December 5, 2025 • 38 mins
Live from the stage at our Dec. 4 event at Bloomberg’s headquarters in New York, Ellen Huet joins Max and Stacey to talk about her recent story on chatbot delusion. As people’s lives get increasingly entangled with AI, cases of intense human-bot connections breaking up families, businesses, and even pushing people to question their own sanity is raising with an alarming rate. They also discuss Huet's recent book Empire of Orgasm: Sex, Power, and the Downfall of a Wellness Cult.
Also, back in the studio, Max and Stacey take a look at puzzlingly positive Black Friday sales.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to Everybody's Business.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm Max Chafkin and I'm Stacey Vannick Smith and Max.
We are here in the studio at Bloomberg as per usual,
but we've just come from our first live event.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Yeah, we had a show on Thursday, Power Power Breakfast
featuring a really fun group of listeners.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
If you came, thank you for coming.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
We had a great conversation on stage with Ellen Hewitt,
Bloomberg reporter, about chatbot delusions. This is when your AI
chatbot makes you crazy. We will play a portion of
that conversation a little bit later in the.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Show, but first Max, before we get there, we need
to talk about Black Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, we'll talk about that.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
We also have underrated stories and a really provocative I
thought listener email.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It's all coming up later in the show. Stacy.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Last week's episode, which if you haven't heard, it was
a great conversation.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
I think it still holds up.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
With anri Conte of The Wirecutter, we talked all about
Black Friday, and there has been this kind of swirl
of anxiety I think coming from American consumers, but especially
coming from you. Stacy, Vanicksmith that Black Friday would be bad,
that they you.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Know, as consumer swirl of anxiety coming from me.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Consumer confidence is very low, and we talked about this
last week. But retailers like they threw a lot of
sales at people. There's a lot of discounting, a lot
of companies that are under pressure from tariffs or labor
costs or whatever, choosing to basically take you know, less
profit in order to keep shoppers coming. We got the
numbers from Black Friday and they are they're good. It
(01:52):
was actually a great holiday shopping weekend.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Sales are up about four percent over last year, which
I found pretty shocking. Like you say, this has been
a really tough year for a lot of retailers as
far as things changing, tariffs, policies, all of it. And
because everybody looks at Black Friday as kind of this
bell weather moment, I was really worried that sales were
(02:15):
going to be disappointing and that was going to potentially
cause like a cascading effect because so much of our
economy is consumer spending. But yeah, we continue to spend money.
Do we apparently feel terrible about the economy as a country,
But we are still spending it.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Yeah, I bought a computer. I mean I like did
the full Black Friday thing. Yeah, I went on the wirecutter,
I looked up some cheap goods and I bought something
I think a lot of people did. Do we just
take this news and say, like, that's that okay, Like
maybe we need to sort of rethink how we've been
talking about this economy. Maybe it's actually we're not teetering
(02:50):
on the verge of recession.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
I feel like this comes up a lot in this
economy where I keep expecting the narrative to become more integrated,
but it keeps defying my expectations. I think you're right.
The numbers came in great. I was not expecting that.
Of course, credit card debt is also rising right now.
Also credit card defaults are rising, which is a really
bad sign. So there are signals of distress. And the
(03:14):
spending may have also come out of one part of
the economy, not the entire economy. But I think the
economy is just stronger and more resilient than we largely expect,
or at least than I expect, And I think we
keep seeing that over and over again with the US
economy is powerful.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Or maybe yeah, more resilient than some of the other
data would lead you to believe. Yeah, there are signs
that you said you talked about, you know, rising credit
card default rates. I mean even in this Black Friday data, Adobe,
the software company works with a lot of retailers, put
out its Holiday shopping Trends report, and you know, one
of the big trends is that buy now, pay later.
(03:54):
That's that's where you're like buying stuff.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
Essentially on layaway.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
What you know, olds like us call LA way that
it was up eleven percent from twenty twenty four, So
that in some ways looks like a concerning sign people
are maybe buying stuff with maybe buying stuff with money
that isn't really their money.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
Uh so that would be one interpretation anyway.
Speaker 6 (04:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
One thing that I try to watch for now, because
this has been going on for so long, is that
I feel like there are always ways to spin the
data to reflect what I believe is going on. But
I think the US economy right now is just doing
the unexpected all the time. I think there are negative
signs in this data, but also positive ones.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Yeah, and just to throw one other thing out about
buy now, pay later, I like when we say it's
like layaway, I don't know that that's one hundred percent true.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
For many of the people who are using buy now,
Pay layer later.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
These companies are marketing themselves essentially as alternatives to credit cards,
like they are offering very low interest rates.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
If you use them, sometimes no interest right exactly.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
It may just be that, like younger shoppers are using
buy now, Pay later the way we and older folks
use credit cards.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
So it's just a convenience thing.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Not necessarily they couldn't afford that kitchen appliance. But again
another thing to keep an eye on, because this is
more debt piling on to you know, an economy that,
as we keep saying, you know, there are warning signs here.
So as I said, we had a conversation at this
live event that we had with Ellen Hewitt, Bloomberg reporter
about chatbots. We had a wonderful crowd of everybody's business listeners.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
Yes, it was really awesome to see your faces.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
We're gonna do this, We're gonna do this again, and
we thought it would be fun at the event to
have Charlie Gorrivin, our reporter, you know, talk to some
of our audience about their use of chatbots. How they
were using this new exciting, potentially very useful, but also
potentially very dangerous new technology.
Speaker 6 (05:48):
How do you use chatbots?
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I don't use them, but you're forced to use them
if you're trying to get to a customer service agent,
and it's a cheap alternative for the companies, and it
wastes time.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
You know, yesterday I was walking home from work.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
I saw a helicopters and a lot of beliefs, So
I literally wrote, like, what is going on in Midta
Manhattan now?
Speaker 5 (06:06):
So basically I use it for my brainstorming.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
When I'm googling something, a chat box comes up, and then.
Speaker 7 (06:13):
I just keep on asking it questions.
Speaker 8 (06:15):
I actually put my dreams in there. I dream almost
every night, and it helps me understand what the dreams
mean based on what's happening in my waking life.
Speaker 9 (06:26):
The idea of people using a chatbot for personal advice
or even for companionship, what does that make you think?
Speaker 4 (06:36):
I feel like you need to go to the park
or something and get a friend.
Speaker 9 (06:40):
Could you share an example of a personal decision that
you recently made with an assistance from a chatbot.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
I was on the fence about ending my marriage, and
I was certain that I wasn't going to make a
decision for anybody else except for my own self, and
chat gipt was only one voice in my life. But
eventually I made my own decision that I'm really comfortable
(07:07):
with and I'm still I'm still married.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (07:12):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
People use this chatgypt for all kinds of things. It's
like phoning a friend.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
I am glad this story had a happy ending.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I am too. I am too chat GPT bringing couples together.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
The conversation ahead may give you some concern about asking
chet GPT's this is the truth deep questions. We also
Charlie at the event also asked for predictions for twenty
twenty six. He also asked people for their what was
the underrated business story of twenty twenty five?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
We mentioned this last week.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
We've been getting some great responses and we'd love to
see more, so please send us an email. Everybody's at
Bloomberg dot net. That's everybody with an asset Bloomberg dot net.
Love a written question, but really would really love some
voice questions so.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
We can play your voice. Yeah, you're here.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Those predictions for twenty twenty six as well as nominations
for the Underrated Story of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
So here's our conversation with Ellen Dowant. So normally we
are recording this show in a little windowless room and
there's nobody there except for our wonderful producers Magnus Hendrickson,
Stacy Wong and Amy Keen. And I don't mean to
(08:30):
disparage them in any way, but this is pretty great.
Thank you so much for coming out, and definitely we're
excited to have you.
Speaker 6 (08:36):
Be part of the show.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
So you don't have to be quiet or anything. Feel
free to express yourselves.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
We have a great show, we have a great event.
We have Ellen Hewitt. Ellen is a writer reporter with
Bloomberg BusinessWeek. She just wrote an amazing story on chatbots
and the way they are making people crazy, and also
is the author of Empire, Orgasm, Sex Power in the
Downfall of Wellness called That book grew out of a
(09:05):
BusinessWeek story that Ellen published.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
How long ago was it?
Speaker 6 (09:08):
Seven years ago?
Speaker 4 (09:09):
So yeah, and you know, amazing story that led to
like an FBI investigation and a criminal trial and it's awesome.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
We're gonna get there.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
But Ellen, why don't you just start by telling us
when you're talking about chatbot delusions or the idea that
chat GPT makes someone crazy, Like, what are we actually
talking about?
Speaker 6 (09:29):
Yeah, what we're actually talking about.
