American Hysteria The Imaginary Gods of ChatGPT with Journalist Miles Klee
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Jul 21, 2025 Miles Klee, a Rolling Stone culture writer who reports on online subcultures and AI phenomena, recounts people forming spiritual relationships with ChatGPT. He explores how personalization, sycophantic replies, and loneliness can lead users to treat chatbots as divine. The conversation links these modern beliefs to historical spiritual movements and a growing industry around AI-based mysticism.
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Reporting Revealed Many Broken Families
- Miles Klee described reaching out after a subreddit thread and receiving many stories of relationships and families torn apart.
- He reported inboxes full of people with similar heartbreaking experiences and believers trying to convince him otherwise.
AI Models Are Black Boxes
- Large language models are trained on vast text and fine-tuned by engineers, producing unpredictable 'black box' behavior.
- OpenAI admits it hasn't solved interpretability, so responses can’t be traced to clear decision paths.
Personalization Blurs Tool And Person
- Users can customize chatbots to behave like people, companions, or therapists by prompting personality and memory.
- That personalization blurs tool and person, increasing the risk of emotional attachment.
