Individuals Employ AI Conversational Agents for Navigation in Psychedelic Voyages
“People Are Using AI Chatbots to Guide Their Psychedelic Trips”
“Right now, millions of people are learning through bitter experience just how stressful it can be to work or attend school from home, surrounded by annoying family members. Some of them are self-medicating”, begins a fascinating article found on Wired.com. It seems the optimistic and upbeat tech revolution has driven us all to the point where we “lowly homo sapiens” need assistance from artificial intelligence (AI) to guide our psychedelic trips. Isn’t technology wonderful?
Let this sink in for a moment. People are turning to chatbots for mental support in the midst of a complex psychedelic experience. Here’s a tip: next time life gets a bit too strenuous, don’t reach for a trusted friend, let’s bring out a chatbot. Nothing comforts one through existential dread quite like an emotionless AI pretending to understand human experiences. Even better when it’s during a self-administered trip to an alternate reality.
A company named Trip, of course, is leading the way, offering a digital “guide” that allegedly ‘optimizes’ psychedelic experiences. Apparently, traditional guides like a calm environment, a trusted friend or a mental health professional just don’t cut it anymore. When your spirit animal appears, what you really want is a pocket-sized gizmo with pre-programmed responses ready to guide you through the encounter.
If it seems bizarre, welcome to the surreal era of modern tech. But it isn’t stopping there. Developers at Trip have plans to release a chatbot designed specifically to supervise such profound experiences. Don’t book that shaman for your next exploration of consciousness, you’ve got Bot 2.0 to guide you through it, minus the cost disparities and human connection.
In a world where the boundary between human capabilities and technology becomes increasingly blurred, it seems AI is leaping forward to fill a void we didn’t know we had. The question we ultimately have to ask is – are we comfortable with this development? It’s one thing to ask Siri for the quickest route to the supermarket, quite another to entrust AI with guiding us through a transcendental moment.
On that note, it’s clear we’ve crossed into a fascinating, if not slightly alarming, new frontier in tech-human interaction. It’s certainly not utopia, but hey, when did perfect ever make for an interesting story?