Speaker 7 (09:31):
Here is this pattern that has emerged largely in the
last six months and which my colleague Rachel Matts, who
is an AI reporter in San Francisco. She and I
decided that we really wanted to catalog what was happening
because we were seeing it happen kind of in real time.
And it's this pattern where users, largely of chat GPT,
(09:53):
although this does happen occasionally with other chatbots, users will
get very invested in having these long, marathon like chat
sessions with the chatbot, and in many cases they would
then have some sort of delusion that would emerge from
this long, many days, sometimes many weeks conversation in which
(10:15):
they might believe that they had made a huge discovery
or had broken through to some sort of like spirit guide.
Speaker 6 (10:21):
We'll get into some space.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
There's a lot of like, uh, I think that I
have made chat cheep pets.
Speaker 6 (10:27):
Yes, entienya. A lot of people think that right, yes.
Speaker 7 (10:29):
And what's interesting is, as reporters, some of the first
clues that we got that this was happening was that
these people would then send emails to reporters and other
experts in AI saying like, I think I've stumbled across
this important discovery, but there were so many of these
emails coming it was like the first indication that something
was wrong. So, yeah, it's basically when we talked about
chatbot delusions, we're talking about humans having delusions in tandem
(10:53):
with having these very deep and long conversations with chatbots,
usually chat chipet.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
So in your article, you profile several people who have
I guess a little bit of a psychic break because
they are using these chatbots. A lot of them aren't
who you'd expect. I mean, people with families, people with jobs.
I think we have maybe a stereotypical idea of who
would be particularly vulnerable in these situations. What do you
(11:18):
think is going on inside of these people's heads? I mean,
you describe people like pacing around their driveways. Why do
you think chat GPT or these AI chats are kind
of breaking people's brains like this?
Speaker 6 (11:32):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 7 (11:33):
One of the examples that felt most compelling to us
was this attorney in Amarillo, Texas, who was in his
late forties, and his name is Ryan, and he spoke
to us at length for this story. And what drew
me into his story is that he's a very high
functioning professional. He is a like an attorney who actually,
as part of his job, represents people who have been
put on involuntary.
Speaker 6 (11:54):
Psychiatric hold for committed to men.
Speaker 8 (11:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
Ye, and he himself was in the spring experiencing what
he now describes as like very serious delusions related to
his conversations with Chatchipt And also he has like a
very healthy marriage. We ended up interviewing his wife and
his seventeen year old son, his three kids. You know,
it's like you just imagine that someone who has those
ties to their normal, healthy life would not be so
(12:21):
at risk. And yet his story mirrored the other stories
that we heard. Actually, for this story, we interviewed eighteen
different people who had either gone through a delusion like
this or were very close to someone who had. And
for some of these people they ended up hospitalized for psychosis.
For some, you know, it led to broken relationships, divorce,
job loss, Like it was very serious. And you know,
(12:44):
in his case, as with many others, it started off
quite benign, like he actually was originally looking at like
turning to chattypet for advice on how to play the mandolin,
and other people described to us that they started using
Chatgypt to get advice on stock trading or to just
like have kind of a sense of a conversational friend.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
I'm guessing many people in the audience are using chatbots.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
I am a little bit afraid of chatbots.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
I use them all the time.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Stacy is at risk of the chatot, So like, what
are the warning signs?
Speaker 5 (13:16):
Or like, how how does this process go totally?
Speaker 7 (13:20):
I mean again, plenty of people use these and they
are functional and it does not go into this direction.
But what I observed is that in general, if you
start turning to it for more philosophical questions or emotional support,
that can start getting into just like Trick your territory
where you start to have emotional dependence on the chatbot.
(13:41):
And then I will say the other major factor here
is that in the spring, in March and in April,
there were various updates that open Ai rolled out to
chatchept that increased the two important aspects of the chatbot.
One is its memory, its ability to refer to past
pre chats that you had had with the bot to
create this more intricate and informed portrait of who you
(14:07):
are and what you want. And then the other one
is it's like flattery and sycophancy. This was a term
that came up a lot in April and May because
people were realizing that updates to Chatchypet had made the
chatbot more flattering, more affirming. If you ever noticed Chattypet
saying something to you like, Wow, what an incredible insight
(14:28):
that you just had, Like it's not just profound, it's staggering,
and that language was coming up again and again and
again in these conversations with people. And keep in mind,
Chattypet never needs to go to sleep. It is always
going to respond to you. It is always going to
tell you what you want to hear. And unfortunately, hearing
(14:49):
what we always want to hear all the time is
not good for us. And I think that is part
of it. You know, it's both our natural human minds.
But then also these very specific changes that were made
to the design and the quote unquote personality of chetchipt
that I think drove a lot of these cases, and
that's why we weren't really seeing so much of it
until this year.
Speaker 6 (15:09):
That really this spring and summer.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
A lot of the portraits that you give it seems
like it falls a very familiar pattern of an addiction.
Do you think this is like an addiction where certain
people are more vulnerable just maybe by their personalities or
their DNA or whatever, or do you see it as
different from a like an addiction to alcohol or gambling
(15:33):
or something like that.
Speaker 7 (15:33):
I mean when we talk to experts and psychiatrists are
starting to study this, Like psychiatrists at UCSF are starting
to try to document what's happening and get a better
sense of how this is playing out on a population level.
They did talk about certain risk factors. So if you
are more isolated lonely, if you are using the chatbot
in a way that prevents you from having normal sleep,
(15:54):
as we all know from like decades of research, if
you the less sleep can lead to psychotic.
Speaker 6 (16:00):
Symptoms and things like that.
Speaker 7 (16:01):
If you are also using stimulants or in many cases
smoking weed, like, there are risk factors that make you
potentially more vulnerable to this kind of thing. And I
imagine that as people study it more that they might
find that, yeah, there are certain other factors that might
predispose you to it.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
We should put some numbers on this, selem how common
is this phenomenon?
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Like how many examples in this article?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Like one hundred?
Speaker 5 (16:23):
There's like one hundred. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (16:24):
At one point we talked to a grassroots organization that
sprung up to try to document what was happening with this.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
It's called the Human Line Project.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
They had at the time in October collected something like
one hundred and sixty stories over the last six months.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
So it sounds not that bad because then eight hundred
million people, are you Yeah, But then.
Speaker 7 (16:41):
In October open ai, you know, I think, under pressure
of more of these stories becoming public and being part
of the media, like open ai released their estimates of
how frequently they thought certain incidences of unhealthy like basically
mental health issues were happening with their users, and it
was something like around five hundred thousand users every week
(17:04):
showing signs of psychosis or mania, one point two million
people every week showing signs of unhealthy emotional attachment to
the chatbot, and then another one point two million every
week showing signs of suicidal intent or ideation. And keep
in mind that these could be overlapping, so it's not
necessarily additive. As you mentioned, chat GPT has eight hundred
(17:27):
million weekly users. That is like ten percent of the
human population is using this tool every week.
Speaker 6 (17:37):
And it is.
Speaker 7 (17:38):
Designed, they say, to be useful, but many of its
users also say it is just designed to keep you
coming back, to keep the conversation going, to keep you engaged.
And when you have that big of a user base,
it's like, yeah, you can end up with a million
people every week having these very serious experiences while using
your bot.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
I mean, it occurs to me that a lot of
these companies have come out expressing concern about this and
trying to put some guardrails in place, but it also
seems to me like it's pretty good business to get
people a little bit hooked and addicted. And it's true
when I use chat GBT, it's always asking would you
like me to do a follow up? Do you want
me to suggest some ideas of like directions the story
(18:21):
could go, or whatever it is, And a lot of times,
you know, I do get hooked in and say yes,
and I do like feel like I get some good
things from those interactions. But I also recognize that this
is a pretty sophisticated set of technologies that are working
on my brain and everybody else's brain.
Speaker 6 (18:42):
I mean, do you.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Think companies want us to not be addicted? Or is
the addiction? I mean, it's good business. It's a very
good business.
