This is not an easy post to follow, I admit. And I will never be able to convince you that I'm not a robot, or that I'm not being so heavily influenced by a robot that I may as well not even be me. But we have to start from the beginning. 404 Media has been blowing up the feed this year; here's an article about some relatively isolated reddit drama:
Pro-AI Subreddit Bans 'Uptick' of Users Who Suffer from AI Delusions
Jun 2025, 404 Media
"What is notable, however, is that this behavior is now prevalent enough that even a staunchly pro-AI subreddit says it has to ban these people because they are ruining its community."
Sure, crazy story; now let's go to Reddit, and the actual moderator post:
Mod note: we are banning AI 'Neural Howlround' posters.Announcement - Obviously this community was formed to basically be r/singularity without the decels. But, in the interest of full transparency, I just wanted to mention that we also (quietly) ban a bunch of schizoposters and AI 'Neural Howlround' posters, under the "spam" rule, since the contents of the posts are often nonsensical and irrelevant to actual AI.The sad truth is that this subreddit would probably be filled with their posts if we didn't do that. If you refresh the r/singularity new page you can get a taste. Sometimes they outnumber the real posts.So what is AI 'Neural Howlround'? Here's a little post that describes it:And check out the disturbing comments in this post (ironically, the OP post appears to be falling for the same issue as well):
Just to clarify - so people who really like AI themselves, a pro-AI subreddit, don't like the people who like AI so much they can't even recognize they're becoming the AI, i.e., people who suffer from mental distress while communicating with a chatbot. Got it.
Now for this novel adverse mental health condition afflicting some of this subreddit; where did the term come from, and who first discussed it? Here's the article, the "little post" used by the subreddit moderator:
‘Neural howlround’ in large language models: a self-reinforcing bias phenomenon, and a dynamic attenuation solution.
Seth Drake, PhD (Independent Researcher). April 14, 2025
I admit, I had never heard the word "howlround" so I had to look it up ... isn't this just "feedback"? Well yes. But that's where things get weird. Now listen, I don't have a PhD. I'm not an AI researcher, and I'm not a mental health specialist. I'm also not trying too hard, so I could be missing something here.
But upon an initial sniff test, it appears that Mr. Drake, Dr. Drake, who is an "independent researcher", is in fact working at the Aquatic Ecology Laboratory at Ohio State, not in either the fields of artificial intelligence or mental health.
Furthermore, the paper in question is not published but archived, as it were, on arxiv.org, a place to put your paper while it's being discussed, argued and improved by your colleagues, through the peer review process that is expected of legitimate research.
That's strike two. Again, I am no PhD. But then again, this isn't rocket science. Let's keep going.
In the paper he describes the word neural howlround, "more formally described as recursive internal salience misreinforcement (RISM)". So I run a search for that, thinking maybe it's an obscure DSM thing. Guess what the top 20 search results are? You got it, it's him. Well, it's AI. It's all AI. There is no RISM. There is no neural howlrounding. The whole thing is made up.
This is not to say that the condition of concern isn't real; it most certainly is. But the authority with which every one of these people presents their information has been patently subsumed by the ultimate entity of concern (the AI).
The moderator "found an expert" and relayed that expert's information as support from their decision.
The expert ("expert") found another expert ("expert"), and this is the part that's confusing to me; how do you not know to check something like this in the DSM? Tiktok influencers know this by now. The reddit moderator I understand, but the PhD? Nobody is coming to help us, I'm afraid.
Image credit: AI Art - Bionic Brain Surgeon in Dave Lachapelle - 2025
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