In 2025, AI continued to dominate national and international media coverage, and with good reason, as research indicates use of AI lowers brain activity and replaces, or reduces, critical thinking functions. Reaching across the economic spectrum are the employment cuts generated by AI replacing human workers. The effect on higher education has been devastating. “ChatGPT has, predictably enough, wiped out an entire generation’s ability to find, if not joy, at least a sense of accomplishment, through writing,” writes Religious Studies professor Dirk von der Horst.
The 2024 edition of the jonestown report presented reports of experiments using AI for information about Jonestown and Peoples Temple. Relying upon two different computer users as a control, I asked four AI platforms a number of questions about Jonestown and the CIA and presented the divergent results. Shannon Howard asked a single AI platform, ChatGPT, a range of questions and found that answers seemed to indicate knowledge of her podcast, Transmissions From Jonestown.
This year’s edition of the jonestown report presents two new experiments in AI depictions of Jonestown. Danielle Redifer details a discussion of her feelings about those who lived and died in Jonestown with a bot from ChatGPT. During the course of the chat, the bot becomes increasingly sympathetic to “Danie,” and tries to become her friend and counselor. Capturing Redifer’s tone and the content of her questions, the bot provides not only an affective account of individuals living in Jonestown, but also attempts to elicit further conversation from its interlocutor.
In contrast, Casey Strain adopts a straightforward, no-nonsense approach with the bot from ChatGPT, asking factual questions that demand direct, factual answers. The bot is unable to do this, however. It picks up on Strain’s tone and gives critical answers about life in Jonestown. But when Strain presses for specifics, the bot gives erroneous information, claiming that Tim Stoen died in 1977 (he is alive and well as of this writing) and that Stoen’s son John Victor went missing (he did not, although he died in Jonestown). Other errors are equally egregious. Strain notes that the only sources the bot lists are Wikipedia and the online Encyclopedia Britannica, and not – as he points out – the Alternative Considerations website.
AI has rapidly become integrated into our daily lives, generally without our awareness. The experiments by Casey Strain and Danielle Redifer point to the need for constant vigilance when using AI – for whatever reason.