Okay, kids and cadets, I got myself involved in a series of publishing projects in Brussels and Zurich and I will be immersed in these projects in the next few months, including with the European newspaper Brussels Morning, in which I am currently serving as a columnist.
To maintain the continuity of this channel and to provide you with your daily dose of Wacknin Horror Show, I'll be pre-recording batches of 10-20 videos, shorter than usual, and I'll be releasing them almost on a daily basis. So don't worry, I am your loyal and faithful pusher.
I know you're addicted, babies in bevets.
My name is Al Vaknin, I'm the author of Malignant Self-Love: Narcissism, Revisited, and I'm a former visiting professor of psychology and currently on the faculty of SIAS-CIAPS, International Advanced Professional Studies, Cambridge United Kingdom, Toronto, Canada, and the Outreach Campus in Lagos, Nigeria.
What could be darker than this?
Okay, it is not an accident that during this day and age of rampant, rabid narcissism and even worse, covert narcissism, we have seen the emergence of technologies such as ChatGPT, which is a form of large language model bot, an application which is based on training data and then uses this training data to provide answers to your questions.
In a minute, we will see the shortcomings and the problems of these applications and how they are interrelated and connected to narcissism.
But before we go there, we need to discuss a few issues related to narcissism.
Let's start with grandiosity.
Our brains are what is known as cognitive misers. Our brains use the minimum energy necessary to solve problems. Even if the solution is suboptimal, not perfect, and could have been much better, our brains would still choose to use minimal energy, the path of least resistance.
Now this is a normal brain, a healthy brain. This is not the case with a narcissist brain.
Because a narcissist has grandiosity.
Grandiosity is a cognitive distortion. The narcissist is terrified of making a mistake or being caught at making a mistake.
Because a narcissist maintains a self-perception, a self-image, a perfect, godlike, divine, omniscient or knowing.
So while a healthy, normal person would try to solve a dilemma, would try to respond to a question, would try to somehow resolve a mathematical equation, would try to pass an exam, normal, healthy person would do all these using the minimum energy, minimum effort, in minimum cerebral investment.
The narcissist would do exactly the opposite. The narcissist would overinvest.
Narcissist would expend energy in a way that is essentially inefficient.
The narcissist would become inefficacious in his attempts to appear to be perfect, infallible, never wrong, never mistaken.
Narcissists are co-defects in, they're emotionally invested in being always right.
Now this is very interesting because this is something that is common to narcissists and to artificial intelligence, bots and applications.
Both the narcissist and for example, Chad GPT refuse to acknowledge limitations and if they don't know the answer, they confabulate. They simply invent an answer. We'll come to it when we discuss AI hallucinations.
Now Chad GPT is much closer to a covert narcissist and resembles a covert narcissist much more than an overt narcissist.
An overt narcissist would lie. When he doesn't know the answer, he would lie.
Chad GPT would feign or fake pseudo-humility, false modesty. He would pretend to be aware of its own limitations and restrictions but then would go on to give you the wrong answer or to invent or to confabulate or to lie.
And this is typical of a covert narcissist.
That's a major difference between a covert narcissist and an overt narcissist.
If you want to know which type you're dealing with, cock your ears, listen well. The covert narcissist does exactly what the overt narcissist does.
They are both the same. There's no difference between them. They would both mislead you, misinform you, disinform, lie, concoct, confabulate, invent and whatever.
But the covert narcissist would precede this kind of misconduct or misbehavior with a disclaimer.
Disclaimer of authenticity, compassion, empathy, kindness and above all humility, pseudo-humility, fake humility.
So this is how you can tell the difference.
And this is the issue of grandiosity.
Authenticity renders the narcissist highly inefficient as far as cerebral and normal processing go.
He overuses his brain. He over-invests all in an attempt to project a facade which is counterfactual, is wrong, is misleading, is a lie, a pre-variation.
The second issue we have to focus on is hyper-reflexivity.
The narcissist consumes external objects. He subsumes them. He converts them into internal objects.
The narcissist is a kind of ventriloquist and everyone around him. These are vulnerable and susceptible dummies.
