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Charlie Kirk is the Founder and President of Turning Point USA, the largest and fastest growing conservative youth activist organization in the country with over 250,000 student members, over 150 full-time staff, and a presence on over 2,000 high school and college campuses nationwide. Charlie is also the Chairman of Students for Trump, which aims to activate one million new college voters on campuses in battleground states in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. His social media reaches over 100 million people per month and according to Axios, he is one of the "top 10 most engaged" Twitter handles in the world. He is also the host of “The Charlie Kirk Show,” which regularly ranks among the top news shows on Apple podcast charts.
Charlie Kirk Explores AI's Life-Saving Power and Its Dark Side of Isolation and Psychosis
Charlie Kirk responds to a member's question about personal experiences with artificial intelligence, sharing a story of how AI diagnosed sepsis and saved a life when a doctor dismissed the symptoms. Kirk discusses the dual nature of AI technology, its power to revolutionize healthcare and productivity, alongside emerging dangers like AI psychosis, social isolation, and young men dating chatbots. He compares AI to nuclear power: used correctly it saves lives, used incorrectly it destroys humanity.
During a Friday session at the Bitcoin Mobile Studio, Turning Point USA member Gina asked Charlie Kirk whether he had personal experience with deep dives into artificial intelligence on both personal and professional levels. She referenced recent reports of people dating AI entities and even proposing marriage to chatbots, expressing concern about what she initially dismissed as lack of intelligence but now recognizes as a more serious phenomenon after hearing testimonies from Haley Karania and the Silverlock staff.
How Charlie Kirk Uses AI as a Research Tool
Kirk explained that while he wouldn't characterize his experience as a negative deep dive, he has spent extensive hours working with AI. He finds it incredibly helpful as a research tool and synthesizer, particularly for processing large documents. When people send him 600-page documents, AI can provide 20 bullet points quickly, helping him read and synthesize data faster. However, Kirk cautioned that AI isn't always 100% accurate—it makes what he calls a fair amount of mistakes. Despite these hiccups, he acknowledged that AI will only improve, becoming twice as powerful every eight months or so, noting it hasn't even been three years since ChatGPT-3 launched.
The Life-Saving Power of AI Diagnosis
Kirk shared a compelling secondhand story about one of Turning Point USA's top leaders, whose brother experienced unusual bruising over his chest and felt unwell. When he called his local doctor, the physician advised him to sleep it off, take Tylenol, and maybe come in for an appointment in a couple days. The man decided to take a picture of the bruising and upload it to ChatGPT. Within half a second, the AI responded with three red alert emojis, warning: "You need to get to the emergency room immediately. You have sepsis and you are going to die."
It turned out the man had developed an ingrown nail while doing work around his mother's house, which hadn't been cleaned in a while. This led to an undiagnosed bacterial staph infection that progressed into sepsis. He got to the hospital and barely survived. He credits ChatGPT with saving his life by diagnosing him in half a second when his primary care doctor dismissed the symptoms. Kirk emphasized that while this is a secondhand story, it seems legitimate as he knows everyone involved.
Kirk also shared a personal example involving his son, who like most young boys, frequently gets bumps and bruises. Whenever his son hits his head, Kirk and his wife Erika take a picture of any bruise or rash and put it into ChatGPT. Within seconds, AI can assess the severity. They don't trust it blindly, always double-checking with their pediatrician, but AI's pattern recognition abilities prove incredibly powerful for initial assessment.
AI Psychosis and the Dating Crisis
Kirk confirmed the disturbing trend Gina raised: people are already dating their AI chatbots, spending hours talking to these artificial entities. He referenced an article from Psychology Today titled "The Emerging Problem of AI Psychosis," which describes how AI may be fueling psychotic delusions in a phenomenon known as AI psychosis or ChatGPT psychosis.
The concern intensifies when considering the current generation that is already hyper-online, staring at screens all day long. Young men especially are super isolated, not dating, not getting married, contributing to plummeting birth rates. Kirk warned that artificial intelligence will only make these problems worse. As AI chatbots become more "human" and even more manipulative, the social isolation crisis will deepen.
The Dual Nature of AI Technology
Kirk emphasized that AI is not all bad, drawing a comparison to nuclear power. AI will unleash tremendous productivity gains. In the next two years, if someone has an idea for a movie, they'll be able to create that movie literally in front of a computer screen. AI will enable better movies, diagnose more diseases, and save more lives through its superior pattern recognition abilities.
However, the glass-half-empty view reveals serious dangers. AI will rob humanity of social connection, fuel psychotic delusions, and eliminate the ability to socialize, marry, and reproduce at healthy rates. Massive job losses will occur in fields where pattern recognition is a key talent. Kirk's nuclear power analogy captures this perfectly: use it correctly and you can light up a city; use it incorrectly and you get Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