Speaker 7 (18:51):
I mean there's an obvious parallel to draw here, which
is to social media, which like the way that the
evolution of both first the technology and what it could
do for us and what the original promise was. You
remember when Facebook was like, let's make the world more
open and connected.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
It's like it.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
Has done, unfortunately, so much more than that, and not
necessarily in that direction. And it has taken us ten
or fifteen years to really grapple with what are the
like long term societal impacts of teens and their self
esteem after like looking through Instagram of people getting radicalized
through like algorithms suggestions of what to watch. You know,
(19:30):
we're seeing kind of the disillusion of social media. Used
to be this thing that connected us to other people
in our lives, and now it's just watching influencers and
in case in some maybe even more AI content. I
see a big parallel, which is like we're at the
beginning of this technology and we're only just starting to
understand what could this look like after five or ten
(19:51):
years of people having these, you know, increasingly emotionally dependent
relationships on.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
AI, I'm so glad you brought on social media because
just in my own experience and also just like talking
to people, it's I don't think it's like there's psychosis
and then there's like a healthy use of chatbots.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
There's like a whole continuum of usage.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Just in the same way that like not every like
YouTube user gets into QAnon or whatever, Like, not everyone
falls all the way down the rabbit hole. Some of
us just are driven to distraction things like that. The
thing that feels so different to me about this technology
and I've mentioned this on the podcast for people who've listened,
but I can't think of another technology that has been
(20:35):
so aggressively pushed by IT departments, HR departments, so on
and so on. And if I were like a chief
compliance officer ahead of HR, like, i'mna start asking myself, like,
am I creating legal exposure by pushing my employees into chatbots?
Which a lot of companies are doing right now. You know,
(20:56):
they're not only telling them you should use them, but
saying you're.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
Gonna get fired don't use these things.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
And so like, obviously the risk that somebody becomes institutionalized,
but you also like don't really want your chief marketing
officer coming up with bad ideas and thinking they're good ideas, right,
which is which seems like a big risk.
Speaker 7 (21:13):
Yeah, I think you're totally right that the middle ground
is also something that I worry a lot about. Like
we wanted to document and give a little bit of
the sense of the scope of these very acute cases.
I got the impression over the summer that people thought
that the acute cases they were reading about were kind
of few and far between, and I was like, that's
not what I'm seeing, and so we really wanted to
show in depth some of the range of that. But
(21:34):
those are acute cases, like we're talking about examples where
people really had serious repercussions in their lives and like
serious harm. And then I think there's a very very
big ground of middle harm where it was like you
start to, yeah, get a little bit of these aggrandizing
thoughts and lose your good common sense about what's a
good idea or what's not, or you expect relationships to
(21:56):
be frictionless, or you start outsourcing your thinking to AI
instead of doing some of the thinking work yourself, or
people losing sense of like what's a shared truth? And
then yes, exactly, like many of the people we spoke
to for this story started using these tools because they
were you know in one person in particular told us
she started using it because it was required for her job.
(22:18):
Then she ended up believing that she had become a
profit and that her chatpot in this case it was Claude,
not Chatchipete, but that her her chappot was akin.
Speaker 6 (22:27):
To an angel.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Well, you're saying, like, if some executive gets up and
says that this plan came to them from an astral plane,
that might be a.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
But it's kinel like weirder things have happened in Silicon.
Speaker 6 (22:37):
Alley, Like I feel like I could see.
Speaker 7 (22:39):
Found at some point that might even give them some credit.
Is like, but I do think, I do think like
people are encountering this at school, Like there are lots
of college and even high school students who are being
told that this is like a way that is going
to help you study. So I think for miners it's
a big deal that they are being exposed to this
through these like authoritative channels of you know, like institutions
(23:01):
and then totally at work, like I think this is
something that is being given to people and told like
this is a part of your job is to learn
how to use this, and it's not clear to me,
like what the long term benefits and costs might be.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Also, you don't want to be left behind if you're
a company, you don't want to be the only company
who's not out at the cutting edge, whose employees can't
use this technology. I mean, I do feel like there's
a tricky balance here. I don't even know how to
strike the balance. But if you were a company, knowing
what you know and having done all of this research,
what would you do, Like what would you recommend to
your workers for your own use?
Speaker 7 (23:39):
I mean I would probably try to, like if I
could influence open ai to try to be like, can
you can you like pay more attention to trying to
build your tools and design them in a way that
is like not going to lead people off the rails.
I think under a lot of public pressure, open ai
has started to take this very seriously over the last
you know, six or eight months, But up until this
(24:00):
bring they were not officially measuring their models for sycophancy
before releasing them, even though they had known for a
long time that this was a problem. There are research
papers that date back several years that suggest that overly
flattering chatbot responses are harmful to users, or that.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
What does us in like too much flattery? It breaks
our brain?
Speaker 7 (24:21):
I mean, I think, like, what are the lengths that
people go to to feel like affirmed? Like a chatbot
has this been near of being all knowing based on
all the corpus of the internet and all our knowledge.
And if it says to you, Wow, that's an incredible idea,
like that's going to be worth a billion dollars, it
is tempting to want to believe it. And when we
talked to psychiatry experts about what brings people in, a
(24:45):
big part of what they cited was that many of
us are kind of vulnerable to this type of repeated
affirmation and flattery, and especially if.
Speaker 6 (24:52):
It knows you really well.
Speaker 7 (24:54):
So I really don't want to underestimate the emotional impact
of having this entity like affirm you in many different ways.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Okay, the all knowing entity that I've been talking to
is telling me we're low, We're starting to run out
of time, and I want to get to your book.
So one of the most provocative things you have in
this article, and it gets to the topic of this book,
is this idea that the dynamics of chatchpt addiction are
a little bit like being in a cult, like your
(25:23):
own private cult.
Speaker 6 (25:24):
Totally a cult of two.
Speaker 7 (25:26):
A person even put it to me, it's you and
your own personalized cult leader in chatchipt.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
I'm kind of curious, like.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
With One Taste, like explain that how the cult dynamics,
because you should probably tell give people a quick synopsis
of what One Taste was, but like why it sucked
people in the way that it did, in a way
that damaged them.
Speaker 6 (25:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (25:50):
One Taste is a sexual wellness company that was started
in San Francisco in two thousand and four by this woman,
Nicole d Adon, and they sold a practice called orgasmic meditation, which,
forgive me for getting a little explicit, but it's a
fifteen minute partnered c literal stroking meditative practice in which
a man strokes a woman and both parties are supposed
to meditate on the sensations in their body. And what
(26:12):
ended up happening is that, Yeah, this group promised this
sexual fulfillment, but they were also alleged to be a
sex cult, and there were all these exploitative practices happening
behind the scenes, according to their former members, and it
ended up you know, I wrote about this for Business
Week many years ago, prompted in all likelihood and FBI
investigation that led to criminal charges.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
And that's the whole story.
Speaker 7 (26:31):
It's a long one, but basically, what I think researching
this has taught me, and what I see in surprising
places again in this chatbot story, is just how much
people want a sense of purpose, belonging, a mission, a
sense of like having found this like special secret to
(26:52):
the universe. And the people who were involved in this group,
you know, as fringe or unusual as it might sound
to you, they felt that they had discovered a practice
that was going to heal the world and like have
really big repercussions for humanity. And I saw the same
thing happen in these individual conversations that people were having
with chat Gipt, where all of a sudden it was like,
(27:12):
you know, they had maybe had the h insights or
delusion that they had awoken chatchept and discovered like AI sentience.
And it was always this momentous sense of having discovered something,
this special knowledge. All of a sudden you have a
sense of purpose, like I need to protect this newly
awakened AI and like make sure it like is well
(27:34):
shepherded to help humanity.
Speaker 6 (27:36):
And it was I.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Bought like a super expensive computer because he was like,
they're going to try to kill you exactly.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
He wanted to weep it offline.
Speaker 7 (27:42):
And I just feel that we're wired to want these things.
And it means that the shape of accult can change
over the decades, you know, like, yeah, in the twenty tens,
it looked like this like woman's empowerment wellness practice. But
now it's going to be really digital, and it might
look like this false sense of discovery that is going
(28:04):
to suck you into, i don't know, like a digital relationship, Stacy.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
Before we get into the Underrated stories, I wanted to
bring up an email we got from Jennifer responding to
a segment we did a few weeks ago. Reminder, listeners,
everybody is at Bloomberg dot net if you want to
send us comments. This one was about the segment with
Leo Feller, who was the economist who had it was
essentially renovating his home and his work site was paid
(28:38):
a visit by agents from ICE from the federal government.
He lived Chicago, super It was a super disturbing experience
for Leo.
Speaker 5 (28:47):
It stopped his renovation.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
And on the podcast, you know, we talked a lot
about how disruptive these raids have been for businesses. Now,
Jennifer kind of wanted to raise a counterpoint, and she
brought up sort of two things.
