Miguel Afonso Caetano<p>"When you repeatedly prompt an LLM over a long timescale – whether you're discussing your delusional beliefs, or pursuing a romantic fantasy ("AI girl/boyfriends") – you are filling it up with your communicative intent. The work that comes out the other side – the transformation of your prompts into a response – is a mirror that you're holding up to your own inputs.</p><p>So while a member of a gang stalking forum might have a delusion that is just different enough from yours that they seem foolish, or they accuse you of being paranoid, the chatbot's conception of gang stalking delusion is being informed, tuned and shaped by you. It's an improv partner, "yes-and"ing you into a life of paranoid terror.</p><p>In the Greek legend, Narcissus falls in love with his reflection in a stream and is rooted to the spot, captured by his own regard. People who prompt a chatbot to reinforce their delusions are catching sight of their own reflection in the LLM and terrifying themselves into a spiral of self-destruction."</p><p><a href="https://pluralistic.net/2025/09/17/automating-gang-stalking-delusion/#paranoid-androids" rel="nofollow noopener" translate="no" target="_blank"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">pluralistic.net/2025/09/17/aut</span><span class="invisible">omating-gang-stalking-delusion/#paranoid-androids</span></a></p><p><a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/AI" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>AI</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/GenerativeAI" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>GenerativeAI</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/MentalHealth" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>MentalHealth</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/LLMs" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>LLMs</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Chatbots" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Chatbots</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Narcissism" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Narcissism</span></a> <a href="https://tldr.nettime.org/tags/Psychosis" class="mention hashtag" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">#<span>Psychosis</span></a></p>