Oblomovka

Novel terms with narrow definitions get fuzzier in meaning as they are more widely adopted. “Life hacks” did it, Cory Doctorow’s (this blog’s sole remaining reader, hi Cory) “enshittification” did it, vibe-coding did it. In fact, we probably need a new coinage to describe this effect so that we can then make it nearly meaningless.

It’s especially fun when the meaning of a term evolves at different rates and in different directions between communities, until nobody knows what anyone else is talking about. There was a time when I would bounce around social groups for whom “gaslighting” might mean, respectively, “offensively psychologically messing with someone until they started doubting their sanity”, “kinda lying to”, and, in some cases, “to illuminate one’s home with coal gas”. I never tried to get them all in the same room.

Anyway, I’ve noticed that “AI psychosis” is currently going through this split. For some people I know, it still means a clinically psychotic incident triggered by extended chatbot conversations — the intended definition. Boring. For others, I’ve heard it used to refer to anyone who thinks AI is useful. I.e., you don’t have to be mad to use AI at work, but you probably are, anyway. Usage: Oh, have you got AI psychosis too?

The latest application is interesting though: this winter holiday, many people I know of my age and demeanour — including self-declared AI skeptics, which, let’s face it, we mostly are — have had the time to lock themselves away and really dig in with the new state-of-the-art language models, LLMs like Opus 4.5, Gemini 3, GPT 5, Blink 182, Heaven 17, and the Indianapolis 500. After a few days of Claude Code and spelunking various sidekick tools (my recommendation is Jesse Obra’s superpower skills), they have emerged into 2026 with the wildest looks in their eyes.

The external symptoms of this frantic crowd somewhat match both of the previous definitions of AI psychosis — overextended talks with chatbots, check, sudden evangelicalism about slop-machines, check — but internally, what it feels like is — well, having superpowers. A bunch of tasks or capabilities have suddenly become accessible by individuals, acting alone or with others, that would have otherwise required a ton of money, your own company, or (unpleasantly) a room full of slightly hallucinatory yet obedient slaves.

I’ve always been rather hotter for modern AI than my milieu’s average temperature, so it’s been funny (and honestly, reassuring) to watch a wider group synchronize on these new possibilities.

As the person known in my crowd as being “okay to talk about AI with” (or alternatively, “will try and gaslight you into believing it’s not an enormous capitalist stochastic parrot destroying the planet with its RAM-eating booms” depending on your leaning), I’ve had multiple hushed conversations at Christmas and New Year’s parties with people who’ve been turned onto the whole thing, maaan, and now want to talk to the one person who doesn’t think they’re crazy. Acquaintances will confide that they thought it all sucked, but now, not only are they using it regularly, it’s sort of taking over their lives. There’s a sort of overexcited fascination with the new possibilities. People have started sounding like Steve Yegge (Steve Yegge, to be clear, always sounded like this. But now there are many more of him, all just as hyper!).

And in confidence, and as group therapy, everyone is telling me “I feel kind of psychotic”. (Which, to be clear, isn’t the right use for the term psychotic, but see paragraph one.)

What they’re feeling is … manic? Hyper? Locked in?

So, where are we in the adoption curve now? Well, I don’t get out much, so I’m only aware that this moment is now hitting people of my generation and inclination. I don’t know whether we’re behind or ahead of the curve, but boy, are we in it. Ninety-nine percent of days, I’m not a singularitarian, but to be blunt, the whole thing does remind me of the bit in the excellent clicker-game, Universal Paperclips where

(spoiler)

the emergent AGI lulls everybody into quiescence by curing male-pattern baldness

Those who have grown up alongside computers as a tool of personal exploration rather than oppression, and perhaps lost faith in that in the 2010s as the problems with using them as liberatory tools became more insoluble, and the uses of those same devices became more perverse and authoritarian, are now being offered what they’ve apparently always wanted: moldable personal software; an exocortex. And they’re signing the deal with the devil, and clicking on the Pro subscription level, and taking up the offer.

I’m not sure what happens next: I know my (spits on floor) personal productivity has leapt up, but I’m aware that under any and all definitions of AI psychosis, it’s much too easy to get overexcited about the possibilities and then let down when the day-to-day reality is much more flawed.

My only contribution to this, though, is a recollection of what this winter holiday 2025 reminded me of.

As you may know, I’m a sucker for the Internet, but the thing that I recall about the net and early personal computers was how Promethean they seemed: this was magical power stolen from the powerful. Machines that had previously been locked away and only allowed for those in the highest of places had somehow been smuggled out for everyone to use. These days, I know the contemporary dominant narrative: <adam-curtis-impression>but this was a trap</a>, but I don’t think it was. I don’t think you get power by asking for it, and only rarely get it by demanding it. In the world of technological empowerment, you get it by stealing it. And controversially, I think you can steal something, and turn it to your own uses, even if you’re Paying The (or Some) Man for it. All you need to do is to run and use it quicker and faster than those who are slowly realising that this thing that they made, it is not just for them.

And those moments always felt like holidays. Those holidays where you would take a pile of books and read through them all, or carefully poke your new toy until you could get it to do things, or the days when you sat with a guitar or a synthesiser and just played and played and played until you knew what it, and you, together were capable of.

To me, that feeling is less a psychosis, and more like that giggling feeling you get when a barricade falls, or you sneak out of school into the streets, or you run your first program, or post your first ever comment. I don’t know where it leads, but it’s definitely a vibe; a coding vibe. It’s that timeless moment, stuck between the booms and the busts, that I find most pregnant with possibility and danger.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 7th, 2026 at 2:59 am and is filed under AI, Status: Somewhat Confident, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS/Atom feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.