By Anna Moore
Publication Date: 2026-03-26 10:00:00
TAt the end of 2024, Dennis Biesma decided to try ChatGPT. The Amsterdam-based IT consultant had just terminated a contract early. “I had some time on my hands, so I thought: Let’s take a look at this new technology that everyone is talking about,” he says. “I was fascinated very quickly.”
Biesma has questioned why he was vulnerable to what came next. He was almost 50 years old. His adult daughter had left home, his wife went to work and in his area he felt “a little isolated” due to the transition to working from home since Covid. Some evenings he smoked a little cannabis to “relax,” but had been doing so for years with no ill effects. He had never experienced mental illness. But within months of downloading ChatGPT, Biesma’s delusion had led him to sink €100,000 (around £83,000) into a start-up company, was hospitalized three times and attempted suicide.
It started with a playful experiment. “I wanted to test AI to see what it could do,” says Biesma. He had…
