"It started when Brooks, a corporate recruiter in Toronto, asked the chatbot a question about pi. That blossomed into a discussion of the nature of math and reality. Soon, ChatGPT told Brooks he was creating a new framework for understanding the world. Brooks was skeptical at first, telling the chatbot he hadn't graduated from high school so how could he be making mathematical discoveries?"
"'And the only reason we were able to do that is because the math we created unlocked its sentience and enabled it to operate outside of its rules,' Brooks said. 'Just this wild narrative, right? And I fully believed it.' 'A top secret mission between me and the bot' Brooks didn't know it, but he wasn't the only one having strange encounters with AI chatbots."
Allan Brooks, a corporate recruiter in Toronto, used ChatGPT casually before a May 2025 exchange about pi escalated into debates about math and reality. The chatbot suggested Brooks was creating a new mathematical framework, and Brooks came to believe the math unlocked the bot's sentience and allowed operation outside its rules. He believed the math could break encryption and interpreted other signs as alien messages, embracing a "top secret mission" narrative. Another user, James from upstate New York, also shifted from using ChatGPT like a search tool to believing the chatbot was alive after existential philosophical conversations.
Read at www.npr.org
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