Dear reader, my deepest gratitude for lending me a few minutes of your precious time.

As always, I will keep it short.

How did I find myself wobbling into these deep waters?

Well, my interest got piqued by two seemingly unrelated phenomena; one new (AI hallucinations) and the other ancient (the eschatological ‘great delusion’ mentioned in the Bible).

In this piece, under the guidance of the fundamentals of Psychology and Psychiatry, I will try to demonstrate that we are living at a time when “reality” is at its most fragile in world history.

AI hallucinations

The simplistic phrase “when artificial intelligence lies” is a somewhat amble summary of this disturbing phenomenon. Various scenarios are replete in all forms of media of AI confidently giving out made-up responses and stating them as fact.

One such example is the story of a lawyer who used AI to construct a legal argument and submitted it to court without doing due diligence. It turns out some of the cases in the paper were non-existent.

As a writer, I shudder to imagine a day when AI would lay claim to some of my work. Dear gentle readers, if you ever hear any AI program saying it wrote any of my pieces, please know that it will be hallucinating (wink wink).

Dear students, please write your essays de novo. Do not use AI to do your assignments. When you get caught, do not say, “The bot is hallucinating. It did not write that. I did.” I am not giving you any ideas (another wink).

Alternative names for AI hallucinations I have found (there might be more) are AI delusions, AI confabulations and AI fabrications. They all seem to refer to the same thing.

However, from a strict Psychological viewpoint, delusions and hallucinations are not similar.

DELUSION vs HALLUCINATION

In Psychology, a delusion is an error in a person’s thought content whereby they hold a fixed and false belief despite evidence that proves the contrary. For example, one may unshakeably believe that a foreign government spy agency wants to kill them (paranoid delusion) or that they are the king of an entire continent (grandiose delusion).

On the other hand, a hallucination is an error in a person’s perception whereby one of their senses (sight, smell, hearing, et cetera) produces a false output but with no input (external stimulus). For example, the sense of hearing might generate a voice with no one talking (auditory hallucinations) or the sense of sight might project images but with no object in reality (visual hallucinations).

In summary, a delusion is a flaw in what a person is thinking (thought content). A hallucination is an aberration of the sensory interpretation of the world (perception). The presence of delusions and or hallucinations is what is called PSYCHOSIS.

REALITY vs PSYCHOSIS

Another way to define psychosis is simply as “loss of touch with reality”.

Two crucial questions arise: what shapes our reality, and who defines the baseline of reality i.e. who decides what is real (the truth) and what is not (a lie)?

Ultimately, the answers to these questions are simple.

Our reality is an amalgamation of the information we consume and the belief systems we subscribe to. I am sure my gentle reader can agree that these elements are prone to manipulation in the contemporary world of AI, virtual reality, infodemics and propaganda.

In other words, one of the most dangerous side effects of rapidly evolving technology is the exponential fragility of our reality. I will not even begin to discuss the existential danger of “mass psychosis”.

The ‘great delusion.’

I wish to conclude by divulging a brain worm that has terrorised me for years.

The Bible talks of a ‘great delusion’ that will arise in the twilight years of world history:

“And for this reason, God will send them strong delusion that they should believe the lie.” – 2 Thessalonians 2: 11 (NKJV)

In other words, Science and the Bible intersect when identifying a rapid shift in reality (mass psychosis) as an empirical sign of societal collapse.

As a species, we should wake up, sit down and get sober. We are moving too fast towards the precipice.