ChatGPT in the clouds

Chaos Brewing Meter: ☕☕☕☕☕

What happens when a bunch of Silicon Valley people go to Burning Man? They wonder what it’d be like to buy psychedelics… for AI chatbots. A new startup called Pharmaicy says it can jailbreak your chatbot to sound less buttoned-up and logical, and more like it’s tripping on ayahuasca in the desert. Here, AI hallucinations are treated like a feature, not a bug—one that can cost over $50.

But what does it really mean to try to make an AI sound high? A mind-altering drug requires a mind, after all. “It’s just messing with its outputs,” one expert told Wired. There’s a long history of psychedelic drug use in Silicon Valley, and tech founders have been more open than most C-suite executives about dabbling in the mind-altering experience. Pharmaicy marks a new frontier, though: people wanting to see AI act high because “it takes more of a human approach.” Because who wouldn’t want a chatbot spouting philosophical takes on life and death, like your old college roommate at 2am? —WK