[Linkpost] “LLM-induced craziness and base rates” by Kaj_Sotala

One billion people use chatbots on a weekly basis. That's 1 in every 8 people on Earth.

How many people have mental health issues that cause them to develop religious delusions of grandeur? We don’t have much to go on here, so let's do a very very rough guess with very flimsy data. This study says “approximately 25%-39% of patients with schizophrenia and 15%-22% of those with mania / bipolar have religious delusions.” 40 million people have bipolar disorder and 24 million have schizophrenia, so anywhere from 12-18 million people are especially susceptible to religious delusions. There are probably other disorders that cause religious delusions I’m missing, so I’ll stick to 18 million people. 8 billion people divided by 18 million equals 444, so 1 in every 444 people are highly prone to religious delusions. [...]

If one billion people are using chatbots weekly, and [...]

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First published:

July 14th, 2025

Source:

https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/WSMvEMuiZoK5Evggq/llm-induced-craziness-and-base-rates

Linkpost URL:
https://andymasley.substack.com/p/stories-of-ai-turning-users-delusional

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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