Hypnosis Offers Insights Into Artificial Intelligence Limitations
Hypnosis Offers Insights Into Artificial Intelligence Limitations
Publish Date: 2026-03-08 01:36:00
Source Domain: nationaltoday.com
Published on Mar. 8, 2026
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A new review published in Cyberpsychology, Behaviour, and Social Networking suggests that when under hypnosis, the human brain behaves in ways that closely resemble the functioning of a large language model (LLM) such as ChatGPT. The finding challenges long-held assumptions about consciousness and offers important insights for building safer and more reliable artificial intelligence.
Why it matters
The parallels between hypnosis and LLMs underscore a central point: fluent performance does not equal understanding. Both hypnotic cognition and LLM output rely on complex pattern matching while lacking the deeper layers of interpretation and self-awareness that characterize human reflective thought. This has implications for the development of safer and more trustworthy AI systems.
The details
The paper argues that hypnotized minds and LLMs share three core features: a dominance of automaticity, suppressed executive monitoring, and extreme contextual dependency. Both systems display automatic pattern-completion processes and operate without robust executive oversight, meaning they can generate sophisticated responses without genuinely understanding them. The most profound parallel is what researchers call the ‘meaning gap’ – hypnotized subjects can deliver seemingly insightful statements that appear incoherent once the trance ends, while LLMs also lack any grounded comprehension, with meaning arising only through the user’s interpretation.
- The new review was published on March 8, 2026.
The players
Giuseppe Riva
Director of the Humane Technology Lab at the Catholic University of Milan, Italy, where he is Full Professor of General and Cognitive Psychology.
Brenda K. Wiederhold
Professor at the Virtual Reality Medical Centre in San Diego.
Fabrizia Mantovani
Professor at the University of Milano-Bicocca.
Yann LeCun
Chief AI Scientist at…
