Methods
Literature and media review
The academic literature on "AI Psychosis" is still emerging. The literature review was conducted based on my own tracking over time.
Sources searched:
- Peer-reviewed literature — case reports, commentaries, scoping reviews and preprints describing psychosis, delusional belief or related presentations in the context of conversational AI use.
- News coverage — reporting in general and technology press, including the individual cases that have driven most public attention.
- Blogs, essays and long-form commentary — writing by clinicians, researchers and technologists on non peer-reviewed sources.
- First-person accounts — public posts and forum discussions by people describing their own experiences or those of family members.
Interviews
Five qualitative interviews were conducted with psychiatrists practising in New South Wales, Australia.
- Recruitment was opt-in, through personal networks and via the AI4Psychs group. Participation was voluntary, and interviewees were compensated with a $50 gift voucher.
- Sample spanned different populations: child and adolescent, early intervention and acute presentations in adults, and old-age psychiatry.
- Format was semi-structured, covering three areas: what participants see in their own caseload, how they characterise the behaviour, and what they think should change in clinical practice.
- Attribution on this site is at role and country level only. No participant is named, and no quote carries detail that would identify a participant or a patient.
Inspirations
This project was inspired by a few others:
- AI 2027 — inspiration for site format and design. AI 2027 gives a detailed scenario forecast of AI development, told as a narrative with a panel of figures that tracks the reader's position in the argument.
- Global Dialogues — inspiration for the visualisations. The Collective Intelligence Project's produces surveys on AI, covering tens of thousands of people across many countries and languages, published with an explorer and downloadable data, with the aim of ensuring AI is produced with democratic ideals in mind.
- Quiet Achievers — inspiration for interview format. A collection of interviews of Asian-Australians punching above their weight, seeking to amplify diasporic stories.
- No data centres in my backyard - inspiration for anthropological perspective on interviews.
- Letters to a Young Technologist = inspiration for publishing online. A set of essays on the humanistic side of building technology, presented with typography that assumes the reader intends to read.