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According to new studies by OpenAI and MIT Media Lab, the more users talk to ChatGPT the more lonely they feel. The connection was made in the context of two, yet-to-be-peer-reviewed studiesone done at OpenAI analyzing “over 40 million ChatGPT interactions” and targeted user surveys, and another at MIT Media Lab following participants’ ChatGPT use for four weeks.
MIT’s study identified a number of ways that talking to ChatGPT – whether through text or audio – can affect a person’s emotional experience. This is beyond the general conclusion that higher usage led to “heightened loneliness and reduced socialization.” . For example, participants with heightened trust in the chatbot, and who tend to become emotionally attached to human relationships, felt more lonely and emotionally dependent on ChatGPT. ChatGPT’s voice mode had a less dramatic effect, especially if ChatGPT spoke with a neutral tone. Talking about personal topics can also lead to feelings of loneliness. However, conversing with ChatGPT on more general topics is more likely to increase emotional dependency. OpenAI’s study revealed that emotional conversations with ChatGPT are still rare. OpenAI writes “Emotionally expressive interactions were present in a large percentage of usage for only a small group of the heavy Advanced Voice Mode users we studied,” . This suggests that, even if MIT findings are as unsurprising as they are concerning, they are not widely used outside a small circle of power users.
MIT Media Lab’s and OpenAI’s research has some important limitations, such as both studies covering a brief period of time (one-month for MIT and 28 days for OpenAI), and MIT lacking a control group. The studies add to what has been intuitively true for some time now – talking to AI can have a psychological effect on the people doing the talking. It’s clear that MIT Media Lab, OpenAI, and other researchers are interested in understanding what will happen when talking with AI becomes the norm.