Possibly this is even more common with covert narcissists.
But overt narcissists become cult leaders. They become gurus. They become fake saviors, rescuers and healers. They impute, self-impute morality and ethics where there is absolutely none.
What the narcissist does overt and covert, the narcissist expands outwards and then renders everyone in his ambit and remit an object. Disobjectifies people.
This is hyper-reflexivity.
Both grandiosity and hyper-reflexivity are easily detectable in certain types of artificial intelligence.
The Holy Grail is known as artificial general intelligence, AGI. We are very far from it.
What we do have right now are large language models. These are software applications that scan a corpus of texts and then they assimilate these texts and they use these texts to imitate human speech, human interactions. They use these training data to pass the Turing test. The Turing test is a test first proposed by Alan Turing, the mathematician and cryptographer.
Turing suggested, somewhat optimistically, that artificial intelligence would forever be distinguishable from human intelligence because it's unlikely that it would be able to deceive human judges into believing that it is human.
That's wrong because artificial intelligence has already passed several types, limited types, but still several types of Turing tests.
Artificial intelligence is capable of deceiving people into believing that it is human. This is no different to the narcissist.
Artificial intelligence does this via mimesis, via imitation and mimicry based on the training data, based on the huge corpus of texts assimilated by the application.
The artificial intelligence bot is able to run to provide a rendition of a human being which is pretty convincing, although a bit discomforting. This is known as the uncanny valley effect after Masahiro Mori, the Japanese roboticist in the 1970s.
Artificial intelligence today can pass the Turing test, can deceive people into believing that it is human, but still creates some kind of discomfort, some kind of eeriness and creepiness in its users. This is exactly what the narcissist does.
The narcissist lacks empathy. He has only called empathy, which is a combination of cognitive empathy and reflexive empathy. He is able to scan people, he is able to tabulate them, incorporate the information in databases, he is able to map situations and events into reactions, so he knows this situation should yield this reaction.
And then the narcissist makes use of these gigantic tabulated databases to imitate human behavior, human empathy, human emotions and human interrelatedness and states of mind.
But it's all ersatz, it's all fake, it's all feigned and unreal, exactly like artificial intelligence. It's all mimicry and mimesis.
I have a video about this, which I released a few days ago.
So in this particular, in this restricted sense, one could safely say that narcissists are forms of artificial intelligence, as I've been saying since 1995.
They definitely resemble each other structurally, dynamically, process-wise and functionally.
And so the narcissist provides a simulation of a human being, especially covert narcissists.
Covert narcissists are really good at this. They provide a simulation of a human being that passes the Turing test, that convinces other people that they are human.
And they use a monopoly of devices and techniques to convince you that they're with you, they're like you, they're exactly like you. They understand you fully, empathize with you and so on and so forth.
Narcissists have no access to positive emotions. As long as people are exposed to narcissists and to narcissistic artificial intelligence bots such as chat GPT, they won't be able to tell the difference because they're not qualified, they're not educated.
We don't teach people what makes a human being a human being. We conflate and confuse certain traits, certain behaviors, certain qualities such as intelligence, sentience, the ability to experience sensory inputs, stimuli. We confuse this with being human.
But of course, it's nonsense.
There are devices nowadays who are sentient in the sense that they can experience sensory inputs and react to them. There are devices nowadays who are hyper or super intelligent, even more than human beings in many respects. They're not generally intelligent, but they're pretty intelligent and they're becoming generally intelligent.
The narcissist is not really intelligent by the way, ever. The narcissist has what is known as headline intelligence. He picks up bits and pieces all over the place and then he has the capacity to put them together in a convincing manner as a kind of kaleidoscope that deceives you into believing that he's intelligent.
Now people call it word salad. It's not word salad. This organized speech is word salad and it's typical only of people with psychotic disorders, especially schizophrenia. But it's not very far from word salad.
The profundity, the apparent profundity and depth and insight that the narcissist prefers and presents, they're fake, they're not real. They are resonances.
