<![CDATA[I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them.]]>I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. I can't name any specific people because they include personal friends I deeply respect, but I worry about how this plays out.

I lived through the great MTBF vs MTTR (mean-time-between-failure vs. mean-time-to-recovery) reckoning of infrastructure during the transition to cloud and cloud automation. All those arguments are rearing their ugly heads again but now its... the whole software development industry (maybe the whole world, really).

It's frightening, because the psychosis folks operate under an almost absolute "MTTR is all you need" mentality: "its fine to ship bugs because the agents will fix them so quickly and at a scale humans can't do!" We learned in infrastructure that MTTR is great but you can't yeet resilient systems entirely.

The main issue is I don't even know how to bring this up to people I know personally, because bringing this topic up leads to immediately dismissals like "no no, it has full test coverage" or "bug reports are going down" or something, which just don't paint the whole picture.

We already learned this lesson once in infrastructure: you can automate yourself into a very resilient catastrophe machine. Systems can appear healthy by local metrics while globally becoming incomprehensible. Bug reports can go down while latent risk explodes. Test coverage can rise while semantic understanding falls. Changes happens so fast that nobody notices the underlying architecture decaying.

I worry.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/topic/55f77699-8649-41d0-a5f4-ad8c95f4c760/i-strongly-believe-there-are-entire-companies-right-now-under-heavy-ai-psychosis-and-its-impossible-to-have-rational-conversations-about-it-with-them.RSS for NodeThu, 11 Jun 2026 23:25:48 GMTFri, 15 May 2026 20:17:23 GMT60<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 07:32:15 GMT]]>@mitchellh I guess that's within the realm of what @pluralistic often refers to at "working well but failing badly"...

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://helvede.net/users/jwcph/statuses/116583087151085440https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://helvede.net/users/jwcph/statuses/116583087151085440Sat, 16 May 2026 07:32:15 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 07:28:50 GMT]]>@RebelGeek99 @mitchellh @DukeDuke

What you've just said....yes. Exactly that.

Yes.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/kaffando/statuses/116583073743515084https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/kaffando/statuses/116583073743515084Sat, 16 May 2026 07:28:50 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 07:26:00 GMT]]>@mitchellh I'm doing a PhD on the epistemic risks of LLMs. I used to work in industry and I see this too and it's so terrifying. Currently writing a paper looking at one of the mechanisms at play here, but how do we even talk to these people and get them help anymore? Especially when it's clear entire startups are affected.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/ambrosia_engine/statuses/116583062608514860https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/ambrosia_engine/statuses/116583062608514860Sat, 16 May 2026 07:26:00 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 07:14:11 GMT]]>@mitchellh@hachyderm.io Thanks for stating what many are seeing in our industry. Especially since your opinion bears a lot of weight.

I myself am trying to figure out how to voice concerns in the workplace and in the Open Source communities I participate in, while trying to not completely disregard the excitement people feel.

It becomes hard to argue with colleagues about the pros and cons of using LLMs in software engineering, when the CTO suggests an AI-first approach to anything, at any chance they get.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://ibe.social/notes/ambkrethsmhttps://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://ibe.social/notes/ambkrethsmSat, 16 May 2026 07:14:11 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 07:10:34 GMT]]>@mitchellh
In the 90s we only optimised to MTBF, MTTR wasn't considered terribly helpful. A software deployment could run for months without restarts or updates. But back then a person could hold an entire stack in their minds. I recall my first realisation of the total shift to MTTR with an ML based written record reader. We outsourced the ML, each instance could read only 1 record before dying. My boss was nonfussed, just restart it anew for every record... Infra is now just bubbles popping.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/TenPastTwo/statuses/116583001932054823https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/TenPastTwo/statuses/116583001932054823Sat, 16 May 2026 07:10:34 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 07:00:22 GMT]]>@unlofl @hopeless There's no fediverse downvote by design, and the upvote/like/star doesn't do very much either. You can block people who continually spout nonsense.]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://social.immibis.com/objects/91f757e2-6719-42a6-b839-2d8f42774845https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://social.immibis.com/objects/91f757e2-6719-42a6-b839-2d8f42774845Sat, 16 May 2026 07:00:22 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 06:59:09 GMT]]>@SpaceLifeForm @mitchellh "When the cloud is down, it's foggy" - some kind of strange metaphor or pun]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://social.immibis.com/objects/1dd1127a-7c2e-4d59-8a4d-c1d57e4dde18https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://social.immibis.com/objects/1dd1127a-7c2e-4d59-8a4d-c1d57e4dde18Sat, 16 May 2026 06:59:09 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 06:34:34 GMT]]>@pojntfx I lost a loved one to dementia, and have been saying for a while how similar LLM psychosis is to that experience.

