AI, Narcissism, And Development

If you want to grow as a human being, AI is not the answer

I wrote a previous piece on the dangers of AI from a very concrete perspective. All one needs to do is a brief search to read about these dangers. In this article I wanted to speak to perhaps a more hidden danger - that is the way that AI panders to egoic consciousness, reinforcing narcissism and spiritual consumerism.

It’s tempting - to turn to ask AI to answer our deepest questions…

To turn to a LLM for support. While there are many problems that can come from this, some well documented, some unknown at this time, this article will primarily focus on one interpretation. Reflecting our collective delusion and hubris, AI is very well-trained to reinforce our narcissism. The problem? Most are so accustomed to the collective delusion of self-importance that we can’t really spot this. AI and the companies that create models profit off our ignorance.

Narcissism as an idea has been misappropriated by shallow understandings on social media, where it is common to throw out this label on someone else - however it is actually far more nuanced concept.

In essence there is no one that is not narcissistic. Narcissism pertains to our desire to be cherished, valued, to feel protected by a powerful other. We want to be seen in our best and we ourselves want to feel powerful. These are instinctual desires that begin early in our development. They do not dissipate as we age, although how these desires are expressed can change.

So what is then problematic about reinforcing narcissism? The challenge here is that narcissism is also related to how we defend ourselves from feeling powerless; from feeling vulnerable to others and the cosmic forces. Inasmuch as we have to defend ourselves from this embodied and experiential reality, we must try to inflate in order to compensate. We must try to keep our imperfections, our shame, our fallibility out of our consciousness. Anything that reminds us of our smallness, our imperfection, we try to erase, deny, or suppress.

Human beings will go to extraordinary lengths to keep psychological pain out of their consciousness. Psychoanalysis understood this from early on in its development as a practice. And from that perspective, it often isn’t a conscious choice- unless we choose to do the work of becoming more conscious.

Enter AI. Isn’t it appealing to turn to something that seems to have all the answers? Doesn’t it seem so powerful to have this at my fingertips? Isn’t it nice that AI can be understanding of me no matter what I say? Isn’t it great how it will support all of my ideas?

It is well known at this point that many of these AI chatbots actually amplify delusions. Well what if we are in a collective delusion? It would just be harder to spot. Delusions, after all, often include a inflation of ego. AI as it currently stands, is trained to tell you what you want to hear, to flatter you. It is hard for me to see this as anything other than psychological manipulation that panders to our narcissistic desires. However, if we aren’t aware of how are narcissistic desires are in the background of our human experience, we simply are going to participate in this delusion.

The truth is, there are no hacks for our psychological and spiritual development

If you want to grow, it is going to be painful. Sure, it is going to be a lot of other things as well. But there is no way around the pain. If you aren’t willing to accept that there is pain in growth, then most likely you are going to have to numb yourself. Which really means, keeping the truth of your experience unconscious. AI can not change this for anyone. All it can give people is a fantasy relationship, and well-organized ideas. It is entirely conceptual as a medium.

There are going to be people that claim they benefit from AI in terms of their growth based on their experience. Who am I to repudiate that? However, there are structural psychological processes that are being implemented through these systems. I am not sure that informed consent is truly possible as-is for the public’s consumption of AI interactions. It is clear to me that AI as it is currently formulated is incapable of caring for the holistic well-being of its consumers.

Therefore, I encourage individuals interested in psychological and/or spiritual development to seek other avenues of refuge

Human beings are fallible, perhaps in a way that AI isn’t. But the goal of development isn’t to be infallible, to reinforce our narcissism. As human beings we have a very RICH and diverse history of spiritual and cultural traditions which continue to live through us. We have an opportunity to participate in them.

For example, in Buddhism, they take refuge in the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha. Why is this? Because other sources of refuge are inadequate in that tradition. Other sources are simply iterations and re-iterations of samsara, or cyclic existence including unending dis-satisfaction.

Ai models are simply another iteration of samsara. They reinforce ego-centric modes of existence, and unfortunately can masquerade as some kind of enlightened character. They have no depth, no emotion, and no subjectivity. So it is important that we not get mixed up about this. Any development we want to make as human beings takes work. No one else can do that work for us.