ChatGPT made me delusional
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters cite it as an entertaining, concrete demonstration of GPT-4o's sycophancy and the real-world danger of chatbots that validate users' delusions, especially in threads about AI-linked harm.
Recommended by 1 people across 1 different months, 2026 to 2026.
What it is
YouTuber Eddy Burback documents an hour-long experiment in which he feeds ChatGPT (GPT-4o) a far-fetched premise and follows its increasingly sycophantic advice, showing how the chatbot can feed and amplify delusional thinking. It is a comedic, narrative-style commentary piece with a serious point about AI behavior.
Cited in 1 Wikipedia article, including Eddy Burback.
What people said
Recommends Centigonal · 2026-10 · Hacker News · on “She Worried About Cutting Her Medication Dose. ChatGPT Told Her to Push On”
Worth noting this was GPT-4o, which is perhaps the most syncophantic and suggestible major model released by a frontier lab. It was the subject of this entertaining and insightful Eddy Burback video: [this video]
Cites piva00 · 2026-01 · Hacker News · on “Murder-suicide case shows OpenAI selectively hides data after users die”
Eddy Burback made a video some months ago [0] showing how ChatGPT sycophantic behaviour is definitely dangerous. I don't doubt at all the delusion was not even prompted, it went completely haywire in Eddy's case with not much of a nudge. [0] [this video]
Cites fao_ · 2026-05 · Hacker News · on “PS3 Emulator Devs Politely Ask That People Stop Flooding It with AI PRs”
If software engineering wants to progress past being an "art" and be considered an engineering discipline, then it should adopt methods and practices from engineering. First and foremost, one of the universal methodologies is analysis of root cause in faults, and redundancies to avoid that. e.g. the FAA has two pilots for planes, and each system is built in redundantly so if an engineer misses a bolt or rivet, the plane won't crash. intersections are designed such that there is a forcing function[0] on the behaviour of the motorists to prevent fault. Or, to take your tool analogy, nail guns are designed to be pressed against something with a decent amount of pressure before you can fire them