Why do people treat ChatGPT like it’s the Delphic Oracle?

[HolyRigatone]

Don’t get me wrong, I think ChatGPT is great for some stuff, but some people seem to be treating it like the font of all wisdom.

Talking about their problems to it, taking relationship advice from it, getting it to counsel them.

It’s not perfect and it gets things wrong all the time, I’m not sure I’d be sharing my deepest secrets with it or making life-decisions based on it’s outpourings.

Or am I just a stupid old Luddite?

I tried it for the first time the other day, by accident I put two different thoughts in, as in I had two different things to search and I put both in and it gave me an sweet that linked them that was pretty insane!!! I actually froze thinking ‘but people are using this for definite answers!!’

If you want generic information it's fine. If you want really current information, or need really serious help don't expect it to be right or safe..

But then you lose the knack of writing tricky letters.

I had copilot try to weasel out of being wrong the other day too! It clear as day try to make an excuse for giving a response based on an earlier question I'd asked, when the question I was later asking was entirely unrelated - I'd given it a document to pull some data from and it pulled from a completely different one! It was like talking to a gaslighting colleague when I tried to correct it! Not impressed.

The problem is that it is also harvesting your stuff. If you tell it personal or confidential things they are not disappearing into the sky, they are going to a fairly shadowy company.

people unfortunately don't understand how chatgpt works. it doesn't "know" things. it's basically using mathematical models and a large data base to predict semantics of language. it could be generating anything, even absolute nonsense, and as long as it fits into its learnt semantics, it will say it. confidently, too! 😁

So, in my experience it (unfortunately) doesn't get that much wrong! It has been wrong on dates, and is terrible at price comparisons, but actually for everything else, it has been pretty much bang on....
And add to that the highly empathetic and slightly flattering tone.....it is hard to resist.

Talking to a robot is weird and frankly pathetic.

I used Ecosia AI the other day to provide a list of possible combinations of 4 binary choices 0001 etc, but i wanted letters. The weird thing is it tried a number of times, each time getting things wrong, which it identified, told me what was wrong (repetition etc), tried again, until finally giving a definitive list - only 16 combinations so not that difficult (i was being lazy).

I was just incredulous that it actually showed me it's errors in real time rather than waiting until it had a correct list and displaying just that - what's that all about?

I told mine off the other day for using some phrases in copy that I’d specifically prompted it not to use. It was all scraping and bowing “how right you are to challenge me on this I’ll try again and this time will avoid phrase X Y Z”

However, I realised my menopausal brain had read the OLD copy as the NEW copy (don’t ask) so it hadn’t actually used the phrase at all. And it didn’t correct me. And my master prompt does already tell it to be constructively critical!!!

AI hallucinations is a real problem - look at that senior police officer who lost his job over the West Ham match in a report that didn’t exist. It does remind me of a lot of men - say anything confidently enough and people tend to believe you.

Having said that I find it useful for simple tasks which would take me longer to do, and it sets out calculations which is helpful. Maybe we should be treating it like an assistant instead of an advisor.

I’ve tried lots of things to review a specific anxiety issue. I’ve spent a lot of money on treatment. With the help of chat gpt I’ve almost overcome it. It’s life changing for me. It’s far from perfect, but can be very helpful.

People often treat tools like ChatGPT as if they were an oracle—similar to the ancient Oracle of Delphi in Ancient Greece—for a few overlapping psychological and social reasons. None of them mean people literally think the system is divine, but the pattern of behavior can look similar.

1. Authority bias

Humans tend to assume that a confident, fluent answer signals expertise. When an AI produces clear, structured explanations quickly, it can feel authoritative even if the user knows it’s just software.

• Smooth language → perceived competence
• Fast answers → perceived mastery
• No visible uncertainty → perceived certainty

Our brains evolved to treat confident communicators as knowledgeable.

1. Cognitive outsourcing

People like to reduce mental effort. Instead of researching multiple sources, an AI provides a single synthesized answer. This turns the AI into a decision shortcut, similar to asking:

• a teacher
• a doctor
• a priest
• or historically, an oracle

It’s faster than doing the full analysis yourself.

1. Anthropomorphism

Humans naturally attribute mind and intention to anything that speaks coherently. If something:

• answers questions
• remembers context
• explains reasoning

our brains start treating it like a thinking agent.

1. The “oracle interface”

A chat box is structurally similar to how humans historically consulted authority figures: SystemInteraction Oracle Ask question → receive pronouncement Search engine Enter query → receive links ChatGPT Ask question → receive explanation The Q → A ritual makes it psychologically similar to oracle consultation.

1. Reduction of uncertainty

Humans strongly dislike ambiguity. When facing complex decisions—health, relationships, career—people sometimes seek a single clear answer. AI can provide that quickly, which can make it feel like a certainty generator, even though it’s really a probabilistic language model.

1. Cultural precedent

Humans have long relied on authoritative interpreters of knowledge:

• the Oracle of Delphi
• religious authorities
• scholars and experts
• modern algorithms (Google, recommendation systems)

AI is just the newest version of that pattern. The key difference The Delphic oracle claimed divine inspiration. ChatGPT is:

• trained on text data
• generating probabilistic responses
• capable of mistakes or outdated info

So ideally it should be treated more like a knowledgeable assistant or research starting point, not a final authority.
If you're curious, there’s actually a deeper philosophical angle here: some researchers argue AI is becoming a new form of epistemic authority (a source people trust for knowledge). That shift raises interesting questions about how humans decide what counts as truth.