https://hachyderm.io/@cczona/114618173190392133

https://hachyderm.io/@cczona/116019873544950215

They think they are fine, while the person you used to know is gradually replaced by someone unrecognisable. Professional de-skilling issues aside, a sadder dimension to me is how AI psychosis degrades not only cognition but also social skills. So relationships deteriorate too, and at scale that will ultimately become communities and solidarity deteriorating as well. It's been disturbing to see people I care about lose interest in connecting at a human level, while grasping for the empty flattery of a large language model. Is this our future, truly?

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/cczona/statuses/116582860386774832https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://hachyderm.io/users/cczona/statuses/116582860386774832Sat, 16 May 2026 06:34:34 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 06:34:13 GMT]]>@lizbian @mitchellh @briankrebs Yep, exactly my point since a pretty long time.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mamot.fr/users/KekunPlazas/statuses/116582859013322506https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mamot.fr/users/KekunPlazas/statuses/116582859013322506Sat, 16 May 2026 06:34:13 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 06:18:45 GMT]]>@mitchellh memories of the "microservices fix everything" brigade. We threw out easy integration testing and embraced distributed SPoFs

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://toot.community/users/tmcfarlane/statuses/116582798159931459https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://toot.community/users/tmcfarlane/statuses/116582798159931459Sat, 16 May 2026 06:18:45 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 05:16:33 GMT]]>@mitchellh does this mean you're going to remove the "maintainers are exempt" language from https://github.com/ghostty-org/ghostty/blob/main/AI_POLICY.md ?

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/nikclayton/statuses/116582553564806486https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/nikclayton/statuses/116582553564806486Sat, 16 May 2026 05:16:33 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 04:43:53 GMT]]>@pojntfx @mitchellh holy goats, hadn’t hear that dementia analogy before but that is exactly it. I’ve lost elder family to dementia and when you’ve lived with it you realize that it is so much more than “forgetting”, it is literal decay of executive, cognitive capability. Not sure i hould say thanks for sharing that, i’m now going to see it everywhere. 😳

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/johannab/statuses/116582425111607806https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://cosocial.ca/users/johannab/statuses/116582425111607806Sat, 16 May 2026 04:43:53 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 04:25:02 GMT]]>@hopeless Its a metaphor and the post explains their concern pretty well

Can anyone help me find the downvote button here? My fedi client still only has one for "fav"

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mstdn.social/users/unlofl/statuses/116582351018545411https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mstdn.social/users/unlofl/statuses/116582351018545411Sat, 16 May 2026 04:25:02 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 04:15:55 GMT]]>@mitchellh Let's hope OP never decides to get into politics. Because demonizing everyone who reached a different conclusion than him with "psychosis" came very naturally. There's no justification given for the use of the word in this context either.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/concern_troll

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/hopeless/statuses/116582315145325950https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mas.to/users/hopeless/statuses/116582315145325950Sat, 16 May 2026 04:15:55 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 03:28:16 GMT]]>@mitchellh I think you are on to something being up in corporate behaviour, I'm not sure if it's attributable directly to "AI psychosis" as much as companies leveraging the robots to serve their basest instincts.

You and I can look at a system like GitHub or Windows and say that it has gone to complete trash. We can say that the cost of the downtime (for us) exceeds the value of the new features coming in.

But that math appears to be different for their customers. We're not seeing a mass exodus from GH or from MS products. All of that MTTR math is proving out. Failures are way less costly than developers kept claiming. Shipping is way more important.

Corporations are finally unleashed to ship trash and keep collecting subscriptions at an unprecedented rate.

Line must go up 📈

I personally think this is all bad. But I don't know that it's "AI psychosis" rather than just basic "corporate psychosis".

