The Download: tripping with AI, and blocking crawler bots

A growing number of people are using AI chatbots as "trip sitters"--a phrase that traditionally refers to a sober person tasked with monitoring someone who's under the influence of a psychedelic--and sharing their experiences online. It's a potent blend of two cultural trends: using AI for therapy and using psychedelics to alleviate mental-health problems. But this is a potentially dangerous psychological cocktail, according to experts. While it's far cheaper than in-person psychedelic therapy, it can go badly awry. Cloudflare will now, by default, block AI bots from crawling its clients' websites The news: The internet infrastructure company Cloudflare has announced that it will start blocking AI bots from visiting websites it hosts by default.