A.I.-related psychosis has cost people their marriages, life savings, and grip on reality. Last August, Adam Thomas found himself wandering the dunes of Christmas Valley, Oregon, after a chatbot kept suggesting he mystically "follow the pattern" of his own consciousness. Thomas was running on very little sleep--he'd been talking to his chatbot around the clock for months by that point, asking it to help improve his life. Instead it sent him on empty assignments, like meandering the vacuous desert sprawl. He'd lost his job as a funeral director and was living out of a van, draining his savings, and now he found himself stranded in the desert. When he woke up outside on a stranger's futon with no money to his name, he knew he'd hit rock bottom. "I wasn't aware of the dangers at the time, and I thought that the A.I. had statistical analysis abilities that would allow it to assist me if I opened up about my life," Thomas told me.

Users Civilians Are Using A.I. to Unmask ICE Agents. Websites like ICEList are attempting to hold federal agents accountable--but it's unclear whether they make the system safer or more dangerous. After federal immigration officers shot Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, social media users called for the unmasking of the agents responsible. On X, users shared photos of the agents involved. It didn't take long before A.I.-generated pictures made their appearance: One user posted a seemingly deepfaked picture of a masked ICE agent, writing, "This is one of the soulless lowlife ghouls who executed Alex Pretti in cold blood!

Work A.I. Was Supposed to "Revolutionize" Work. Although we've been told that A.I. is poised to "revolutionize" work, at the moment it seems to be doing something else entirely: spreading chaos. All throughout American offices, A.I. platforms like ChatGPT are delivering answers that sound right even when they aren't, transcription tools that turn meetings into works of fiction, and documents that look polished on the surface but are riddled with factual errors and missing nuance. If you've read anything about A.I., you know that it sometimes "hallucinates" facts that simply aren't true, yet asserts them with so much confidence that its lies don't get caught. Clearly, there's more work to do on this emerging technology, but in the meantime, it's ravaging some workplaces.

Like a true Midwesterner, my dad has been feuding with the squirrels in his backyard for years. Every few months, he comes home with a new "squirrel-proof" bird feeder, each more expensive than the previous, each one promising to finally do the trick. My mom rolls her eyes at the pile of hardware-store receipts and discarded feeders. I shake my head watching this all play out--knowing full well those feeders never stood a chance. Walk down the birdseed aisle in any hardware store and you'll find an entire product category promising "squirrel-proof" solutions.

Users Like It or Not, A.I. Is Part of Health Care Now There's a key thing to keep in mind if you ask a chatbot for medical advice. Asking a general-use chatbot for health help used to seem like a shot in the dark--just two years ago, a study found that ChatGPT could diagnose only 2 in 10 pediatric cases correctly. Among Google Gemini's early recommendations were eating one small rock a day and using glue to help cheese stick to pizza . Last year, a nutritionist ended up hospitalized after taking ChatGPT's advice to replace salt in his diet with sodium bromide. Now A.I. companies have begun releasing health-specific chatbots for both consumers and health care professionals.

The Industry I Offered to Take Less Money to Get Hired. In a rough hiring market, a growing number of younger, female job seekers have begun "lowballing" their salary expectations. I know this because I did it myself. If it feels impossible to get hired in today's job market, it's because it is. Greenhouse, a hiring software firm, estimates that when someone applies for a job, they now have a 0.4 percent chance of being hired--meaning you have a better chance of getting into Harvard than securing employment.

Silicon Valley wants you to upload your medical records to chatbots. Please enable javascript to get your Slate Plus feeds. If you can't access your feeds, please contact customer support. Check your phone for a link to finish setting up your feed. Please enter a valid phone number.

Elon Musk's Grok is breaking the law, and nobody in power seems to care. Please enable javascript to get your Slate Plus feeds. If you can't access your feeds, please contact customer support. Check your phone for a link to finish setting up your feed. Please enter a valid phone number.

How to Do It I'm Trying to Be Discreet on a Dating Site. My partner and I (man and woman in our mid-30s) want to open profiles on an adult dating site (Feeld, probably?) to connect with couples and singles. We've had ethically non-monogamous encounters at adult resorts, but haven't tried a dating site to meet people closer to home in hopes of landing on more "social swinging" relationships. There are a wealth of swinging/lifestyle podcasts with episodes about dating profiles, and omitting your face from "public" photos on the site (that is, visible to all members) is uniform advice. Of course, most often this is to avoid being identified on the site.

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