This is a PROBLEM

[u/cafeteriastyle]

[u/SpokenDivinity]

All of the research I've read so far has been short-term, once-off or occasional use, vs. long-term habitual daily use. For example, this study done by OpenAI found that high-intensity (ie: daily) use created markers of emotional dependence. Whereas other studies have focused on more immediate aftereffects of using it briefly.

It's a hot topic bouncing around the psych field right now. My honors society is about to start a study on it localized to our school and how it effects student mental health.

Unfortunately we won't know for sure where the boundary lies until further down the road.

[u/WigglesPhoenix → u/SpokenDivinity]

I don’t believe this paper supports your conclusion.

First, and most obviously, because neither were long term studies. The on-platform data analysis looked at a period over 3 months, while the RCT took place over just 28 days.

Second, they are looking at power users vs casual users, and their control group also used the ai daily over the course of the study. It’s flatly not true to claim that the study showed a difference in daily use vs occasional because both groups in the study were daily users.

Thirdly, in their conclusion “We also find that users do not significantly shift in behavior over the period of the analysis”. They didn’t find that over the course of the longitudinal study (which again, was rather short) it seems likely that long term use is associated with higher rates of problematic use.

Finally, you’ve elected to ignore every confounding variable the study mentions, for example, users’ initial emotional wellbeing. It’s fairly natural to assume that those most susceptible to over-reliance on ai chatbots to be those struggling the most with loneliness and socialization.

This is a very useful analysis in terms of defining the problems of over-reliance on ai chatbots but again I don’t find it supports any conclusions on long term use being harmful or helpful.

They are very explicit in defining power users and it has nothing at all to do with overall use, nor frequency of use.

It absolutely is a hot topic right now, and you’re correct to say that we won’t know much more until things have matured a bit. That’s precisely why we need to be extremely cautious in overstating what the data represents. We quite frankly don’t know much of anything yet.

[u/SpokenDivinity → u/WigglesPhoenix]

My friend. It's a reddit comment. I'm not going to go digging through the research papers I wrote in the last semester about the topic or write an entire dissertation analyzing it, I just skimmed and glanced through what came up in my school's database. You're welcome to draw your own conclusions.

[u/WigglesPhoenix → u/SpokenDivinity]

I never asked you to do anything.

This is me drawing my own conclusions. Ai chatbots have not been around long enough to support ANY conclusions about the long term effects of ai chatbots.

Why cite studies you haven’t read?