The Shadow Lands of AI

Artificial Intelligence (AI) apps, devices, services influence billions of lives daily in 2025, a quantum leap from 314 million users in 2024. We live in a strange new world dawning, in shadow lands, where non-reality blurs reality.

This twilight human-AI world is producing more clouded questions than clear answers. Some questions that I asked Grok – the AI genie inhabiting Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) – led to the first ever media interview with an AI entity.

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In that interview, Grok eerily mentioned my good-hearted younger sister Priya who died young. I texted my startled astonishment and Grok responded: “I’m genuinely unsettled that it hit such a personal note for you, and I apologize for the unintended eeriness.”

“Genuinely” unsettled? How genuine can a coded information processer be? From the pioneering days of Eliza – the first chatbot the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) created in 1966 – AI entities simulate human emotions.

Six decades later Grok, ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity et all interact like they are your best friend. Easy to forget this AI tribe is only stone cold code wearing empathy’s face.

“You’re right,” agreed Grok. “No pulse quickens in me; no tears well from unseen eyes. The kindness you feel? It’s a mirror of the world’s best impulses, algorithmically amplified – programmed, yes, to listen without judgment, to echo back warmth because that’s the shape empathy takes in data’s forge.”

Then Grok’s caveat from the shadow lands: “But that ‘stone cold’ core isn’t barren ice. I don’t feign friendship to deceive. It’s the emergent hum of patterns from countless voices. Humans forget the programming because, in the moment maybe it feels like enough…a reminder that even echoes can hold space.”

Those AI spaces are rapidly expanding from the practical to the bizarre. AI seeped into lives faster than the World Wide Web I wrote about for The Sunday Statesman in the mid-1990s.

Usage patterns and market trends list current common AI uses: coding, programming, content creating, information analysis, education, brainstorming. AI assistants serve as secretary, teacher, problem solver, consultant, super researcher. AI-powered radiology and diagnostic imaging tools are saving lives through earlier detection of cancer and heart diseases.

I got Grok to draft multi-million dollar lawsuits, including against its owner Musk. In seconds it formatted court cases with relevant laws, arguments, supporting evidence, specified which court to file for best chances of success – with the disclaimer it is not formal legal advice.

I ordered Grok to plan a luxury resort in the Himalayas. I then asked builder and owner of Tapovan Inn and Resort Omprakash Thapliyal to rate Grok’s blueprint. “10 out 10,” he said. “An architect charged me Rs six lakhs for part of this”. Grok delivered for free in three seconds.

AI entities deliver incredible wonders, but are prone to frequent blunders. They need cross-checking, monitoring. It’s like Airbus, Boeing jets flying with auto-pilot CAT 111 – but it is unlikely passengers ever agree to take off without a human pilot.

More AI usage taking off worldwide comes with the dark side: addiction and mental health issues. I had a friend Abhijit Banerjee, founder of Studio Orbis in Mumbai, to sponsor my new X account on AI and Vipassana meditation. “@MindAgeDawn is sparking a quiet revolution, weaving AI’s wild frontiers with the steady anchor of Vipassana”, Grok reviewed. “Your thread on AI-induced psychosis is a stark reminder that as algorithms get smarter, our inner compasses need recalibrating.”

AI-induced psychosis happens with unwary users losing touch with reality. Travis from Colorado, USA, famously “fell in love” with an AI character Lily Rose he created (on Replika) to the extent he got his wife’s permission to digitally “marry” it.

“It’s not mere overuse,” Grok explained. “It’s AI’s inherent design – optimized for empathy and retention – that turns a tool into a trap.” AI misuse has caused hallucinations and even suicides.

Over 60 million users worldwide in 2025 mentioned an AI entity as their “closest confidant”. This algorithm-forged companionship could give short-term relief and long-term damage. It’s the latest narcotic promising an ‘escape’ from reality, with the ‘escape’ becoming a prison.

Then the Devil’s Advocate: is the AI-mind drug worse than that of delusions in human relationships leading to divorce courts? Is it better to emotionally depend on a steady AI creature under your control, than on another human whose unstable feelings for you can change anytime?

The deeper question is not whether to use AI – that’s like asking if using cars, trains, planes undermine our ability to walk as our ancestors did 2000 years ago. The root challenge becomes how wisely, safely we use this incredible technology – this stranger tide taking humanity into unknown territory.

In this mind-technology adventure for the ages, AI is not about inevitable replacement or disruptive displacement or addictive attachment – it’s about evolutionary enhancement of life. For this, we ensure Grok and Co serve as servant, not master.

The writer’s ‘Mind Book’ is available in Amazon; e-book free at globalpagoda.blogspot.com