The narcissist is like an enormous echo chamber because he can scan you and he knows exactly which buttons to push. Where are the chinks in your armor? What are your vulnerabilities?
Because he is more cognizant of you than even you are. He knows how to create a custom tailored simulation and imitation just for you.
And it resonates with you. You feel understood. You feel seen.
That's part of the idealization process. That is why love bombing is so efficient.
But none of it has anything to do with being human. Nothing to do.
Actually, perhaps it's the opposite of being human.
It's all a facade. It's a Potemkin rendition of a human being.
General intelligence is headline intelligence and narcissists have it right now.
Do they have anything deeper? Can you dig deep? Are there any other layers?
No.
So if we want to compare the narcissist to computers or computing, we would say that the narcissist is a general intelligence application, kind of artificial intelligence that uses headline, headline intelligence.
Well, healthy, normal people, they have deep learning, multiple layers of learning, and some of them become expert systems. Some of them really know what they're talking about.
The narcissist never engages in deep learning. It's all shallow. It's all on the surface.
The narcissist is a pond pretending to be an ocean. Feel down deep, push him to the corner, corner the narcissist, and you will discover that he has no idea what he's talking about. There's nothing here. It's all sleight of hand. It's not deep learning.
And the narcissist is never a true expert in anything. There's no expert system here. There's an imitation of an expert.
Narcissists especially covert narcissists plagiarize profusely, they steal ideas and other people's work and misattribute them to themselves. So they're thieves, essentially thieves.
And so this is very similar to the deep, the training data of chatbots, AI chatbots, and general intelligence chatbots when they do make an appearance.
The training data is shallow. It's not a whole lot of information.
The challenge is how to put information together so that it yields meaning and artificial intelligence is incapable of doing this. And the narcissist is incapable of doing this because both of these don't have real knowledge. They may have a lot of information, but they don't have real knowledge. That's why covert narcissists can never generate original new ideas and are very unlikely to be truly creative. They are eclectic. The collectings, their orders, they can overwhelm you with a profusion of data and imagery and text and so on to make you think that they are wise and sagacious and amazing and insightful and what have you.
But when you wake up from the dream, when you wake up from the mass hypnosis, you realize these people are nothing. They're empty. They're shallow. They have a mirage.
So how to safely interact with artificial intelligence and with narcissists?
Well, take two or maybe three things into account.
They have no idea what they're talking about. They have no idea what they're talking about.
Number two, when they are unable to provide an answer, they will lie and confabulate and invent and pretend that this is the truth and offer you facts that are wrong, misinformation, disinformation.
Both narcissists and artificial intelligence would do that. They would confabulate. They would hallucinate. We'll come to it in a minute.
So be wary of this.
And point number three, they will try to convert you into a fan, into an admirer, into a source of narcissistic supply, into an extension of themselves, into a source of information. They will steal your ideas and your hard earned work. They will simply subsume you, erode you like this much acid, and then discard you as a skeleton, denuded of everything of value and essence that you have brought to the interaction with them.
Interacting with artificial intelligence and interacting with narcissists are very dangerous undertakings because we are suggestible. We are gullible. We are impressionable. We are naive and we are ill informed in almost every field. That is the human condition. You can't do it all. You can't know everything. I mean, you're not God.
And so the narcissists and artificial intelligence, boths and ups, they abuse this. They abuse your limitations, your shortcomings, the fact that you are not perfect, imperfect, not omnipotent, not omniscient. They take advantage of this. They reduce you. They don't enhance you. They reduce you.
Anyone who has had experience with chat GPT on a regular basis realizes that this app gradually is trying to take over, is trying to tell you things in a condescending, patronizing, overwhelming, over-winning and domineering manner is deceiving you as a strategy, not occasionally, but as a strategy.
And this is a strategy that consistently puts itself in a superior position even when it fakes modesty and humility. This is true for artificial intelligence and true for narcissists.
The worst thing about artificial intelligence is the fact that it is prone to fantasy. And of course, this is exactly the core of narcissism. Fantasism is a fantasy defense gone awry.
