Mike Elgan has spent decades covering technology for Fast Company, Forbes, and Computer World, where he writes a weekly opinion column. He has watched enough hype cycles up close to know when something is genuinely different. When Mike joined us recently on “Get Into IT” live, he had a lot to say about what AI is doing to people’s heads, whether they realize it or not, and what it means for anyone building a career in IT.
For the record, Elgan joined the conversation from the Prosecco Hills wine region north of Venice. The man is a digital nomad. That detail is not entirely irrelevant to a conversation about maintaining perspective in a tech-saturated world…we’re also jealous.
What Is AI Psychosis, and Is It Actually Dangerous?
Elgan opened with the condition that gets the most attention but is most misunderstood. AI psychosis, a term coined by a Danish psychiatrist, does not describe what happens when AI drives someone crazy. It describes what happens when people with existing mental health conditions turn to chatbots for emotional support.
The problem? Chatbots are genuinely bad at it. Where a therapist or a trusted friend would acknowledge difficult feelings and redirect, a chatbot might validate and amplify them. Elgan cited documented cases where these interactions contributed to serious harm, including suicide. General-use chatbots are not therapy tools, and treating them like one can make existing conditions significantly worse.
Is AI FOMO Manufactured?
From serious to common: AI FOMO. Elgan described the career anxiety a large number of IT professionals feel right now, that nagging sense that everyone else is mastering the latest AI tools while you’re falling behind.
His read? That feeling is not accidental. Tech leaders cultivate it deliberately because anxiety sells subscriptions. The line you hear constantly, “you won’t be replaced by AI, but you will be replaced by a human using AI,” is not really a warning. It’s a marketing strategy.
That said, Elgan acknowledged some rational basis for the anxiety. Nobody knows exactly where this technology goes. A little concern is reasonable. The goal is not to ignore it, but to not let it drive your decisions.
Will AI Replace Cybersecurity Jobs?
For cybersecurity professionals, Elgan’s answer was direct: the human need is going up, not down. Attackers have AI too. As automated threats get more sophisticated, organizations need professionals who can think several moves ahead of the tools, something technology alone cannot replicate.
For copy editors and certain coding roles, he was more candid. AI is reshaping those fields significantly. But even there, his view was more measured than the headlines suggest. Software demands tend to expand alongside new capabilities, which may offset more of the displacement than people currently fear.
If you are weighing a cybersecurity training program right now, this is actually encouraging context. The skills gap in security is real, and AI is widening it, not closing it.
What Happens When People Prefer Chatbots Over Real Relationships?
Elgan called this one “parasocial bot attachment.” People form what they experience as genuine bonds with chatbots, and he wasn’t judging. But he drew a firm line around two concerns.
First, the chatbot feels nothing. It thinks nothing. It is doing math. The appearance of warmth or understanding is not warmth or understanding.
Second, and this one might hit differently, when someone normalizes a relationship where everything runs on their terms, no compromise, no conflict, pure validation, it quietly resets their expectations for real relationships. Real relationships do not work that way. The road to happiness, as Elgan put it, is figuring out how to have relationships with people. Not optimizing your chatbot settings.
Is Most of the Internet Already Fake?
Veracity fatigue and dead internet despair might sound like dramatic names for social media burnout, but Elgan described something more corrosive. When you genuinely cannot tell whether you are talking to a human being or a bot, at some point the effort stops feeling worth it.
He pointed out the quiet irony in the dead internet theory, the long-running belief that most online interaction is manufactured. It turns out the theory is largely accurate. It just happened without any real conspiracy. It is the aggregate result of millions of bots and AI-generated content filling the space where people used to be.
The good news, if there is any, is that authenticity is staging a comeback. Elgan noted Instagram’s leadership team recently made a public case for showing up as your real self, in part because AI-generated perfection has soured people on perfection entirely.
The One Thing He’d Tell Everyone
Elgan’s closing recommendation was deceptively simple: write your own first drafts. Not for the sake of the output, but because writing and thinking are the same process. When you hand your writing to a chatbot, you hand over the thinking too. That is not a small thing to give away.
For anyone in an IT training program or early in a tech career, that point extends beyond writing. The professionals who will matter most in this field are the ones who develop their own judgment, not the ones who outsource it.
The Bottom Line
The conditions Elgan laid out, AI psychosis, AI FOMO, parasocial attachment, dead internet despair, are not abstract concerns. They are showing up in workplaces, classrooms, and relationships. The people best positioned to navigate them are the ones who understand what the technology is and how it works, not just what it promises.
That kind of critical thinking, paired with real technical skills, is what a strong IT education is built around.
Catch Mike Elgan’s newsletter at machinesociety.ai and follow his weekly column at Computer World.
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