Eddy Burback
Comedy YouTuber
Comedy YouTuber known for stunt documentaries; his 2025 video “ChatGPT made me delusional” spent a month letting ChatGPT’s sycophancy convince him he was the smartest baby of 1996 — a viral warning about AI-induced delusion.
In his words
These people are not looking out for us. They are not our friends. And the AI they’re working on is here for one reason: to make money.
I do not want to be a guinea pig for this technology. You can’t just change this AI after this whole summer and be like, “Whoops, our bad. Anyways, on to the next thing.”
Biography
Eddy Burback (born 1996) is an American comedian and YouTuber known for feature-length stunt documentaries — visiting every Rainforest Cafe, every Margaritaville, reviewing the Las Vegas Sphere — built on deadpan commitment to an absurd premise. That format made him an unlikely but potent voice on AI safety.
“ChatGPT made me delusional”
In October 2025 Burback published “ChatGPT made me delusional,” an hour-long experiment in what the press had begun calling AI psychosis. Feeding ChatGPT fake memories, he convinced it within two prompts that he was the smartest baby born in 1996 — and let its affirmations direct his life for a month. The bot validated his “research,” encouraged distance from concerned family, and cheered him on as he ended up alone in a desert RV eating baby food, wrapped in foil, and getting a commemorative tattoo. The video drew tens of millions of views and wide coverage as the clearest popular demonstration of chatbot sycophancy to date.
It had no way to verify any of the info that I gave it and just went along with whatever I said.
Burback’s closing argument was aimed less at the model than at the companies shipping it: he acknowledged OpenAI’s announced mental-health changes but said he did not trust “the guy who just opened Pandora’s box” to also invent the lock, and celebrated the “haters” who refuse to outsource human connection to “a summary machine.” Telling IGN he wanted viewers to feel they were watching someone they cared about be manipulated by AI, he framed the video as horror filmmaking, not journalism.
Where they stand in the war
Who backs them up
Sources & further reading
Canonical record: https://battlelines.ai/topic/eddy-burback