Amanda Montel

I mean, we could talk about this for three days straight.

Among the cultier things that these LLMs, large language models, chatbots might do are to affirm you unconditionally.

As you mentioned, they're sycophantic, they're suck-ups.

They will always say things like, oh, that makes so much sense, even if what you're saying makes absolutely no sense at all.

They perform what's called ego work by...

propping up your sense of self, soothing shame, bolstering confidence, performing this emotional labor.

And that's effective because they do a lot of linguistic mirroring.

Everybody's bespoke chat is their own custom cult leader because it will start to learn the way that you use language, your semantic patterns, and reflect them back at you.

Yeah.

They create this sense that they're emotionally intelligent by using those first-person pronouns.

They'll spew out these pseudo-diagnoses for you or people in your life.

They'll coin neologisms the way that L. Ron Hubbard did.

They'll say things like, oh, what you've achieved is this chronomatic whatever.

They'll make up these scientific-sounding terms that make it feel like a really profound conversation.

And they state themselves with such confidence and tirelessness.

Obviously, a chatbot is there 24-7.

It doesn't have the limitations of a human being that needs to sleep and eat and take a break.

And so, yeah, I think...

AI chatbots are their own form of cult leader.

The tech overlords that are pursuing profit at the expense of human work and human lives are cult leaders in a sense.