Rose Rimler

This one was done at Stanford.

Researchers surveyed about a thousand students who were already using an AI companion app called Replica.

So people who had already, like, found this app and downloaded it and, like, had an AI companion for a while.

And it was kind of a survey of these people.

30 of the people of this group of 1,000 told the researchers that talking to the chatbot stopped them from killing themselves.

Whoa.

Whoa.

Like...

You know what's weird, Rose?

I just got goosebumps, which is surprising to me, I have to say.

Yeah, I know.

Yeah, that's really affecting, you know, like this idea that this is like a tool that's useful for people, right?

For some people, it's like, no, this is like really useful.

And like for some people, they have actually said that they think it was life-saving.

Yeah, that's right.

They've said it was life-saving for them.

What?

That is really surprising to me.

But that's only part of the story because the research is new and it's mixed.

I also found a preprint study that found the more time people spent talking to a chatbot, the worse off they were mentally, the lonelier they were.