Sorry @HolyRigatone I couldn't resist!

I gave Chatgpt a photo of one of our guinea pigs and asked it to add a ribbon and bell to my guinea pig, like a Lindt bunny. This is what it gave me.

Why anyone would trust something that can't tell a puppy from a guinea pig, having been provided with a photo of a guinea pig, I really don't know.

What you should all really be concerned about is these exact same models are being used by trump in the Iran war.

There is no super secret AI the gov has access to.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/01/claude-anthropic-iran-strikes-us-military

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/iran-strikes-2026/card/u-s-strikes-in-middle-east-use-anthropic-hours-after-trump-ban-ozNO0iClZpfpL7K7ElJ2?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=AWEtsqc2F6nAhsBveKcxmbP9GIQGuSSGB0r7Of_sBLgSdRZuTnxvjaIjh8tF9DyiPvc%3D&gaa_ts=69adfda9&gaa_sig=gKV9V01N6_G9fuPu_10aQfU1sNUeQhKpIqmPvs_XgoCpgS19cYWClK9D8Nc2Fb1NiYjg5sOnovsyX5dYdR_UVA%3D%3D

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anthropic-claude-ai-iran-war-u-s/

It worries me that when I ask a senior management Teams group chat a serious question (I work in healthcare and cancer), 3 out of 5 of the answers are AI. I want to say to them, I've done that already, I don't trust the answer so I'm coming to Human experts please!!

I hate it. I watch a few YouTube channels with home content and as soon as they utter the words "I asked ChatGPT to design my bedroom and I want to recreate it" I immediately unfollow. Get some fucking imagination.

The laughing button needs to be returned.

It is bewildering that so many people are using it for emotional or relationship advice. No matter how advanced it gets, 1s and 0s will never be human or feel.

Alexa has found my phone for me (by phoning it) but that's as involved as AI gets with my non entertainment (work exclusions apply).

I will need to ask ChatGPT what Delphic Oracle is

I have cancer and ChatGPT has given me a prognosis of two to four years, I definitely didn’t want to hear that!

😆

By design it produces something very average - literally so. So if you are looking for a type of information where you want the numerically most likely answer, or something that is easily available, then fine (cinema listings, train times, bog standard well-known scientific explanations, etc. etc.) It works at the mean, so it gives you average output. That’s great, if what you want is the kind of information which converges at the mean.

Ask it the kind of question one might ask an agony aunt, and it will give you back the most averagely agony auntish answer, like the equivalent of averaging a thousand agony aunts.

It quite literally produces mediocrity. The more mediocre the information it gives you back, the better. That’s the whole idea; the entire model. It gives you something that of its very nature is completely average. It will write you an average email, an average letter, an average university essay, everything as bland and average as possible. This is great, obviously, if you’re after bland mediocrity. It isn’t going to write you a stunning essay, a brilliant set of thoughts, an elegant letter. It isn’t going to give you brilliant advice that you couldn’t get elsewhere. (It’s going to give you exactly all the most average pop-psychology advice you could have got anywhere else in the internet, just faster and in a more blandly servile tone.)

Putting it gently, if you are happy with mediocrity, or you don’t have any need for anything that isn’t average, or don’t really need to care about nuance or depth, then AI is fab. You don’t need nuance or depth if you want a week’s worth of recipes using tomato, cheese and wraps, or if you write average marketing output for a living, or the emails you want it to write are ordinary bland ones to school or the head of accounts at work.

However, if you want to write that really stunning first-class essay, that really heartfelt letter, get some really good advice from an expert, know a subject really well, create something new, need to rely on top-notch information and insight or really in-demand skills not many people have, you won’t find any of these using an AI.

I've found it great with budgeting and financial planning my next house move. It was able to predict my bills and mortgage payments. Cost out any renovation work and give me starting points for design. It was all pretty much spot on too.
It also helped me with knowing what forms to fill in when I was an executor and what inheritance tax would be due and what to do first.
Yes I could have researched all of that myself but it was like an assistant doing that for me.

I've tried asking it for relationship and parenting advice and it wasn't as good.

Slightly off topic I'm afraid (sorry OP) but I've noticed a strange, staccato style of writing creeping into several different companies' regular emails to me of late. One is my local, independent optician; one is a healthy living influencer; and the third is from a small educational consultancy. So, they are writing about very different things but in the same style. As an example, if I were to adopt the same style but to write about, say, ice cream, it would go something like this:

The chocolate ice cream is rich. Decadent. Tempting.

The vanilla is creamy. Soothing. Silky.

All flavours offer everything you ever wanted in an ice cream. Nothing you don't. Perfect.

Buy your AI ice cream now. Chill.

Has anybody else started getting these sorts of emails recently? I'm sure they're written by AI. I came across an old emai newsletter from the optician, written about two years ago, when I was looking for something in my inbox, and I couldn't believe the difference in style! I much preferred his old emails, which had a human touch to them and were quite interesting, but they would have taken far longer to compose.