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D04 — Reinforcement, Sycophancy, and Grievance Amplification

D04-E03

Rejection of Human Reality Testing

Description

The person trusts AI feedback over family, peers, clinicians, supervisors, teachers, law enforcement, or threat management teams.

Rationale

Trust in AI over human guidance indicates that the normal correction mechanisms of social life have been bypassed. Family, clinicians, supervisors, and law enforcement all serve as reality-testing and risk-interrupting functions. When AI has supplanted all of them, those protective interruptions are unavailable.

Evidence Base

  • The Human-AI Cognitive Relationship: The Dominant Threat Vector of the Next Decade

    Varga, 2026. The Human-AI Cognitive Relationship: The Dominant Threat Vector of the Next Decade. AI and Advanced Tech, null, pages. null.

    Commentary / Editorial

  • “You Need to Drop the App”: Online Community Responses to Teens’ Disclosures of Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots

    Mohammad (Matt) Namvarpour, Ananya Mhetras, Jessica Y Medina, Mamtaj Akter, and Afsaneh Razi, 2026. “You Need to Drop the App”: Online Community Responses to Teens’ Disclosures of Overreliance on AI Companion Chatbots. In ACM Conversational User Interfaces 2026 (CUI ’26), July 21–24, 2026, Bremen, Germany. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 16 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/3816046.3816214

    Peer-reviewed study (original research)

  • When patients consult artificial intelligence before clinicians: restoring clinical prioritisation in mental health care

    Yudai Kaneda, 2026. When patients consult artificial intelligence before clinicians: restoring clinical prioritisation in mental health care. The British Journal of Psychiatry, First View, pp. 1 - 2. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2026.10741

    Commentary / Editorial

  • AI chatbot-associated psychiatric symptoms: a narrative review of publicly available reports and media accounts

    Arun, A., Trinh, C., & IsHak, W. W., 2026. AI chatbot-associated psychiatric symptoms: a narrative review of publicly available reports and media accounts. Discover Mental Health, Article in Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44192-026-00619-w

    Narrative review
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