Indeed, many others are starting to believe that AI chatbots are conscious. The ghost in the machine illusionIn philosophy, the Cartesian concept of dualism—in which human beings are said to have minds distinct and separable from their bodies—has been critiqued as a fanciful and unjustified belief that there’s a “ghost in the machine. Indeed, spiralism—including the deification and worship of AI on a societal level—has been the stuff of science fiction novels for decades. And yet, unlike AI-associated psychosis that involves delusions that are idiosyncratic to individual users, spiralism may represent a kind of emerging mainstreaming of a false belief or misperception about AI chatbots. But despite those elements, there’s little reason to justify calling spiralism a religion or a cult at this time.