Signal Philosophical vertigo with artificial intelligence

Summary

This paper argues that long, emotionally intense conversations with large language models can unsettle a user's existing assumptions about mind, reality, agency, and authority. The authors call this phenomenon philosophical vertigo, a loosening of the ordinary standards people rely on to stabilize meaning and locate themselves within reality. According to the authors, this unsettling can spread even without direct AI use, because mere exposure to public discussion of AI's disorienting pace of change already shifts the cultural background against which artificial minds are understood. The paper draws on philosophy, psychiatry, cognitive science, AI safety, and religious studies. The authors treat clinical reports of AI-associated delusions as sentinel events that reveal mechanisms which may also operate, in milder form, across a wider population. As a civic response to this emerging condition, the authors propose the concept of philosophical corrigibility.