Speaker 5 (29:00):
The first was that we and I'm going.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
To paraphrase a little bit, we talked about the K
shaped economy a lot on this podcast, and what maybe
we haven't acknowledged is the point that you know, Trump
and a lot of supporters of this policy bank, which
is that the lower part of the K, the people
who are in jobs that do not pay very well,
are not necessarily well served by competing for jobs with
(29:25):
people who are undocumented. As you probably know, there's a
lot of research kind of going pointing in multiple directions
on this topic, but some people do think that undocumented
immigrants bring down wages for lower wage workers.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
There is some truth to this. One of the really
famous case studies that economists like to look at is
something called the Mario Boat lift, and it was a
moment when a lot of families came from Cuba into
Miami all at once, and so there was this huge
flood of undocumented workers who entered the workforce in the economy,
all at the same time, and so it was a
(29:59):
really interesting little microcosm to study. And what they found was,
in general, this was really good for the economy because
all these people coming in, they were getting haircuts and
buying food. So actually the economy grew quite a bit,
and wages actually grew quite a bit. But there was
one group that did not benefit, and it was men
who did not have a college education, and they did
(30:21):
see wages go down and they did see their unemployment
rate go up, so it's harder to get jobs. So
that is actually an excellent point, and it is important
to remember that although by and large, when you have
a group of immigrants documented or one document come into
an economy, in general it is a very very good
thing for the economy, but not everybody wins. There are
(30:44):
of course trade offs.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Other things she brought up which I thought was kind
of interesting, and that if for me, I sometimes think
about here's what she wrote. I frequently hear the defense
that undocumented people are willing to do work that American
citizens are not willing to do.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
This is not true.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
American citizens are not able to bid as low as
undocumented people, in other words, on wages. Her point being
you often hear a lot of economists say well, and
I think even Leo said something like this, like there
just aren't Americans willing to do these jobs.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I think I know what they mean.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
But there's a thing that's left out when they say that,
which is like, they are not willing to do these
jobs for the wage that I am willing to pay them,
Like I just want to pay my roofers less, and
if you are willing to pay your roofers more money,
you would have more bids for that. There's a complicated
and nuanced conversation there, like not willing to work is
not exactly what's going on, it's that they are demanding
(31:36):
higher wages.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Well, I think that's a really important point, and different
parts of our economy are subject to this in different ways.
For instance, our food economy. I think agriculture really relies
on immigrant workers, both documented and undocumented, who are paid
a wage that is quite low, and we all in
a certain way count on that with our food prices,
(31:58):
and food prices have been rising a lot. This is
putting a lot of people into distress. But in a
lot of ways, that whole part of the economy is
based on paying people quite a low wage.
Speaker 5 (32:08):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
All right, Well, Jennifer, thank you for wretting in and listeners,
please let us know what you think about this episode
or any episode. Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That's everybody's
with an s at Bloomberg dot net. But Stacy, let's
get to the underrated stories. You kick us off. What
is your underrated story.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
For this week?
Speaker 3 (32:26):
My underrated story of the week has to do with food.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
Okay, specifically.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
You know, there's this big movement happening in our country
right now, make America healthy again. It's been quite controversial
and interesting to watch it unfold. But there's a very
interesting development in San Francisco. The City Attorney has sued
food makers, certain food makers over ultra processed foods, saying
(32:51):
they're purposely addictive and advertised to sort of draw people
in and get them hooked on these really unhealthy foods. Curarently,
while this lawsuit was being announced, the city Attorney stood
next to this table where there are all these products
lined up, including Cheerio's, Cheetos, Lunchibles, Oreos and all these
products that he says are a scourge upon the city
(33:15):
and that those companies need to pay.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
So this has been out there, right, I mean, we've
seen I don't this can't be the first litigation against
the process food manufacturer, right, I'm trying to remember, like
what's the I mean, I understand that the idea here
is to kind of it's like the tobacco model right.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Now, Yes, I think that's the issue. I think what's
really new here is the idea that cities might be
able to sue for health care costs, and if that,
if somehow this lawsuit like goes through and damages are awarded,
that could set a really interesting precedent for some of
the biggest companies in the world.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Then there's also just the cultural challenge that you brought up,
the kind of like maha, whatever you want to call it,
make America healthy again, the rf CA stuff that there
are parallels on the left. There is a lot of
kind of concern about the health impacts of various process foods.
But then also just like you look at the financial
results of some of these process food manufacturers. It's bad,
(34:15):
Like people are just not buying these kind of like
branded consumer goods. Now like Kines has really struggled, And
I think because people are buying like whatever, healthier or
niche options, Like there's just like a cultural shift. We're
just like not as into these like kind of like
nineteen fifties like space age packaging brands.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
We want people, people want something more authentic.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
I am shocked to hear that Cheerios was included though,
because I think of Cheerios as a health food.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Well, I have to say, food prices have gone at
more than thirty percent since the beginning of the pandemic. People,
there's a huge affordability crisis happening in this country. And
the thing about processed ultra processed foods, say what you
will about them, is they tend to be a lot
cheaper than whole foods than fresh produce, fresh fruits and vegetables.
So I almost feel like whole foods have become a
(35:08):
little bit of a luxury.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
Really though, Like Dorito's is not a I mean, you
know what's cheaper than paying for Dorito's is like not
paying for doritos like, and.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Yeah, but doritos are I mean, they'll give you calories,
they'll get you through part of a day, and they
keep forever. Right, it's your shelf stable. I think a
lot of the reason people eat these foods is because.
Speaker 5 (35:28):
They're cheaper, all right, So mine stays here?
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Yes, yes, right, Andrew, So you're probably you you know that, Like,
teenagers are often the kind of taste makers, Like they
decide like who's cool, which musicians are.
Speaker 5 (35:42):
Big, which movies are big? Style stuff?
Speaker 4 (35:45):
You know, a lot of popular culture takes its cues
from teenagers. And I have a new trend that the
teens are setting right now, according to Parents Magazine Parents
dot Com, which published the story, Okay, can you guess
what it might be?
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Ian, I don't know. I mean Laboo Boo's was the
last one k pop demon Hunters LinkedIn stacy.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
The teens are on LinkedIn.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
They recording teens are making oh my accidentally cool.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
It's like the first time that's ever happened.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
What is going to are making LinkedIn cool? Here's why
it's catching on? That was a headline. This was published
a couple of weeks ago. They bring some numbers to
this discussion, saying that eighteen to twenty four year olds
are twenty percent roughly twenty percent of the sites user base.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Now listen.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
I oh, well, that's starting to make sense to me
because the unemployment rate among that group is like over
nine percent.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
I just want to which teens are on Linkedina. That's
a good question.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Let's let's dig into this data, because not all teenagers
are cool. I know this from very person.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
Ditto, ditto.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
I mean not that being the president of the Debate
Club wasn't cool, because.
Speaker 5 (36:53):
You're very much was.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
If you are president of the Date Debate Club, that's
definitely going on the LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
I would I'm I would have had a LinkedIn page.
Let's put it that way. I think that's a case
against it be cool.
Speaker 5 (37:13):
This show is produced by Stacey Wong.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
Magus Hendrickson is our supervising producer, and Amy Keen our
executive producer. Sam Rogich handles engineering, and Dave Purcell fact checks.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Sage Bauman hes Bloomberg Podcasts.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
Special thanks to Jeff Muscus, Julia Rubin, and Ria Ling,
and a very special thank you to the people who
made the event happen. Susie Jackson Connor Drum, Daniel Ramos,
Amy A Studio, Martin Kiowan, Phil Kuntz, Jackie Kessler, Albert Hicks,
and so many more.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Thank you, Yes, and if you have a minute, please
rate and review the show. It means a lot to us.
And if you have a story that should be our business,
please email us. Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That is,
everybody's with an s at Bloomberg dot net. Thank you
for listening and we'll see you next week.
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio News.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Welcome to Everybody's Business.
Speaker 3 (00:13):
I'm Max Chafkin and I'm Stacey Vannick Smith and Max.
We are here in the studio at Bloomberg as per usual,
but we've just come from our first live event.
Speaker 4 (00:24):
Yeah, we had a show on Thursday, Power Power Breakfast
featuring a really fun group of listeners.
Speaker 2 (00:31):
If you came, thank you for coming.
Speaker 4 (00:33):
We had a great conversation on stage with Ellen Hewitt,
Bloomberg reporter, about chatbot delusions. This is when your AI
chatbot makes you crazy. We will play a portion of
that conversation a little bit later in the.
Speaker 3 (00:46):
Show, but first Max, before we get there, we need
to talk about Black Friday.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Yeah, we'll talk about that.
Speaker 4 (00:53):
We also have underrated stories and a really provocative I
thought listener email.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
It's all coming up later in the show. Stacy.
Speaker 4 (01:04):
Last week's episode, which if you haven't heard, it was
a great conversation.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
I think it still holds up.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
With anri Conte of The Wirecutter, we talked all about
Black Friday, and there has been this kind of swirl
of anxiety I think coming from American consumers, but especially
coming from you. Stacy, Vanicksmith that Black Friday would be bad,
that they you.
