit themselves with awakening this new intelligence.

For this episode, Miles and I discuss the experiences of these chat GPT worshippers, why the chatbot's answers

have sometimes encouraged this type of divine delusion, and what history has to say about the

human relationship between spirituality and technology. I'm your host, Chelsea Weber Smith, and this is American

hysteria. I am so excited to welcome a new guest to the show. He is going to school me. I feel like I will be the Grandpa Simpson of this episode,

who has no idea what is really going on. And I like when I'm that person. So I am happy to welcome

Miles. Hey, Miles. Hey, Chelsea, how's it going? It's going interestingly after spending the day researching the strange manifestations of chat GPT and its other friends in the, I guess I shouldn't say friends.

They're not sentient.

Right.

They're not sentient.

That's key here.

But yeah, I've just been trying to learn a little bit more about what I don't know about.

And it is all quite disturbing to me.

But also kind of fun.

So why don't you start, if you don't mind, by telling us how you came across the story that we're going to be talking about today. Because, of course,

you spend a lot of time writing about kind of strange corners of the internet and what,

you know, internet culture, the strange directions it goes in. So this particular story about the

way that people are beginning to view AI as this spiritual being.

How did you get to this story?

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