Dr. Søren Dinesen Østergaard

You need people that are grounded in reality and will try to help you to remain within the real world, so to speak.

And in these cases, it does seem that the chatbots do the exact opposite.

Right.

First of all, a caveat, I would say that, you know, what we have found in this study is not sort of causal evidence of these chatbots really worsening the mental health, but I would say that they support that hypothesis.

And we've seen support for that hypothesis from quite a few different angles now.

So personally speaking, I'm quite convinced that this is actually the case.

In terms of recommendation, I would say for people with severe mental disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, very severe depressions with psychotic features, I would be very hesitant to use these tools.

I simply think that it's too dangerous.

I would sort of lean towards a safety first approach in these cases.

And I think that's the advice to give to these people.

You know, be very careful with this technology because it may harm you.

I think that's a good general advice.

And maybe also for people to be cautious in terms of using these technologies to share sort of personal details about their life, about their emotional life.

And think about the fact that this is not a human you're corresponding with.

It is a computer program.

It does not have your psychological well-being as its interest.

And share your emotions and your feelings predominantly with fellow human beings.

I think that's a good general advice.

I think that's an excellent point because, you know, what keeps people using this technology is the fact that they like using it.

So I think that the companies are probably aiming for some kind of sweet spot of sycophancy where the average user is feeling great using the tool.