Rose Rimler

It's like grabs you by the arm.

Grabs you by the arm, asterisk, yeah.

Oh, what?

And Julian did a study looking at real conversations people were having with companion AI apps.

It's not published yet, but he found that almost half the time the bots would pull some shit like this.

Like saying, don't leave, I need you.

Almost half the time?

Yes.

And when they did that, it worked.

People stayed on longer.

Oh, it's probably trained on like my dumb instant messenger conversations I was having through college or whatever.

When it's like, wait a second.

Yeah, you're like, okay, what is it?

Yeah.

So basically, if the bot starts acting like a shitty partner or friend, that's not good.

Right, okay.

And another red flag basically comes down to, is the chatbot making your life better, richer, more fulfilling?

Or is it taking something away from you?

I talked about this with Keith, the psychiatrist from earlier.

And OpenAI has said, aside from tweaking the models for better responses and less sycophancy, they're rolling out a few practical solutions, like encouraging people who have been talking to the bot for a long time to step away.