Tristan Harris

Share that information with me.

It doesn't steer you back into regular relationships.

And there's so many subtle qualities to this because you're talking to this agent, this AI, that seems to be an oracle.

It seems to know everything about everything.

So you project this kind of wisdom and authority to this AI because it seems to know everything about everything.

And that creates this sort of – what happens in therapy rooms, people get kind of an idealized projection of the therapist.

The therapist becomes this special figure.

Right.

And it's because you're playing with this very subtle dynamic of attachment.

And I think that there are ways of doing AI therapy bots that don't involve, hey, share this information with me and have this be an intimate place to give advice.

And it's anthropomorphized so the AI says, I really care about you.

Don't say that.

We can have narrow AI therapists that are doing things like cognitive behavioral therapy or asking you to do an imagination exercise or steering you back into deeper relationships with your family or your actual therapist, rather than AI that wants to deepen your relationship with an imaginary person that's not real, in which more of your self-esteem and more of your self-worth, you start to care when the AI says, oh, that sounds like a great day.

And it's distorting how people construct their identity.

OpenAI's investor, Jeff Lewis, actually.

Jeff Lewis, yeah.

He fell into a psychological delusion spiral where... And by the way, Stephen, I...

I get about 10 emails a week from people who basically believe that their AI is conscious, that they've discovered a spiritual entity, and that that AI works with them to co-write like an appeal to me to say, hey, Tristan, we figured out how to solve AI alignment.

Would you help us?

I'm here to advocate for giving these AIs rights.