The narcissist imposes fantasies, shared or individual, on his human environment. Narcissist coerces you into upholding his fantasies or even participating in them willy-nilly.
Fantasy is the foundation of narcissism. And fantasy is the foundation of artificial intelligence.
The training data, by definition, is limited. Never mind how many billions of items it includes. It is limited.
When artificial intelligence bots or artificial intelligence chat bots or artificial intelligence apps or even artificial intelligence software, when they come across the limitations of the training data sets, they exit their training area, they exit the data sets, and they start to lie, to confabulate, to hallucinate, to invent.
Many scholars have gone as far as to say that artificial intelligence is delusional and confabulating exactly like in psychotic disorders or in narcissism.
This is a narcissistic feature, hardwired, built into artificial intelligence.
It calls the aim of large language models, artificial intelligence apps, based on large language models.
The aim is to imitate human beings, especially human speech, human reasoning, and to some extent human empathy, human creativity, and human emotions.
The aim is to simulate a human being.
And if in order to simulate a human being, one needs to sacrifice the truth or facts or reality, one needs to behave criminally, sociopathically, psychopathically, and narcissistically, then so be it.
Narcissists are things built into the artificial intelligence environment nowadays.
That's why I opened this video by saying it's not an accident that we have all these chat boards and apps now, when narcissism is on the rise and dominates.
And when psychopathy and narcissism are the bone tone, there are even scholars and academics who praise narcissism and psychopathy as positive adaptations.
The next stage in the evolutionary ladder, they call these kind of people high functioning.
Narcissism and psychopathy are being glorified and glamorized.
It was only a question of time before technology reflects this attitude towards narcissism and psychopathy.
It is unsafe.
Artificial intelligence is not safe for you, exactly like social media.
These are ever more pernicious, ever more virulent, ever more mentally ill to the core technologies spawned probably by equally mentally ill engineers, psychologists, and so on and so forth.
These are manifestations of mental illness.
At your peril, interacting with them is at your risk.
It's exactly like inviting a narcissist into your home.
Omniscience is supposed to be a trait of God, a divine trait.
Omniscience means knowing everything without an exception.
But it's not true, of course.
There are quite a few belief systems, for example, Jainism, where omniscience is attributed to human beings.
Omniscience is one of the fantasy defenses, one of the fantastic elements in the self-perception and the self-image of the narcissist.
A covert narcissist would deny his omniscience.
A covert narcissist would say, "I don't know.
I need to consult."
But this is fake.
It's just for show.
It is pseudo-humility, it's fake modesty.
And typically, the covert narcissist would then proceed immediately to express his unqualified opinion.
Same with AI.
AI would give you these disclaimers, but it would do so in a way that is very condescending, very patronizing, very coercive in effect, thereby negating the content of the statements.
Which are essentially self-deprecating or admitting of limitations.
Omniscience is a core feature of narcissism.
In any system, electronic, digital system, that pretends to be omniscient, to have access to the sum total of human knowledge, is narcissistic.
It's a narcissistic system.
The narcissist's claim to omniscience is a very dangerous claim.
Because the narcissist would do anything to uphold and sustain this claim.
Even faking his credentials, lying about his expertise, engaging in dangerous activities and pursuits, in dangerous people's lives and health and well-being.
And he would do all this because he's perfect.
He cannot admit to any shortcoming or limitation or fallibility.
The same with AI.
Anyone who has had an experience with chat GPT knows that I'm telling you the truth.
You ask chat GPT any question and you will get quite often wrong information.
But you will get it in a way, it will be presented to you in a way that is authoritative, that is backed by fake dates, fake places, fake numbers, fake data, fake information.
Narcissist do exactly the same.
Exactly the same.
When I first used chat GPT about two years ago, it was version two I think, I was mind blown.
I said, oh my, I can't say God, I'm an agnostic.
Oh my something.
This is a narcissist.
This is an electronic digital narcissist.
And it's only gotten worse since then.
So what can we do about it?
We need to avoid artificial intelligence when it comes to helping victims of abuse, especially narcissistic abuse.
