> Biesma has asked himself why he was vulnerable to what came next. He was nearing 50. His adult daughter had left home, his wife went out to work and, in his field, the shift since Covid to working from home had left him feeling “a little isolated”. He smoked a bit of cannabis some evenings to “chill”, but had done so for years with no ill effects. He had never experienced a mental illness. Yet within months of downloading ChatGPT, Biesma had sunk €100,000 (about £83,000) into a business startup based on a delusion, been hospitalised three times and tried to kill himself.
This is almost too on-the-nose. I was already thinking about how we've become chill about drugs only to have moral panics about AI and social media, but I didn't expect to see a story about a drug user having a psychosis and blaming it on ChatGPT. And no, the fact that he was using cannabis for years "with no ill effects" doesn't mean that it didn't make him vulnerable.
> A logistic regression model gave an OR of 3.90 (95% CI 2.84 to 5.34) for the risk of schizophrenia and other psychosis-related outcomes among the heaviest cannabis users compared to the nonusers. Current evidence shows that high levels of cannabis use increase the risk of psychotic outcomes and confirms a dose-response relationship between the level of use and the risk for psychosis.[1]
Emphasis mine. I'm sure in many of the cases this study is based on, people had been using cannabis for years, while some other factor, a person, a hobby, an interest, an app, a website had only been part of their life for months. That doesn't mean the other factor was the real problem.
I’m no cannabis fan myself, but the above study you posted is heaviest use and includes schizophrenia, which a man in his 40s is not going to spontaneously develop (even with heavy use).
But of course using cannabis that promotes delusions with something that actively facilitates delusions is a bad combo
I am yet to meet a cannabis user that experienced psychosis. Very much all cannabis studies, especially published on .gov are biased and deeply flawed. Typically starting with a conclusion and then working backwards fitting the data without care whether it makes sense, as long as there is catchy headline confirming "Cannabis bad."
I'd say most first businesses fail the first time, the second time, the third time. Blaming personal failure on chat bot or drugs is very convenient and a way to "save face".