Billionaire AI Brain Rot

Are Big Tech CEOs suffering from AI psychosis?

Photo by Windah Limbai on Unsplash

While talking to Linus Tech Tips, Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux OS, called Elon Musk “simply incompetent” and “too stupid to work in a tech company” — -to which, everyone seemingly agreed. It’s hard not to, what with the dozens of times Musk has proven just how inept he is. The Nazi salutes destroying his carefully crafted public image, pushing baseless and dangerous conspiracy theories, his obviously false claims, impossible timelines, idiotic product design, his total lack of self-awareness, and constantly shooting himself in the foot and blaming others have collectively painted Musk as an utter buffoon not fit to manage a lemonade stand, let alone his sprawling empire. But why is Musk like this? Don’t get me wrong, he always had a screw loose or two, but he has gotten substantially worse over the past few years. And it isn’t just Musk; every Big Tech CEO is far more erratic, nonsensical and deranged than they were a few years ago. What is going on? Well, I have a theory that, like a drug dealer getting hooked on their own supply and spiralling, the very products these morons push are breaking their minds, and all the Big Tech CEOs are suffering from severe AI psychosis.

Sometime in the early 2010s, Big Tech CEOs made a considerable shift. They went from cosplaying Steve Jobs to generate attention, admiration and speculative value to cosplaying Tony Stark for the same reasons. They went from trying to take a minimal, thought-out, precision approach to trying to fool us all into thinking they are an extravagant polymath rule breaker, whose lack of consistency is outshone by their performance. And what does a reckless tech genius of this nature have? Their own bleeding-edge AI assistant. So, that is what all these impostors set out to create and use.

In 2014, Bezos launched Alexa and installed it in every room of his house. In 2015, Musk helped found OpenAI. In a very on-the-nose case, Zuckerberg created his own personal AI assistant and called it Jarvis.

Now, using these tools as a novelty or for occasional help is not the end of the world. But these guys didn’t leave it there. It is all but confirmed that the vast majority of Big Tech CEOs have been extensively using AI as personal assistants and the like to help them manage their time and their businesses. We shouldn’t be surprised by this. We know Zuckerberg has been doing this for many years; Musk has been using his Grok AI in this manner since 2023; and Sam Altman has used ChatGPT as a personal assistant since its launch and has even highlighted how he uses its Pulse feature for this.

This kind of overuse of AI is a huge problem.

But why?

Well, there are immediate practical issues. CEOs are already at severe risk of surrounding themselves with “yes men” and having their judgement severely impaired by this constant bias towards themselves. Chatbots are programmed to please the user and so inherently operate as “yes men”. What’s more, these CEOs are not the all-knowing geniuses they paint themselves out to be and are, in fact, at higher risk of experiencing the Dunning-Kruger effect, thanks to isolation from critical feedback and pressure to micromanage areas they are not experts in. But again, because AI chatbots inherently try to please the user, they provide artificial and misleading support for demonstrably false statements, leading to false confidence and a deepening of the Dunning-Kruger effect. So, by deploying AI as a critical connection between a CEO and their company, you exacerbate these already serious issues, which can create huge problems in the company’s leadership.

And the long-term psychological impacts of using AI so extensively are even worse, as they can trigger AI psychosis.

AI psychosis is a new term to describe the triggering or worsening of delusional thinking, or a break from reality, caused by the overuse of these user-biased AI chatbots. Essentially, these AIs can create a personal echo chamber that can reinforce delusional thinking and erode the user’s grip on reality to the point of serious harm to the user and those around them.

Symptoms include delusions, disorganised thinking/speech, mood swings including manic-like states, impaired reality testing, reduced critical thinking, and severe overconfidence/decision fatigue leading to a “metacognitive blind spot”.

AI psychosis is no joke, and there are numerous suicides and even murders seemingly linked to this condition. If you think you, or someone you know, may be suffering from this condition, please seek medical help.

Now, if, like me, you have been paying attention to Big Tech in recent years, those symptoms sound awfully familiar. The number of times I have heard a tech CEO make disorganised, nonsensical, illogical and outlandish claims that are miles away from reality is verging on countless by now. Likewise, over the past few years, there has been a tsunami of insiders calling out their mood swings, lack of critical thinking, and extreme overconfidence.

Basically, the recent devolution of tech leadership not only aligns with when chatbot AIs became usable but also looks indistinguishable from AI psychosis.

Let’s look at an example, like Elon Musk.