Dr. Søren Dinesen Østergaard

I am a little bit worried, to be completely honest, because what seems to be the case is that for some of these individuals, not all, it can actually result in substantial worsening of their mental health.

Well, we did a study based on electronic health record data from the psychiatric service system where I work.

We basically screened all of the clinical notes with descriptions of the patients and their symptoms for words such as chatbot or chatgpt.

And then we read manually these notes to look at the content and what did they describe?

Did they describe the patients getting better or did they describe worsening of their mental health?

And in quite a few of these notes, we were observing that the patients were probably experiencing worsening as part of their interactions with these chatbots.

Yes, just sort of strictly hypothetical speaking, but also something that has actually been covered by the media.

If you have, let's say, a paranoid delusion, you have thoughts about being followed, persecuted, and you share these thoughts with the chatbot, due to the way they're trained, they tend to agree with the users.

And if you have an idea that you're being followed and the chatbot confirms that, that will basically consolidate your delusion saying, okay, I was actually right.

There are somebody after me.

And the car that I have been observing outside on the street is, in fact, the intelligence service spying on me or something along the lines of that.

That would be one example.

An alternative would be individuals with grandiose delusions that have this idea that they have gained a deep insight into something or developed a phenomenal business idea.

If you share that idea with the chatbots, they will basically say, yeah, you're really on the right track here.

This is extraordinary.

You're really onto something.

And again, your delusion will be consolidated by the chatbot.

And that is quite unfortunate.

Exactly.

You need quite the contrary, right?