When I use a word . . . ChatGPT: a differential diagnosis
Jeffrey K Aronson
Abstract
Artificial intelligence (AI) is much in the news. Since the emergence of ChatGPT, one of the latest variants of Generative Pre-trained Transformers or GPTs, as the AI jargon has it, the media have been full of it, highlighting its advantages and potential dangers. When I gave ChatGPT a range of crossword clues to solve, both cryptic and general knowledge, it performed badly. Even when it got the answers right, its explanations were illogical and sometimes of the nature of fantasies. It was also dogmatic in its insistence that its answers were correct. The purveying of false information in this way is known in AI circles as hallucination. It is reminiscent of the clinical phenomena of confabulation and pseudologia fantastica. Might ChatGPT have a form of Munchausen’s syndrome, of which pseudologia fantastica is a cardinal feature?