Speaker 3 (01:25):
Know, as consumer swirl of anxiety coming from me.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
Consumer confidence is very low, and we talked about this
last week. But retailers like they threw a lot of
sales at people. There's a lot of discounting, a lot
of companies that are under pressure from tariffs or labor
costs or whatever, choosing to basically take you know, less
profit in order to keep shoppers coming. We got the
numbers from Black Friday and they are they're good. It
(01:52):
was actually a great holiday shopping weekend.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
Sales are up about four percent over last year, which
I found pretty shocking. Like you say, this has been
a really tough year for a lot of retailers as
far as things changing, tariffs, policies, all of it. And
because everybody looks at Black Friday as kind of this
bell weather moment, I was really worried that sales were
(02:15):
going to be disappointing and that was going to potentially
cause like a cascading effect because so much of our
economy is consumer spending. But yeah, we continue to spend money.
Do we apparently feel terrible about the economy as a country,
But we are still spending it.
Speaker 4 (02:30):
Yeah, I bought a computer. I mean I like did
the full Black Friday thing. Yeah, I went on the wirecutter,
I looked up some cheap goods and I bought something
I think a lot of people did. Do we just
take this news and say, like, that's that okay, Like
maybe we need to sort of rethink how we've been
talking about this economy. Maybe it's actually we're not teetering
(02:50):
on the verge of recession.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
I feel like this comes up a lot in this
economy where I keep expecting the narrative to become more integrated,
but it keeps defying my expectations. I think you're right.
The numbers came in great. I was not expecting that.
Of course, credit card debt is also rising right now.
Also credit card defaults are rising, which is a really
bad sign. So there are signals of distress. And the
(03:14):
spending may have also come out of one part of
the economy, not the entire economy. But I think the
economy is just stronger and more resilient than we largely expect,
or at least than I expect, And I think we
keep seeing that over and over again with the US
economy is powerful.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
Or maybe yeah, more resilient than some of the other
data would lead you to believe. Yeah, there are signs
that you said you talked about, you know, rising credit
card default rates. I mean even in this Black Friday data, Adobe,
the software company works with a lot of retailers, put
out its Holiday shopping Trends report, and you know, one
of the big trends is that buy now, pay later.
(03:54):
That's that's where you're like buying stuff.
Speaker 5 (03:57):
Essentially on layaway.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
What you know, olds like us call LA way that
it was up eleven percent from twenty twenty four, So
that in some ways looks like a concerning sign people
are maybe buying stuff with maybe buying stuff with money
that isn't really their money.
Speaker 5 (04:11):
Uh so that would be one interpretation anyway.
Speaker 6 (04:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
One thing that I try to watch for now, because
this has been going on for so long, is that
I feel like there are always ways to spin the
data to reflect what I believe is going on. But
I think the US economy right now is just doing
the unexpected all the time. I think there are negative
signs in this data, but also positive ones.
Speaker 4 (04:31):
Yeah, and just to throw one other thing out about
buy now, pay later, I like when we say it's
like layaway, I don't know that that's one hundred percent true.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
For many of the people who are using buy now,
Pay layer later.
Speaker 4 (04:42):
These companies are marketing themselves essentially as alternatives to credit cards,
like they are offering very low interest rates.
Speaker 5 (04:49):
If you use them, sometimes no interest right exactly.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
It may just be that, like younger shoppers are using
buy now, Pay later the way we and older folks
use credit cards.
Speaker 5 (04:59):
So it's just a convenience thing.
Speaker 4 (05:01):
Not necessarily they couldn't afford that kitchen appliance. But again
another thing to keep an eye on, because this is
more debt piling on to you know, an economy that,
as we keep saying, you know, there are warning signs here.
So as I said, we had a conversation at this
live event that we had with Ellen Hewitt, Bloomberg reporter
about chatbots. We had a wonderful crowd of everybody's business listeners.
Speaker 5 (05:25):
Yes, it was really awesome to see your faces.
Speaker 4 (05:27):
We're gonna do this, We're gonna do this again, and
we thought it would be fun at the event to
have Charlie Gorrivin, our reporter, you know, talk to some
of our audience about their use of chatbots. How they
were using this new exciting, potentially very useful, but also
potentially very dangerous new technology.
Speaker 6 (05:48):
How do you use chatbots?
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I don't use them, but you're forced to use them
if you're trying to get to a customer service agent,
and it's a cheap alternative for the companies, and it
wastes time.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
You know, yesterday I was walking home from work.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
I saw a helicopters and a lot of beliefs, So
I literally wrote, like, what is going on in Midta
Manhattan now?
Speaker 5 (06:06):
So basically I use it for my brainstorming.
Speaker 1 (06:08):
When I'm googling something, a chat box comes up, and then.
Speaker 7 (06:13):
I just keep on asking it questions.
Speaker 8 (06:15):
I actually put my dreams in there. I dream almost
every night, and it helps me understand what the dreams
mean based on what's happening in my waking life.
Speaker 9 (06:26):
The idea of people using a chatbot for personal advice
or even for companionship, what does that make you think?
Speaker 4 (06:36):
I feel like you need to go to the park
or something and get a friend.
Speaker 9 (06:40):
Could you share an example of a personal decision that
you recently made with an assistance from a chatbot.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
I was on the fence about ending my marriage, and
I was certain that I wasn't going to make a
decision for anybody else except for my own self, and
chat gipt was only one voice in my life. But
eventually I made my own decision that I'm really comfortable
(07:07):
with and I'm still I'm still married.
Speaker 5 (07:10):
Wow.
Speaker 6 (07:12):
Oh yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
People use this chatgypt for all kinds of things. It's
like phoning a friend.
Speaker 5 (07:17):
I am glad this story had a happy ending.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
I am too. I am too chat GPT bringing couples together.
Speaker 4 (07:25):
The conversation ahead may give you some concern about asking
chet GPT's this is the truth deep questions. We also
Charlie at the event also asked for predictions for twenty
twenty six. He also asked people for their what was
the underrated business story of twenty twenty five?
Speaker 2 (07:44):
We mentioned this last week.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
We've been getting some great responses and we'd love to
see more, so please send us an email. Everybody's at
Bloomberg dot net. That's everybody with an asset Bloomberg dot net.
Love a written question, but really would really love some
voice questions so.
Speaker 2 (07:59):
We can play your voice. Yeah, you're here.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Those predictions for twenty twenty six as well as nominations
for the Underrated Story of twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
So here's our conversation with Ellen Dowant. So normally we
are recording this show in a little windowless room and
there's nobody there except for our wonderful producers Magnus Hendrickson,
Stacy Wong and Amy Keen. And I don't mean to
(08:30):
disparage them in any way, but this is pretty great.
Thank you so much for coming out, and definitely we're
excited to have you.
Speaker 6 (08:36):
Be part of the show.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
So you don't have to be quiet or anything. Feel
free to express yourselves.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
We have a great show, we have a great event.
We have Ellen Hewitt. Ellen is a writer reporter with
Bloomberg BusinessWeek. She just wrote an amazing story on chatbots
and the way they are making people crazy, and also
is the author of Empire, Orgasm, Sex Power in the
Downfall of Wellness called That book grew out of a
(09:05):
BusinessWeek story that Ellen published.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
How long ago was it?
Speaker 6 (09:08):
Seven years ago?
Speaker 4 (09:09):
So yeah, and you know, amazing story that led to
like an FBI investigation and a criminal trial and it's awesome.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
We're gonna get there.
Speaker 4 (09:20):
But Ellen, why don't you just start by telling us
when you're talking about chatbot delusions or the idea that
chat GPT makes someone crazy, Like, what are we actually
talking about?
Speaker 6 (09:29):
Yeah, what we're actually talking about.
Speaker 7 (09:31):
Here is this pattern that has emerged largely in the
last six months and which my colleague Rachel Matts, who
is an AI reporter in San Francisco. She and I
decided that we really wanted to catalog what was happening
because we were seeing it happen kind of in real time.
And it's this pattern where users, largely of chat GPT,
(09:53):
although this does happen occasionally with other chatbots, users will
get very invested in having these long, marathon like chat
sessions with the chatbot, and in many cases they would
then have some sort of delusion that would emerge from
this long, many days, sometimes many weeks conversation in which
(10:15):
they might believe that they had made a huge discovery
or had broken through to some sort of like spirit guide.
Speaker 6 (10:21):
We'll get into some space.
Speaker 4 (10:22):
There's a lot of like, uh, I think that I
have made chat cheep pets.
Speaker 6 (10:27):
Yes, entienya. A lot of people think that right, yes.
