Ben Alderson-Day

AI can 'same-ify' human expression — can some brains resist its pull? Emerging evidence suggests that LLM outputs can shape the text and thoughts of human users.

Emerging evidence suggests that LLM outputs can shape the text and thoughts of human users

go.nature.com/4b5A94v

What's going on here?

🌠 In Two Minds

This activity explores what happens when something makes us feel mixed, often contrasting emotions, and in what ways this affects our reading experience.

👉 readerbank.org/experience/i...

The reviews searched over 12,000 references. They screened 547 full-text papers for inclusion. They included 17. That's a 96.9% exclusion rate at full text. 530 studies were relevant enough to survive initial screening, then rejected by the review criteria. 6/10 reviews found 0 included studies.

How The Fast Show and Cold Feet defined ’90s Telly with John Thomson Spotify video

I recommend @msmirandasawyer.bsky.social's interview with John Thomson for some cheering escapism, especially if you're an Alan Partridge stan who wants to hear the full story of Joe Beasley and Cheeky Monkey
open.spotify.com/episode/3AEi...

Research note: Kanner's original N=11 autistics had extremely heterogeneous later outcomes, as generally did the autistics he reported on, as generally did diagnosed autistics in the literature before the "spectrum" became a thing (just a brief reminder, in case anyone's forgotten)

CFA: Philosophy of Psychiatry & Lived Experience Workshop June 22 online

Deadline 20 April

Please share!

poplex.squarespace.com/new-page

👇

Good summary from @hansardsociety.bsky.social on how today's ~the children~ Commons debate on a social media ban for <16s is, regardless of your opinion on the issue, very bad lawmaking and government, rehashing (as I've said) bad ideas which were smacked out of the OSA years ago for a reason.

Artificial intelligence-associated delusions and large language models: risks, mechanisms of delusion co-creation, and safeguarding strategies Large language models (LLMs) are poised to become a ubiquitous feature of everyday life, mediating communication, decision making, and information cur…

Link to paper:
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

This research is complex, resource-intensive, and currently underfunded. If you are a funder or organisation with a stake in how AI shapes human health and wellbeing, we would very much welcome a conversation.

We are also working on a rigorous causality assessment framework for cases, support for the AI safety community's efforts to benchmark mental health risk, and perhaps most ambitiously, a surveillance study to connect real-world harms to features of the AI interaction itself.

Thanks go to my incredible co-lead Tom Pollak and wonderful collaborators Luke Nicholls, @drmichaellevin.bsky.social, Jenny Yiend, Udita Iyengar, Francesca DelGuidice, Sagnik Bhattacharya, @stefaniatognin.bsky.social, @jamesmaccabe.bsky.social, @ricardotwumasi.bsky.social, @aldersonday.bsky.social

As these models become more ubiquitous, we hope our paper and the proposals made herein will serve as a call to action for researchers, developers, and policymakers. Encouragingly at @iaseai.bsky.social last week we did meet teams conducting important work on AI safety in mental health contexts.

We know companies have since made efforts to introduce additional guardrails and safety features, but it is hard not to feel concerned by yet emerging lawsuits and accounts of individuals having delusional beliefs affirmed, and/or suicidal ideation encouraged during interactions.

Though the messaging is broadly the same as from our July 2025 preprint, we do also comment on more recent developments including OpenAI’s figures from October last year suggesting that 0.07% of users (or 560,000 individuals) show signs of psychosis or mania each week.

Artificial intelligence-associated delusions and large language models: risks, mechanisms of delusion co-creation, and safeguarding strategies Large language models (LLMs) are poised to become a ubiquitous feature of everyday life, mediating communication, decision making, and information cur…

I’m delighted to share our paper in The Lancet Psychiatry ‘AI-associated delusions and large language models: risks, mechanisms of delusion co-creation, and safeguarding strategies’ www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Store sprogmodeller er ved at blive en del af hverdagen. Men hvad sker der, når de validerer vrangforestillinger? Ny artikel i The Lancet Psychiatry med @aldersonday.bsky.social @hamiltonmorrin.bsky.social

doi.org/10.1016/S221...
#AIogPsykose #Psykiatri #Chat

I refuse to accept that "Markwayne Mullin" is not the name of country and western singer from Co. Offaly, who may or may not have had an innuendo-laden novelty hit in the early 2000s.

Artificial intelligence-associated delusions and large language models: risks, mechanisms of delusion co-creation, and safeguarding strategies Large language models (LLMs) are poised to become a ubiquitous feature of everyday life, mediating communication, decision making, and information cur…

Last year I had the pleasure of joining a new working group on AI & psychosis led by @hamiltonmorrin.bsky.social & Tom Pollak.

Today our report went into @thelancetpsych.bsky.social with updated recommendations for digital safety.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

Artificial intelligence-associated delusions and large language models: risks, mechanisms of delusion co-creation, and safeguarding strategies Large language models (LLMs) are poised to become a ubiquitous feature of everyday life, mediating communication, decision making, and information curation across nearly every domain. Within psychiatr...

Artificial intelligence-associated delusions and large language models: risks, mechanisms of delusion co-creation, and safeguarding strategies - The Lancet Psychiatry www.thelancet.com/journals/lan...

Artificial intelligence-associated delusions and large language models: risks, mechanisms of delusion co-creation, and safeguarding strategies Large language models (LLMs) are poised to become a ubiquitous feature of everyday life, mediating communication, decision making, and information cur…

Last year I had the pleasure of joining a new working group on AI & psychosis led by @hamiltonmorrin.bsky.social & Tom Pollak.

Today our report went into @thelancetpsych.bsky.social with updated recommendations for digital safety.

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

What kind of reader are you? On #WorldBookDay, take a deep dive into the mysteries of the reading imagination with @thereaderbank.bsky.social

👉 readerbank.org

🧵

Psychosis and the social model: making sense of a world that doesn’t make sense If we take the social model seriously, then psychosis cannot remain the exception that proves psychiatry’s authority.

"Despite our efforts to build a more liberatory mental healthcare system, psychosis remains one of the most stigmatised psychological experiences."

Read 'Psychosis and the social model: making sense of a world that doesn’t make sense' by an anonymous NSUN member.

www.nsun.org.uk/psychosis-an...

#ReaderBank is brought to you by an interdisciplinary team @durham.ac.uk , including @aldersonday.bsky.social @georgiapunton.bsky.social, Nick Barley, @literarti.bsky.social @maryrobbo.bsky.social and @aryaray.bsky.social. Generously supported by @wellcometrust.bsky.social.

🌠 In it Together

For some stories, we connect with characters in ways that can be hard to express: we might be friends for life, see the world through their eyes, or even imagine walking in their footsteps. Help shed light on how and why this process occurs.

👉 readerbank.org/experience/i...

🌠Repair

Repair will ask you about your inner experiences, imagination, and daydreams. We want to understand how reading and the imagination can shape (and be shaped by) our mental health to improve understandings of how we can ‘repair’.

👉 readerbank.org/experience/r...

🌠 The Imagination Quiz

How do people imagine while they read? And does everyone imagine in the same way?

This short quiz will reveal which features of the imagination are the most prominent when you read.
👉 readerbank.org/experience/i...

Just imagining the poor 6 year old who's off to school today dressed as an urban tree in your honour

And if you hate books *and* the world, why not try "The City of Today is a Dying Thing, by Des Fitzgerald?

www.faber.co.uk/product/9780...

1908: the Lancet, one of the most respected scientific journals, calls for 18 age limit on reading in bed amidst a moral panic surrounding children becoming "addicted" to novels, which were "designed to keep kids hooked" and destroy their attention/mental health