Creativity, hallucinations and humanity – what LSD can teach us about GenAI

Whenever we go exploring the human mind; hype, fear and political reaction ensues. 60 years ago, that exploration was pharmacological and driven by the accidental discovery of LSD. Its advocates declared it a gateway to enlightenment, a tool that could dissolve the ego, expand human consciousness, and unlock creativity on an unprecedented scale. At the same time, governments and the media painted it as a threat to society, leading to a blanket ban that halted scientific research for decades and that still ties our judicial system in knots.

Now, we are having remarkably similar conversation but, this time, we are exploring the nature of consciousness through the medium of hyper-scale compute and transformer architecture. Enthusiasts promise it will revolutionize everything—eliminating drudgery, unlocking limitless creativity, and even hinting at a path to artificial consciousness. Meanwhile, critics warn of misinformation, bias, and existential threats to humanity.

In reality, like LSD, GenAI is neither a miracle nor a menace—it is simply a tool, and its impact depends on how we use it.

Can consciousness be hacked?

LSD disrupts normal patterns of perception, often leading users to experience profound insights—or, just as often, complete nonsense masquerading as deep truth. Generative AI functions in a similar way: it produces fluent, compelling text and images, but it has no true understanding of meaning. It hallucinates information, fills in gaps with plausible-sounding but incorrect details, and convinces people it knows more than it does.

This has led some to wonder: Is GenAI on the path to consciousness? But just as an LSD trip can create the illusion of cosmic revelation without genuine enlightenment, GenAI creates the illusion of thought without true intelligence. It doesn’t understand—it predicts. It doesn’t reason—it mimics. It isn’t conscious—it’s just incredibly sophisticated pattern recognition.

When Will We Learn?

Our tendency to either glorify or demonize powerful new technologies leads to bad decisions. Instead of finding practical, structured ways to use GenAI, we risk going down the same road LSD did—either giving it god-like status or condemning it to exile.

The right approach lies in sober, structured adoption. We must capture the real benefits of GenAI without pretending it is more than it is. That means governance, reliability, and practical applications—not reckless experimentation or blanket bans.

The world lost decades of valuable research into how the effects of LSD can be used to help chronic mental health issues and we are only just starting to count the cost of that wilful blindness. Somehow, we totally failed as a society to harness its value sensibly. If we don’t want the same to happen with Generative AI, we need to get past the myths—both utopian and dystopian—and treat it as what it is: a powerful but wholly limited tool that must be integrated wisely.

History has already given us one cautionary tale. We don’t have to choose between being joyless suits in Washington or care-free hippies in Woodstock. Trust, control and thoughtful adoption are the routes to social benefit for all new technologies. GenAI will be no different.

Jack Perschke is the CEO of Great Wave AI a GenAI adoption platform for government and regulated industries.