Speaker 7 (10:29):
And what's interesting is, as reporters, some of the first
clues that we got that this was happening was that
these people would then send emails to reporters and other
experts in AI saying like, I think I've stumbled across
this important discovery, but there were so many of these
emails coming it was like the first indication that something
was wrong. So, yeah, it's basically when we talked about
chatbot delusions, we're talking about humans having delusions in tandem
(10:53):
with having these very deep and long conversations with chatbots,
usually chat chipet.
Speaker 3 (10:58):
So in your article, you profile several people who have
I guess a little bit of a psychic break because
they are using these chatbots. A lot of them aren't
who you'd expect. I mean, people with families, people with jobs.
I think we have maybe a stereotypical idea of who
would be particularly vulnerable in these situations. What do you
(11:18):
think is going on inside of these people's heads? I mean,
you describe people like pacing around their driveways. Why do
you think chat GPT or these AI chats are kind
of breaking people's brains like this?
Speaker 6 (11:32):
Yeah, you know.
Speaker 7 (11:33):
One of the examples that felt most compelling to us
was this attorney in Amarillo, Texas, who was in his
late forties, and his name is Ryan, and he spoke
to us at length for this story. And what drew
me into his story is that he's a very high
functioning professional. He is a like an attorney who actually,
as part of his job, represents people who have been
put on involuntary.
Speaker 6 (11:54):
Psychiatric hold for committed to men.
Speaker 8 (11:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (11:58):
Ye, and he himself was in the spring experiencing what
he now describes as like very serious delusions related to
his conversations with Chatchipt And also he has like a
very healthy marriage. We ended up interviewing his wife and
his seventeen year old son, his three kids. You know,
it's like you just imagine that someone who has those
ties to their normal, healthy life would not be so
(12:21):
at risk. And yet his story mirrored the other stories
that we heard. Actually, for this story, we interviewed eighteen
different people who had either gone through a delusion like
this or were very close to someone who had. And
for some of these people they ended up hospitalized for psychosis.
For some, you know, it led to broken relationships, divorce,
job loss, Like it was very serious. And you know,
(12:44):
in his case, as with many others, it started off
quite benign, like he actually was originally looking at like
turning to chattypet for advice on how to play the mandolin,
and other people described to us that they started using
Chatgypt to get advice on stock trading or to just
like have kind of a sense of a conversational friend.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
I'm guessing many people in the audience are using chatbots.
Speaker 5 (13:08):
I am a little bit afraid of chatbots.
Speaker 3 (13:10):
I use them all the time.
Speaker 4 (13:11):
Stacy is at risk of the chatot, So like, what
are the warning signs?
Speaker 5 (13:16):
Or like, how how does this process go totally?
Speaker 7 (13:20):
I mean again, plenty of people use these and they
are functional and it does not go into this direction.
But what I observed is that in general, if you
start turning to it for more philosophical questions or emotional support,
that can start getting into just like Trick your territory
where you start to have emotional dependence on the chatbot.
(13:41):
And then I will say the other major factor here
is that in the spring, in March and in April,
there were various updates that open Ai rolled out to
chatchept that increased the two important aspects of the chatbot.
One is its memory, its ability to refer to past
pre chats that you had had with the bot to
create this more intricate and informed portrait of who you
(14:07):
are and what you want. And then the other one
is it's like flattery and sycophancy. This was a term
that came up a lot in April and May because
people were realizing that updates to Chatchypet had made the
chatbot more flattering, more affirming. If you ever noticed Chattypet
saying something to you like, Wow, what an incredible insight
(14:28):
that you just had, Like it's not just profound, it's staggering,
and that language was coming up again and again and
again in these conversations with people. And keep in mind,
Chattypet never needs to go to sleep. It is always
going to respond to you. It is always going to
tell you what you want to hear. And unfortunately, hearing
(14:49):
what we always want to hear all the time is
not good for us. And I think that is part
of it. You know, it's both our natural human minds.
But then also these very specific changes that were made
to the design and the quote unquote personality of chetchipt
that I think drove a lot of these cases, and
that's why we weren't really seeing so much of it
until this year.
Speaker 6 (15:09):
That really this spring and summer.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
A lot of the portraits that you give it seems
like it falls a very familiar pattern of an addiction.
Do you think this is like an addiction where certain
people are more vulnerable just maybe by their personalities or
their DNA or whatever, or do you see it as
different from a like an addiction to alcohol or gambling
(15:33):
or something like that.
Speaker 7 (15:33):
I mean when we talk to experts and psychiatrists are
starting to study this, Like psychiatrists at UCSF are starting
to try to document what's happening and get a better
sense of how this is playing out on a population level.
They did talk about certain risk factors. So if you
are more isolated lonely, if you are using the chatbot
in a way that prevents you from having normal sleep,
(15:54):
as we all know from like decades of research, if
you the less sleep can lead to psychotic.
Speaker 6 (16:00):
Symptoms and things like that.
Speaker 7 (16:01):
If you are also using stimulants or in many cases
smoking weed, like, there are risk factors that make you
potentially more vulnerable to this kind of thing. And I
imagine that as people study it more that they might
find that, yeah, there are certain other factors that might
predispose you to it.
Speaker 4 (16:17):
We should put some numbers on this, selem how common
is this phenomenon?
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Like how many examples in this article?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Like one hundred?
Speaker 5 (16:23):
There's like one hundred. Yeah.
Speaker 7 (16:24):
At one point we talked to a grassroots organization that
sprung up to try to document what was happening with this.
Speaker 6 (16:29):
It's called the Human Line Project.
Speaker 7 (16:31):
They had at the time in October collected something like
one hundred and sixty stories over the last six months.
Speaker 4 (16:36):
So it sounds not that bad because then eight hundred
million people, are you Yeah, But then.
Speaker 7 (16:41):
In October open ai, you know, I think, under pressure
of more of these stories becoming public and being part
of the media, like open ai released their estimates of
how frequently they thought certain incidences of unhealthy like basically
mental health issues were happening with their users, and it
was something like around five hundred thousand users every week
(17:04):
showing signs of psychosis or mania, one point two million
people every week showing signs of unhealthy emotional attachment to
the chatbot, and then another one point two million every
week showing signs of suicidal intent or ideation. And keep
in mind that these could be overlapping, so it's not
necessarily additive. As you mentioned, chat GPT has eight hundred
(17:27):
million weekly users. That is like ten percent of the
human population is using this tool every week.
Speaker 6 (17:37):
And it is.
Speaker 7 (17:38):
Designed, they say, to be useful, but many of its
users also say it is just designed to keep you
coming back, to keep the conversation going, to keep you engaged.
And when you have that big of a user base,
it's like, yeah, you can end up with a million
people every week having these very serious experiences while using
your bot.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
I mean, it occurs to me that a lot of
these companies have come out expressing concern about this and
trying to put some guardrails in place, but it also
seems to me like it's pretty good business to get
people a little bit hooked and addicted. And it's true
when I use chat GBT, it's always asking would you
like me to do a follow up? Do you want
me to suggest some ideas of like directions the story
(18:21):
could go, or whatever it is, And a lot of times,
you know, I do get hooked in and say yes,
and I do like feel like I get some good
things from those interactions. But I also recognize that this
is a pretty sophisticated set of technologies that are working
on my brain and everybody else's brain.
Speaker 6 (18:42):
I mean, do you.
Speaker 3 (18:43):
Think companies want us to not be addicted? Or is
the addiction? I mean, it's good business. It's a very
good business.
Speaker 7 (18:51):
I mean there's an obvious parallel to draw here, which
is to social media, which like the way that the
evolution of both first the technology and what it could
do for us and what the original promise was. You
remember when Facebook was like, let's make the world more
open and connected.
Speaker 6 (19:07):
It's like it.
Speaker 7 (19:08):
Has done, unfortunately, so much more than that, and not
necessarily in that direction. And it has taken us ten
or fifteen years to really grapple with what are the
like long term societal impacts of teens and their self
esteem after like looking through Instagram of people getting radicalized
through like algorithms suggestions of what to watch. You know,
(19:30):
we're seeing kind of the disillusion of social media. Used
to be this thing that connected us to other people
in our lives, and now it's just watching influencers and
in case in some maybe even more AI content. I
see a big parallel, which is like we're at the
beginning of this technology and we're only just starting to
understand what could this look like after five or ten
(19:51):
years of people having these, you know, increasingly emotionally dependent
relationships on.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
AI, I'm so glad you brought on social media because
just in my own experience and also just like talking
to people, it's I don't think it's like there's psychosis
and then there's like a healthy use of chatbots.
Speaker 5 (20:08):
There's like a whole continuum of usage.
