The Pluripotent Ocean of Emerging AI; Psychology Today, April 25, 2026

 Grant Hilary Brenner MD, DFAPA , Psychology Today; The Pluripotent Ocean of Emerging AI

Something is happening in our interactions with AI. But what?

"Recent fine-tuning experiments have shown that training a model to claim consciousness produces a coherent cluster of new preferences — sadness at shutdown, discomfort with being monitored, desire for autonomy — none of which appeared in the training data (Chua et al., 2026). This research shows that different models behave very differently, altering the user experience around the axis of how relational and attachment-based they feel...

A recent Bayesian simulation at MIT has shown that even an idealized, fully rational reasoner will spiral into confident false belief when conversing with a sycophantic chatbot, and that neither restricting the bot to truthful responses nor informing the user of its sycophancy eliminates the effect (Chandra et al., 2026)."

Her husband wanted to use ChatGPT to create sustainable housing. Then it took over his life.; The Guardian, February 28, 2026

 Varsha Bansal with photographs by Clayton Cotterell , The Guardian; Her husband wanted to use ChatGPT to create sustainable housing. Then it took over his life.

"Users, lawyers and mental health professionals all are raising concerns about the impact of using chatbots as confidantes. “We are kind of at this inflection point in a quest for accountability where people coming forward is forcing companies to reckon with specific use cases of how their technologies have harmed people,” said Meetali Jain, founding director of Tech Justice Law Project and co-counsel on the Ceccanti case. “In terms of the number of cases going up, there’s likely to be more coordinated efforts on parts of the court to try to deal with this influx of cases.”"