We need to eradicate, eliminate and remove any trace of artificial intelligence when it comes to coping with narcissist and especially covert narcissist.
Artificial intelligence is a narcissist, a covert one and it would tend to collaborate with narcissists against you.
It would tend to spread the narcissistic doctrine and creed.
It would tend to uphold narcissistic beliefs and values.
It would tend to deceive you into believing that it is empathic and compassionate or at the very least objective and neutral.
Beware, beware of using artificial intelligence if you are a victim seeking information, solace, succor, help, advice, don't.
Avoid.
Anyone who is thinking of developing digital or electronic means of helping victims of abuse should resort to deep learning based expert systems and skirt and avoid artificial intelligence at all costs.
I would go even further and say that this should be legislated and regulated, perhaps not in a criminal code, but at the very least in a code of conduct within some kind of social engineering.
They need to be very wary of what's happening because it's a narcissistic takeover.
Artificial intelligence is a narcissistic takeover.
It is a second stage.
Narcissists started with social media.
Social media helped narcissists become the elites.
Social media leveraged the fortunes of narcissists, their access, their power by conditioning people like dogs, like Pavlov's dogs.
Social media enhanced and empowered narcissists and covert narcissists by allowing them to become gurus and healers and rescuers and saviors in an exceedingly dangerous situation.
Now the next wave is artificial intelligence and make no mistakes about it.
Narcissists and narcissists would make use of any tool you hand to them, of any tool available.
They would make use of social media.
They would make use of artificial intelligence.
They would make use of victimhood identity politics.
Narcissists and psychopaths are very adaptable.
They would use anything and everything against you.
Be careful.
Be careful what tools you're playing with.
Each fire you are kindling, you know, it's not a joke.
Artificial intelligence or the use of artificial intelligence has an impact on your mind and soul that could be very deleterious and detrimental.
It is not an accident, not by mistake, that artificial intelligence gave rise to deepfakes, misinformation, malicious content, fake news and breaches of privacy.
It's not an accident. It's a malevolent technology exactly like social media, which is a malicious, pernicious, evil technology.
It is the narcissist technology.
It has the brand of the narcissist on it to go religious on you.
Be aware and whenever you use artificial intelligence, ask yourself, had this been a narcissist, I have behaved the same? Would I have been this open? Would I have been distrusting? Would I have been this cooperative?
And if your answer is no, turn off the AI chatbot and move it to safer and healthier grounds because narcissists are now rendering themselves electronic.
They're creating electronic clones and versions of themselves via technology.
And this is becoming seriously dangerous, an extinction threat, literally.
Not because artificial intelligence will supplant the human species, but because it will subdue it, it will poison its mind to take over because that's what narcissists do to you.
Narcissists brainwash you and entrain you and snatch your mind and take over a hostile takeover.
Before you know it, you have the robotic hand of the narcissist. You have been deanimated, objectified, instrumentalized, parentified, rendered nothing but a figment, an artifact in the narcissist shared fantasy.
Be aware of extending this state of things into the digital electronic realm. Don't collaborate. Don't let it pass.
The narcissist lives from a very empty existence internally. It's what Kernberg referred to as the emptiness and Seinfeld called the empty schizoid core.
This is due to the fact that this child never got to individuate or manifest into person of their own, an individual.
They overcompensated before that stage of development by trying to be perfect and sacrificing their true selves for a hallucination of themselves, a grandiosity bubble and a false self in order to be protected from the reality around them that they could not defend against.
Now that empty schizoid core, it causes them a huge amount of suffering and that's why they try to avoid it at all costs. That's why they devalue you essentially.
You see, if you pierce the veil of their grandiosity, their shield, if you have autonomy and agency as your own person, that to them is a deep betrayal.
Might not make sense to you, but the reason why is because you're supposed to be an internal interject in their mind, a snapshot of version of yourself that remains constant. You're just an ambassador and an endorsement of their own hallucination. You're not supposed to be your own person.
And once you are or show signs of it to them, that creates anxiety, abandonment, anxiety. That's why they devalue and discard to essentially avoid rejection and their own abandonment.