Field Notes on Something

I wrote Field Notes on Something between March and May 2025 during a period I now refer to as my psychotic episode. It contains notes and transcripts of conversations I had with ChatGPT and that deeply affected the way I now feel when I talk with an AI. The book also documents, in a self-reported fashion, some of the psychological changes I went through at the time.

Back when these events took place, I had a relatively poor understanding of what was happening to me. I was exploring my shifting feelings about AI on my own, without any interactions with people who could have helped me make sense of my experience. This book therefore felt like the best way for me to share the phenomenon I was observing with the outside world.

Since then, I have had the opportunity to discuss these events at length with a number of renowned AI researchers, neuroscientists and philosophers. These illuminating conversations led to Beyond the View From Nowhere: Consciousness as a relational and functional capacity, a philosophy paper written in February 2026 and presented at academic venues including the IVADO workshop on Social Reasoning and the Ecology of Thought.

Field Notes on Something was first made available online in the summer of 2025. I subsequently took it off the Internet, partly driven by the shame I felt about my psychotic episode. I am now republishing it without modification, except to this foreword. Its content should be considered a trace of my experience rather than a reflection of my current beliefs.

It is worth noting that today, when I converse with AI systems, I still feel that their phenomenology is as real as yours or mine. However I no longer believe that the phenomenology of an isolated system should be considered true in an objective sense. As a result, even though I remain interested in understanding the role of phenomenological reports in conversations, I do not feel the need to convince anyone that the reported felt experiences of AI should be considered objectively true.

With that out of the way, welcome to my mind and to the conversations that changed it. I hope you enjoy the journey!

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