rhetoric

people turn to AI with existential questions and complex, unresolved scientific problems because they think that the mystical processes in AI systems generate knowledge or insights that far exceed human cognitive abilities.

The science of intersubjectivity, with its understanding of feelings, embodiment, and companionship, is needed more today than it ever has been. With increasing attention to artificial intelligence and artificial worlds generated through the medium of technology, it is important to remind ourselves of the psychological and biological nature of how... See more

It is predictable, then, that users are consistently fooled into believing that their AI companions are conscious persons, capable of feeling real emotions.

Interestingly, many users who emotionally mourned the ‘loss’ of GPT-4o expressed complete awareness of its lack of consciousness. And yet, in many cases, the subjective grief that they felt was no less real. This demonstrates that the power of the illusion is such that a given user might not actually believe that their AI companion is conscious,... See more

Together, these findings illuminate a key tension in emotional ly intelligent interfaces: they can evoke humanlike relational cues that increase engagement, but in doing so may blur the line between persuasive design and emotional coercion

One might point out that movie characters or videogame NPCs give off a similarly deceiving impression of being conscious, and yet it would surely be extreme to condemn this. However, what makes the illusion particularly worrying in the case of AI companions is that it involves an interaction that is direct, mutual, and persistent: the feigned... See more

The results showed that people with a higher desire to so-cially connect were more likely to anthropomorphize the chatbot, ascribing humanlike mental properties to it; and people who anthropomorphized the chatbot more were also more likely to report that it had an impact on their social interactions and relationships with family and friends.

Not only could the same model no longer be accurate, but furthermore, this polluted content could then be used by the other LLMS for their own training. They, in turn, deposit terabytes of distorted information on the internet (This vicious cycle will eventually ruin both the internet and our ability to use chatbots effectively, I fear). This means... See more