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Amid reports of suicides following AI interactions and a false accusation by an AI system that a man committed murder, OpenAI has published a research report on human emotional engagement with its ChatGPT chatbot.
Amid reports of suicides following AI interactions and a false accusation by an AI system that a man committed murder, OpenAI has published a research report on human emotional engagement with its ChatGPT chatbot.
The first key finding of the report blog: "Emotional engagement with ChatGPT is rare in real-world usage."
That statement comes in a post titled "Early methods for studying affective use and emotional well-being on ChatGPT," which announced the study, " Investigating Affective Use and Emotional Well-being on ChatGPT ." It was published by a bevy of researchers, in conjunction with MIT Media Labs, to investigate "the influence of interacting with such systems on users’ well-being and behavioral patterns over time."
MIT Media Labs published its own research, "How AI And Human Behaviors Shape Psychosocial Effects Of Chatbot Use: A Longitudinal Randomized Controlled Study" (see below). Conceptual Framework of the MIT Study "Affective cues (aspects of interactions that indicate empathy, affection, or support) were not present in the vast majority of on-platform conversations we assessed, indicating that engaging emotionally is a rare use case for ChatGPT," OpenAI found.
Those findings come among a spate of real-world anecdotes that report users falling in love with AI constructs, multiple suicides following AI interactions, and one system even accusing a man of murdering his children.
In the latter case, reported last Friday by The Guardian, a Norwegian man named Arve Hjalmar Holmen filed a complaint against OpenAI after the company’s ChatGPT chatbot falsely claimed he had murdered two of his children. The lawsuit, claiming defamation, asked a Norwegian watchdog to order OpenAI to adjust its model to eliminate inaccurate results relating to Holmen and to impose a fine on the company.
There have also been multiple reports of suicide that were related to AI usage, with the publication People publishing at least two articles related to that, " Man Dies by Suicide After Conversations with AI Chatbot That Became His ‘Confidante,’ […]
OpenAI Studies Emotional Effect of AI Usage Amid Reports of Suicide, Murder Accusation
