It’s Obviously the Chatbots

There’s little doubt at this point…

I.

This morning, it was no more than 6 or 7 am — I’m trying to wake up early now that school is back and summer is 360 days away — I heard a man running and screaming. I’d blame it on him, my burnt coffee, but actually it was my relentless mind at work: “I’ve seen those symptoms before,” I thought, “this must be that ChatGPT-induced psychosis everyone talks about.”

I took out the phone and, opening one of those plain-text editors, I started typing. There it was, my coffee silently burning in the stove (I own an Italian machine), as I churned out what promised to be a bomb. Maybe not for the New Yorker; this was, after all, at some suburb south of Madrid (kind of a commuter town), but perhaps for the New York Times, which, for some reason, loves these ChatGPT-blaming hit pieces.

“The AI craze has arrived in Spain,” the title read. “This morning I saw a man running and screaming, which is a new high in the unprecedented wave of ChatGPT-induced psychosis that, by all accounts, is now spreading into ordinary life. Experts warn that such episodes, once confined to late-night bedrooms, are now manifesting on train platforms, supermarket aisles, and walkable public squares.”