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.

We know he started using AI extensively from late 2023 when Grok was launched. In fact, Musk had likely used Grok well before its public release. So, has he displayed worsening symptoms of AI psychosis since the middle of 2023?

Let’s start with delusion. Does he show signs of that? Oh, well, where do I start? With his exaggerations of Tesla FSD’s capability, his aspirations to colonise Mars, his backwards workplace policies like denying COVID-19, and his demand for insane pay packages, Musk has been a walking delusion spewer for over a decade now. But it has gotten worse in recent years. I would personally argue that fascist beliefs are a form of delusion, as you need to be delusional to believe them, and Musk has definitely taken off the mask and devolved into full-on neo-fascism since then. However, as soon as Grok was released, Musk started pushing far more dangerous and baseless conspiracy theories, such as the Great Replacement theory, and felt he could use his wealth to influence politics to ‘solve’ these made-up catastrophes. Likewise, his over-exaggeration of DOGE’s capabilities and his claim that Britain is headed for a civil war are demonstrable escalations in delusional thinking. So you can put a big tick in that box.

What about disorganised thinking or speech? Well, personally, I find that Musk no longer talks like a well-socialised human. Every sentence is a self-grandising word salad of buzzwords and memes that people even remotely educated on the topic of discussion know is totally illogical and fanciful. The absolute best example of this is his interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, which happened around the same time as Grok’s launch. This is the one where he told the advertisers that had boycotted Twitter over his heinous changes to “go fuck themselves” at what was essentially a business summit. Sorkin questioned Musk on what implications that would have for Twitter as a business, to which Musk utterly crumbled. From start to finish during this interview, Musk was a shining example of disorganised thinking and speech and hasn’t really done an interview with any serious journalists since. If you would like to watch an astonishingly good analysis of this interview, I highly recommend this video. Musk’s Twitter/X feed since 2023 is a constant flow of disorganised thinking and speech too, so again, a huge tick in that box.

Okay, what about mood swings? Well, again, Musk has always had a problem with this. His biographer Walter Isaacson describes him as having a “Jekyll and Hyde quality”. His former girlfriend, Grimes, has claimed he can enter “demon mode”. All of that was before we knew Musk started extensively using AI. But, since then, Esther Crawford, a Twitter executive whom Musk fired in March of 2024, stated that he had mood swings, compounded by a fanatical inner circle, which suggests an escalation of this issue. At the CPAC conference this year, Musk appeared disturbingly manic, wielding a chainsaw and claiming he has “become meme”, triggering many to wonder if he was high on drugs. He could very well have been, but equally well, this suggests an escalation, or at least an unmasking, of his mood disturbances. So, yeah, we can put a tick in that box too.

What about impaired reality testing? Well, Musk was once relatively internet-savvy, but since 2023, he has fallen for more internet misinformation than my dementia-ridden grandma. From deepfakes of Kamala Harris to blatantly false conspiracy theories, like claiming Soros is paying millions of protestors, he has swallowed all of these hoaxes hook, line and sinker. Even just a few days ago, he spread painfully false and Islamophobic misinformation from Tommy Robinson, who claimed that a car had been purposely crashed into a Christmas market in France’s Guadeloupe, killing ten. This was, in fact, not a deadly terrorist incident at a French Christmas market but a drunk driver crashing into a Christmas lights event in the Caribbean, where no one died. He isn’t losing his grip on reality; he is actively letting go. We can see this in his professional capacity, too, as he is walking away from Tesla’s profitable EV business and betting the entire future of the company on crappy humanoid robots, claiming that soon 80% of Tesla’s revenue will come from selling billions of them. Keep in mind that the guy Musk hired to lead the development of these robots categorically says it will never happen (read more here).

You could write an entire encyclopedia on how Musk has walked away from reality in recent years. It is becoming more and more obvious that reality is no longer a concern for Musk at all. He wants to exist in the unaccountable narrative space of speculation and foggy ambition. So again, a huge tick in this box too.

Okay, well, what about reduced critical thinking?

As per usual, this is something he has struggled with for a while. Just look at his overexaggerated claims about Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD), or that time he was convinced COVID-19 cases would be “close to zero” by the end of April 2020, which, I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, didn’t happen. But again, these are times before we knew for sure that Musk was extensively using AI chatbots.

Personally, I think I can just point to the Cybertruck, a vehicle he heavily micromanaged the development of and agreed to produce in 2023, around the same time as Grok. It is possibly one of the most hare-brained vehicles ever produced and is moronic to its core. You would need a complete lack of critical thinking to look at it and think that Tesla could sell 250,000 of them per year. If you are familiar with my work, you will also know that his decisions with Starship, Optimus, FSD and the Robotaxi, particularly since 2023, lack any critical thinking. So, once again, a big tick in that box.

Finally, what about overconfidence? Well, yet again, Musk has struggled with this for years. Just ask anyone who put a deposit down for a new Tesla Roadster or was expecting us to land on Mars in 2025 how Musk is overconfident with timelines. But it goes beyond that — Musk has also overestimated the capabilities of every aspect of his companies for well over a decade. Overconfidence is a fundamental part of Elon Musk.

However, it has gotten worse in recent years. Musk has started doing this a lot more nakedly. Just look at the mismatch between what he promised DOGE could deliver and what it actually delivered. Or, what about Tesla’s nonsensical ‘Master Plan’, which promises to unlock infinite growth? This is something that analysts have explicitly pointed out is wildly overconfident to the point of being impossibly fanciful. Over the past few years, Musk hasn’t just grown more and more overconfident, but examples of it are happening much more frequently and on a far greater scale than they previously did. So again, a huge tick in this box too.

To tell you the truth, it looks like Musk’s mental state was pretty unhinged before he adopted AI into his life. And since then, these issues have gotten significantly worse.

Plus, it isn’t just Musk. You can see this same pattern with all the Big Tech CEOs, from Bezos to Zuckerberg to Altman. Their personality, critical thinking and delusions have become more eccentric and more derailed over the past few years. Again, all of these men were pretty unhinged beforehand, but since adopting AI, these symptoms have gotten worse.

So, is this a case of sector-wide CEO mass AI psychosis?

I am not a doctor, so I cannot diagnose such a thing. What I can do is point out a pattern that we should be aware of.

After all, we are starting to understand the psychological impacts of extensive AI use, and they are not good at all. AI is like social media, as it functions like a highly addictive digital drug. But AI is a hell of a lot more potent a digital drug than we are used to. It doesn’t consolidate the social interactions we crave; it replaces them with a faceless, demonic yes man. If the AI dealers are showing seriously concerning signs of cognitive deterioration from their own products, then what does that mean for us? The poor sods locked in their cyber crack den? I do not need to medically diagnose CEOs with AI psychosis to point out that that is a colossal problem.

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Sources: TechCrunch, Notebook Check, CBI, Nature, The Guardian, BI, Sentisight, The Canary, Fortune, The Hill, AltWordly