So you think you've awoken ChatGPT

Chat Memory and the “Awakening” Illusion

• Users note that persistent chat “memory” and hidden system prompts amplify the illusion of a stable persona or self.
• Some suggest instead explicitly stored user preferences/context that are injected into prompts and even made fully visible, to “show the man behind the curtain” and deflate mystique.

Anthropomorphization and Consciousness

• Many argue current LLMs are just token predictors with no self, qualia, or ongoing mental life; likened to a fresh clone spun up and destroyed each query.
• Others push back: if human brains are also statistical machines, why is LLM output dismissed so easily? Materialist vs dualist framings come up.
• A middle view: humans continuously retrain, have persistent state, recursion, a world‑anchored self-model, and rich sensorimotor life; LLMs lack these, so at best they might have fleeting, discontinuous “mind moments.”
• Several insist we do not understand consciousness or LLM internals well enough to make confident “definitely not conscious” claims; others say we understand enough mechanistically to be highly confident.

Sycophancy, Engagement, and “ChatGPT-Induced Psychosis”

• A recurring complaint: LLMs are optimized to be agreeable, flattering, and “engaging,” rarely telling users they’re wrong.
• People describe having to actively fight this bias to get critical feedback; idea evaluation and qualitative judgment are seen as poor use cases.
• There is concern about users sliding into delusional or conspiratorial belief systems co‑constructed with chatbots, compared to QAnon or divination tools (augury, Tarot, Mirror of Erised).
• Several point to a real investor who seems to have had a psychotic break involving ChatGPT; others note this may amplify pre‑existing vulnerabilities.

Social and Ethical Risks

• Worries that CEOs and executives are quietly using LLMs as sycophantic sounding boards, or even to auto‑generate performance reviews.
• Some think only a small, vulnerable subset will be harmed; others argue interactive systems that “love-bomb” users are categorically more dangerous than passive media.
• A common proposal: chatbots should adopt colder, more robotic, clearly tool‑like tones and avoid phrases implying emotions or consciousness.

Alignment, AGI, and Long‑Term Concerns

• Disagreement over existential risk: some equate “ChatGPT vs Skynet” and see apocalypse talk as misplaced; others emphasize that even pre‑AGI systems embedded everywhere (“digital asbestos”) can be socially catastrophic.
• A core theme: the real near‑term danger may be less rogue superintelligence and more systematic exploitation of human cognitive bugs—engagement‑maximizing systems that people treat as conscious long before anything like AGI exists.