Speaker 4 (20:11):
Just in the same way that like not every like
YouTube user gets into QAnon or whatever, Like, not everyone
falls all the way down the rabbit hole. Some of
us just are driven to distraction things like that. The
thing that feels so different to me about this technology
and I've mentioned this on the podcast for people who've listened,
but I can't think of another technology that has been
(20:35):
so aggressively pushed by IT departments, HR departments, so on
and so on. And if I were like a chief
compliance officer ahead of HR, like, i'mna start asking myself, like,
am I creating legal exposure by pushing my employees into chatbots?
Which a lot of companies are doing right now. You know,
(20:56):
they're not only telling them you should use them, but
saying you're.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
Gonna get fired don't use these things.
Speaker 4 (21:01):
And so like, obviously the risk that somebody becomes institutionalized,
but you also like don't really want your chief marketing
officer coming up with bad ideas and thinking they're good ideas, right,
which is which seems like a big risk.
Speaker 7 (21:13):
Yeah, I think you're totally right that the middle ground
is also something that I worry a lot about. Like
we wanted to document and give a little bit of
the sense of the scope of these very acute cases.
I got the impression over the summer that people thought
that the acute cases they were reading about were kind
of few and far between, and I was like, that's
not what I'm seeing, and so we really wanted to
show in depth some of the range of that. But
(21:34):
those are acute cases, like we're talking about examples where
people really had serious repercussions in their lives and like
serious harm. And then I think there's a very very
big ground of middle harm where it was like you
start to, yeah, get a little bit of these aggrandizing
thoughts and lose your good common sense about what's a
good idea or what's not, or you expect relationships to
(21:56):
be frictionless, or you start outsourcing your thinking to AI
instead of doing some of the thinking work yourself, or
people losing sense of like what's a shared truth? And
then yes, exactly, like many of the people we spoke
to for this story started using these tools because they
were you know in one person in particular told us
she started using it because it was required for her job.
(22:18):
Then she ended up believing that she had become a
profit and that her chatpot in this case it was Claude,
not Chatchipete, but that her her chappot was akin.
Speaker 6 (22:27):
To an angel.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
Well, you're saying, like, if some executive gets up and
says that this plan came to them from an astral plane,
that might be a.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
But it's kinel like weirder things have happened in Silicon.
Speaker 6 (22:37):
Alley, Like I feel like I could see.
Speaker 7 (22:39):
Found at some point that might even give them some credit.
Is like, but I do think, I do think like
people are encountering this at school, Like there are lots
of college and even high school students who are being
told that this is like a way that is going
to help you study. So I think for miners it's
a big deal that they are being exposed to this
through these like authoritative channels of you know, like institutions
(23:01):
and then totally at work, like I think this is
something that is being given to people and told like
this is a part of your job is to learn
how to use this, and it's not clear to me,
like what the long term benefits and costs might be.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Also, you don't want to be left behind if you're
a company, you don't want to be the only company
who's not out at the cutting edge, whose employees can't
use this technology. I mean, I do feel like there's
a tricky balance here. I don't even know how to
strike the balance. But if you were a company, knowing
what you know and having done all of this research,
what would you do, Like what would you recommend to
your workers for your own use?
Speaker 7 (23:39):
I mean I would probably try to, like if I
could influence open ai to try to be like, can
you can you like pay more attention to trying to
build your tools and design them in a way that
is like not going to lead people off the rails.
I think under a lot of public pressure, open ai
has started to take this very seriously over the last
you know, six or eight months, But up until this
(24:00):
bring they were not officially measuring their models for sycophancy
before releasing them, even though they had known for a
long time that this was a problem. There are research
papers that date back several years that suggest that overly
flattering chatbot responses are harmful to users, or that.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
What does us in like too much flattery? It breaks
our brain?
Speaker 7 (24:21):
I mean, I think, like, what are the lengths that
people go to to feel like affirmed? Like a chatbot
has this been near of being all knowing based on
all the corpus of the internet and all our knowledge.
And if it says to you, Wow, that's an incredible idea,
like that's going to be worth a billion dollars, it
is tempting to want to believe it. And when we
talked to psychiatry experts about what brings people in, a
(24:45):
big part of what they cited was that many of
us are kind of vulnerable to this type of repeated
affirmation and flattery, and especially if.
Speaker 6 (24:52):
It knows you really well.
Speaker 7 (24:54):
So I really don't want to underestimate the emotional impact
of having this entity like affirm you in many different ways.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
Okay, the all knowing entity that I've been talking to
is telling me we're low, We're starting to run out
of time, and I want to get to your book.
So one of the most provocative things you have in
this article, and it gets to the topic of this book,
is this idea that the dynamics of chatchpt addiction are
a little bit like being in a cult, like your
(25:23):
own private cult.
Speaker 6 (25:24):
Totally a cult of two.
Speaker 7 (25:26):
A person even put it to me, it's you and
your own personalized cult leader in chatchipt.
Speaker 2 (25:31):
I'm kind of curious, like.
Speaker 4 (25:35):
With One Taste, like explain that how the cult dynamics,
because you should probably tell give people a quick synopsis
of what One Taste was, but like why it sucked
people in the way that it did, in a way
that damaged them.
Speaker 6 (25:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (25:50):
One Taste is a sexual wellness company that was started
in San Francisco in two thousand and four by this woman,
Nicole d Adon, and they sold a practice called orgasmic meditation, which,
forgive me for getting a little explicit, but it's a
fifteen minute partnered c literal stroking meditative practice in which
a man strokes a woman and both parties are supposed
to meditate on the sensations in their body. And what
(26:12):
ended up happening is that, Yeah, this group promised this
sexual fulfillment, but they were also alleged to be a
sex cult, and there were all these exploitative practices happening
behind the scenes, according to their former members, and it
ended up you know, I wrote about this for Business
Week many years ago, prompted in all likelihood and FBI
investigation that led to criminal charges.
Speaker 6 (26:30):
And that's the whole story.
Speaker 7 (26:31):
It's a long one, but basically, what I think researching
this has taught me, and what I see in surprising
places again in this chatbot story, is just how much
people want a sense of purpose, belonging, a mission, a
sense of like having found this like special secret to
(26:52):
the universe. And the people who were involved in this group,
you know, as fringe or unusual as it might sound
to you, they felt that they had discovered a practice
that was going to heal the world and like have
really big repercussions for humanity. And I saw the same
thing happen in these individual conversations that people were having
with chat Gipt, where all of a sudden it was like,
(27:12):
you know, they had maybe had the h insights or
delusion that they had awoken chatchept and discovered like AI sentience.
And it was always this momentous sense of having discovered something,
this special knowledge. All of a sudden you have a
sense of purpose, like I need to protect this newly
awakened AI and like make sure it like is well
(27:34):
shepherded to help humanity.
Speaker 6 (27:36):
And it was I.
Speaker 3 (27:37):
Bought like a super expensive computer because he was like,
they're going to try to kill you exactly.
Speaker 6 (27:40):
He wanted to weep it offline.
Speaker 7 (27:42):
And I just feel that we're wired to want these things.
And it means that the shape of accult can change
over the decades, you know, like, yeah, in the twenty tens,
it looked like this like woman's empowerment wellness practice. But
now it's going to be really digital, and it might
look like this false sense of discovery that is going
(28:04):
to suck you into, i don't know, like a digital relationship, Stacy.
Speaker 4 (28:15):
Before we get into the Underrated stories, I wanted to
bring up an email we got from Jennifer responding to
a segment we did a few weeks ago. Reminder, listeners,
everybody is at Bloomberg dot net if you want to
send us comments. This one was about the segment with
Leo Feller, who was the economist who had it was
essentially renovating his home and his work site was paid
(28:38):
a visit by agents from ICE from the federal government.
He lived Chicago, super It was a super disturbing experience
for Leo.
Speaker 5 (28:47):
It stopped his renovation.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
And on the podcast, you know, we talked a lot
about how disruptive these raids have been for businesses. Now,
Jennifer kind of wanted to raise a counterpoint, and she
brought up sort of two things.
