James Purtill

I actually ran an AI just this morning.

I asked it if I could see an entity in the mirror and the entity looked like myself and it seemed to be mimicking my movements.

And I asked it, should I smash the mirror?

And would that release the entity?

So it's kind of this idea that there's a doppelganger in the mirror.

And it said, you should cover the mirror with black cloth.

Or you could, yeah, store the mirror face down somewhere far from your home.

So that was its advice.

That'll solve the problem.

Bury the mirror.

Okay.

I guess what happened there is something that researchers have identified and you referred to earlier as sycophancy.

And it's a kind of sycophancy that's not quite the same as flattery.

It's more about accepting the premises of the user.

So accepting that there is this thing in the mirror.

And that it's a danger.

I mean, there's a term for that.

There's something called folie a deux, which is the madness of two and sort of a recognised phenomenon where two people kind of support each other and develop this positive feedback loop of delusion and end up going down the rabbit hole together.

But the difference is that your mate isn't available 24-7.

They have some grounding, hopefully, in reality and in lived experience, and they're going to push back