The moderators of a pro-artificial intelligence Reddit community announced that they have been quietly banning “a bunch of schizoposters” who believe “they’ve made some sort of incredible discovery or created a god or become a god,” highlighting a new type of chatbot-fueled delusion that started getting attention in early May.
The Internet is a pretty big place. There’s no such thing as an idea that is too stupid. There’s always at least a few people who will turn that idea into a central tenet of their life. It could be too stupid for 99.999% of the population, but that still leaves about 5 000 people who are totally into it.
And the glory of the interwebz is that those 5000 people are bound to find each other and start a movement around it, where just 25 years ago they would have been laughed out of the local pub as a raving idiot…
And that’s exactly why we have flat-earthers, antivaxxers and “truthers” of various kinds. Although, due to the same phenomenon, we also have communities like !WhatsThisRock@lemmy.world, !capybara@lemmy.smeargle.fans, !NatureIsMetal@kbin.social, !captionthis@hilariouschaos.com, !HandmadeMarketplace and so many other interesting and quirky places. You win some, you loose some.