Dr. Alexandre Hudon, a Medical psychiatrist, clinician-researcher and clinical assistant professor in the department of psychiatry and addictology at the Université de Montréal spoke with the program about the potential interplay between psychosis and generative AI, a topic he also explored in an article in The Conversation.
“ Psychosis is a state where a person will lose contact with shared reality,” he said.
Hudon says it’s really important for people to understand that psychosis itself is not a personality flaw, or a lack of intelligence or a problem with cognition, but rather a brain-mind state that can affect anyone under certain specific conditions.
“It’s mostly a stress related state, so people they have a genetic vulnerability to experience psychosis,” he said, adding that people don’t necessarily know they are vulnerable to psychosis before they experience it.
“But what we know is that if you put someone with, like a certain number of stressors, they’re gonna, at some point experience a psychosis if I don’t remove these stressors,” he said. “This state can be resolved because even if it’s chronic or if it’s induced or something, that’s very acute, there are ways to resolve a psychosis state. There are certain triggers. We need to identify these triggers and we need to give the appropriate treatments.”
Hudon said those treatments can involve medications in cases of chronic conditions, or psycho-therapeutic treatments for substance use disorder in cases of substance induced psychosis.
“Keep in mind that it has nothing to do with you, your identity, your intelligence, it’s really something that’s biological.”
Hudon says the term AI psychosis, isn’t a formal diagnosis.
“ It’s really more of a clinical or descriptive term that is being used to describe situations where interaction with AI systems appears to trigger, worsen or even shape psychotic symptoms in vulnerable individuals,” he said.
“ The AI itself does not really create psychosis out of nowhere, but it does amplify existing vulnerabilities or reinforce certain delusional beliefs or blur reality boundaries and things like that.”
Listen to the full interview about to hear Hudon share examples of what this could look like in practice, how he’s taking it into account in his practice, and what he thinks people need to keep in mind of AI in light of the issue.
Apple Podcasts
Spotify
YouTube