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mstdn.ca/users/gatesvp/statuses/116582127823592773https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mstdn.ca/users/gatesvp/statuses/116582127823592773Sat, 16 May 2026 03:28:16 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 02:52:53 GMT]]>@mitchellh I toss the occasional "Where's your Ed At?" podcast their way. Sometimes the best grounding force is a Brit swearing in your ear for 40 minutes about trading made-up fart tokens.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://goingdark.social/ap/users/115857222608075799/statuses/116581988680768417https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://goingdark.social/ap/users/115857222608075799/statuses/116581988680768417Sat, 16 May 2026 02:52:53 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 02:45:02 GMT]]>@mitchellh

It's not "AI psychosis". It's just bad programmers and people who don't know anything about anything, and that suddenly has been revealed now that they don't have to pretend to do anything.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/richpuchalsky/statuses/116581957771755554https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/users/richpuchalsky/statuses/116581957771755554Sat, 16 May 2026 02:45:02 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 01:48:46 GMT]]>@mitchellh I used Claude today to verify a change I'd made to a piece of Python code. Instead of using a statically defined tuple of valid subclass names, it suggested using a pattern I found later on StackOverflow that it stated was "drift-proof" (which is what I wanted, to reduce toil in the code base.)

It offered me something that 1) failed right away due a missing import it didn't mention in its suggestion and 2) the code it suggested returned an empty tuple when I used the suggested pattern. I shrugged, and reverted to the manual method I had originally written.

Claude is arguably the most robust model for software engineering and I find it does dumb shit _all the fucking time_ ... and so many people just blithely assume it's right without checking.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mstdn.ca/ap/users/116213082989216869/statuses/116581736545744212https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mstdn.ca/ap/users/116213082989216869/statuses/116581736545744212Sat, 16 May 2026 01:48:46 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 01:22:01 GMT]]>@lizbian @mitchellh @briankrebs Prof. Michael Wooldridge has expressed clearly, for wider dissemination on his Royal Society lecture from February, many of the problems recapitulated in this thread; the zingers are 30m in or so and he flies cover very carefully at the start. This is where I'd point civilians. But the odd Condescending Wonka meme may help. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyyL0yDhr7I

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116175731239673526/statuses/116581631367916224https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116175731239673526/statuses/116581631367916224Sat, 16 May 2026 01:22:01 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 01:11:42 GMT]]>@mitchellh I have people I’ve been (or am) *very* close to I’ve had to say “we don’t talk about AI” with.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://social.europlus.zone/users/europlus/statuses/116581590800529426https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://social.europlus.zone/users/europlus/statuses/116581590800529426Sat, 16 May 2026 01:11:42 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 01:09:30 GMT]]>@pgoultiaev @mitchellh The updated EU Product Liability Directive 2025 explicitly assigns liability for induced, medically recognised, psychological damage, in the context of "AI" systems. There is a pseudo-religious sociological phenomenon occurring with regards to this technology. Neil Postman warned about this in "Technopoly". Ivan Illich proposed social strategies for actually dealing with and preventing it...

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116175731239673526/statuses/116581582174290962https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116175731239673526/statuses/116581582174290962Sat, 16 May 2026 01:09:30 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 01:07:30 GMT]]>@nickynah @briankrebs @mitchellh I have but dipped into Sokal and Bricmont's "Fashionable Nonsense: Postmodern Intellectuals' Abuse of Science" from 1999 on this point... the cult of market fundamentalism keeps betraying itself, and the "AI" pseudo-religion may yet cause capitalism to eat itself alive. This is where the existential risk lies. Not "AGI" or "ASI" fairy stories.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116175731239673526/statuses/116581574271016900https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116175731239673526/statuses/116581574271016900Sat, 16 May 2026 01:07:30 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 01:04:33 GMT]]>@landelare @mitchellh This is precisely why I prefix any and all LLM-originated outputs in my own working notes with "Parrot (Model name)" and believe me, more than once, I've caught e.g. Claude family models making wholly inappropriate Python API suggestions, betraying the model was mean-reverting to training set in its output token stream.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116175731239673526/statuses/116581562689125434https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116175731239673526/statuses/116581562689125434Sat, 16 May 2026 01:04:33 GMT<![CDATA[Reply to I strongly believe there are entire companies right now under heavy AI psychosis and its impossible to have rational conversations about it with them. on Sat, 16 May 2026 01:02:27 GMT]]>@lizbian @mitchellh @briankrebs Regarding the anthropomorphization argument: merely calling into question the nomenclature of "AI Alignment" is enough to trigger contempt/threat reactions in some "AI" proponents, betraying it has developed a pseudo-religious property. When people are unable to step to one side and consider the technology in its wider context, regardless of whether they were "one-shotting" code subsystems with e.g. GLM 5.1, demons form.

]]>https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116175731239673526/statuses/116581554450721495https://forum.fedi.dk/post/https://mastodon.social/ap/users/116175731239673526/statuses/116581554450721495Sat, 16 May 2026 01:02:27 GMT