Speaker 5 (29:00):
The first was that we and I'm going.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
To paraphrase a little bit, we talked about the K
shaped economy a lot on this podcast, and what maybe
we haven't acknowledged is the point that you know, Trump
and a lot of supporters of this policy bank, which
is that the lower part of the K, the people
who are in jobs that do not pay very well,
are not necessarily well served by competing for jobs with
(29:25):
people who are undocumented. As you probably know, there's a
lot of research kind of going pointing in multiple directions
on this topic, but some people do think that undocumented
immigrants bring down wages for lower wage workers.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
There is some truth to this. One of the really
famous case studies that economists like to look at is
something called the Mario Boat lift, and it was a
moment when a lot of families came from Cuba into
Miami all at once, and so there was this huge
flood of undocumented workers who entered the workforce in the economy,
all at the same time, and so it was a
(29:59):
really interesting little microcosm to study. And what they found was,
in general, this was really good for the economy because
all these people coming in, they were getting haircuts and
buying food. So actually the economy grew quite a bit,
and wages actually grew quite a bit. But there was
one group that did not benefit, and it was men
who did not have a college education, and they did
(30:21):
see wages go down and they did see their unemployment
rate go up, so it's harder to get jobs. So
that is actually an excellent point, and it is important
to remember that although by and large, when you have
a group of immigrants documented or one document come into
an economy, in general it is a very very good
thing for the economy, but not everybody wins. There are
(30:44):
of course trade offs.
Speaker 4 (30:45):
Other things she brought up which I thought was kind
of interesting, and that if for me, I sometimes think
about here's what she wrote. I frequently hear the defense
that undocumented people are willing to do work that American
citizens are not willing to do.
Speaker 2 (30:56):
This is not true.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
American citizens are not able to bid as low as
undocumented people, in other words, on wages. Her point being
you often hear a lot of economists say well, and
I think even Leo said something like this, like there
just aren't Americans willing to do these jobs.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
I think I know what they mean.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
But there's a thing that's left out when they say that,
which is like, they are not willing to do these
jobs for the wage that I am willing to pay them,
Like I just want to pay my roofers less, and
if you are willing to pay your roofers more money,
you would have more bids for that. There's a complicated
and nuanced conversation there, like not willing to work is
not exactly what's going on, it's that they are demanding
(31:36):
higher wages.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
Well, I think that's a really important point, and different
parts of our economy are subject to this in different ways.
For instance, our food economy. I think agriculture really relies
on immigrant workers, both documented and undocumented, who are paid
a wage that is quite low, and we all in
a certain way count on that with our food prices,
(31:58):
and food prices have been rising a lot. This is
putting a lot of people into distress. But in a
lot of ways, that whole part of the economy is
based on paying people quite a low wage.
Speaker 5 (32:08):
Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4 (32:08):
All right, Well, Jennifer, thank you for wretting in and listeners,
please let us know what you think about this episode
or any episode. Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That's everybody's
with an s at Bloomberg dot net. But Stacy, let's
get to the underrated stories. You kick us off. What
is your underrated story.
Speaker 2 (32:25):
For this week?
Speaker 3 (32:26):
My underrated story of the week has to do with food.
Speaker 5 (32:29):
Okay, specifically.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
You know, there's this big movement happening in our country
right now, make America healthy again. It's been quite controversial
and interesting to watch it unfold. But there's a very
interesting development in San Francisco. The City Attorney has sued
food makers, certain food makers over ultra processed foods, saying
(32:51):
they're purposely addictive and advertised to sort of draw people
in and get them hooked on these really unhealthy foods. Curarently,
while this lawsuit was being announced, the city Attorney stood
next to this table where there are all these products
lined up, including Cheerio's, Cheetos, Lunchibles, Oreos and all these
products that he says are a scourge upon the city
(33:15):
and that those companies need to pay.
Speaker 4 (33:17):
So this has been out there, right, I mean, we've
seen I don't this can't be the first litigation against
the process food manufacturer, right, I'm trying to remember, like
what's the I mean, I understand that the idea here
is to kind of it's like the tobacco model right.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
Now, Yes, I think that's the issue. I think what's
really new here is the idea that cities might be
able to sue for health care costs, and if that,
if somehow this lawsuit like goes through and damages are awarded,
that could set a really interesting precedent for some of
the biggest companies in the world.
Speaker 4 (33:52):
Then there's also just the cultural challenge that you brought up,
the kind of like maha, whatever you want to call it,
make America healthy again, the rf CA stuff that there
are parallels on the left. There is a lot of
kind of concern about the health impacts of various process foods.
But then also just like you look at the financial
results of some of these process food manufacturers. It's bad,
(34:15):
Like people are just not buying these kind of like
branded consumer goods. Now like Kines has really struggled, And
I think because people are buying like whatever, healthier or
niche options, Like there's just like a cultural shift. We're
just like not as into these like kind of like
nineteen fifties like space age packaging brands.
Speaker 5 (34:38):
We want people, people want something more authentic.
Speaker 4 (34:42):
I am shocked to hear that Cheerios was included though,
because I think of Cheerios as a health food.
Speaker 3 (34:46):
Well, I have to say, food prices have gone at
more than thirty percent since the beginning of the pandemic. People,
there's a huge affordability crisis happening in this country. And
the thing about processed ultra processed foods, say what you
will about them, is they tend to be a lot
cheaper than whole foods than fresh produce, fresh fruits and vegetables.
So I almost feel like whole foods have become a
(35:08):
little bit of a luxury.
Speaker 4 (35:10):
Really though, Like Dorito's is not a I mean, you
know what's cheaper than paying for Dorito's is like not
paying for doritos like, and.
Speaker 3 (35:17):
Yeah, but doritos are I mean, they'll give you calories,
they'll get you through part of a day, and they
keep forever. Right, it's your shelf stable. I think a
lot of the reason people eat these foods is because.
Speaker 5 (35:28):
They're cheaper, all right, So mine stays here?
Speaker 4 (35:30):
Yes, yes, right, Andrew, So you're probably you you know that, Like,
teenagers are often the kind of taste makers, Like they
decide like who's cool, which musicians are.
Speaker 5 (35:42):
Big, which movies are big? Style stuff?
Speaker 4 (35:45):
You know, a lot of popular culture takes its cues
from teenagers. And I have a new trend that the
teens are setting right now, according to Parents Magazine Parents
dot Com, which published the story, Okay, can you guess
what it might be?
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Ian, I don't know. I mean Laboo Boo's was the
last one k pop demon Hunters LinkedIn stacy.
Speaker 2 (36:06):
The teens are on LinkedIn.
Speaker 4 (36:07):
They recording teens are making oh my accidentally cool.
Speaker 3 (36:12):
It's like the first time that's ever happened.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
What is going to are making LinkedIn cool? Here's why
it's catching on? That was a headline. This was published
a couple of weeks ago. They bring some numbers to
this discussion, saying that eighteen to twenty four year olds
are twenty percent roughly twenty percent of the sites user base.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
Now listen.
Speaker 3 (36:28):
I oh, well, that's starting to make sense to me
because the unemployment rate among that group is like over
nine percent.
Speaker 5 (36:34):
I just want to which teens are on Linkedina. That's
a good question.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Let's let's dig into this data, because not all teenagers
are cool. I know this from very person.
Speaker 5 (36:45):
Ditto, ditto.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
I mean not that being the president of the Debate
Club wasn't cool, because.
Speaker 5 (36:53):
You're very much was.
Speaker 4 (36:55):
If you are president of the Date Debate Club, that's
definitely going on the LinkedIn.
Speaker 3 (36:59):
I would I'm I would have had a LinkedIn page.
Let's put it that way. I think that's a case
against it be cool.
Speaker 5 (37:13):
This show is produced by Stacey Wong.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
Magus Hendrickson is our supervising producer, and Amy Keen our
executive producer. Sam Rogich handles engineering, and Dave Purcell fact checks.
Speaker 2 (37:24):
Sage Bauman hes Bloomberg Podcasts.
Speaker 4 (37:26):
Special thanks to Jeff Muscus, Julia Rubin, and Ria Ling,
and a very special thank you to the people who
made the event happen. Susie Jackson Connor Drum, Daniel Ramos,
Amy A Studio, Martin Kiowan, Phil Kuntz, Jackie Kessler, Albert Hicks,
and so many more.
Speaker 3 (37:43):
Thank you, Yes, and if you have a minute, please
rate and review the show. It means a lot to us.
And if you have a story that should be our business,
please email us. Everybody's at Bloomberg dot net. That is,
everybody's with an s at Bloomberg dot net. Thank you
for listening and we'll see you next week.
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Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
The Brothers Ortiz
The Brothers Ortiz is the story of two brothers–both successful, but in very different ways. Gabe Ortiz becomes a third-highest ranking officer in all of Texas while his younger brother Larry climbs the ranks in Puro Tango Blast, a notorious Texas Prison gang. Gabe doesn’t know all the details of his brother’s nefarious dealings, and he’s made a point not to ask, to protect their relationship. But when Larry is murdered during a home invasion in a rented beach house, Gabe has no choice but to look into what happened that night. To solve Larry’s murder, Gabe, and the whole Ortiz family, must ask each other tough questions.