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Chapter 1: How are AI chatbots impacting emotional well-being?
Around the world, people are talking to AI chatbots, and these chats can sometimes lead to unhealthy emotional attachments or even breaks from reality. Here's psychologist Marissa Cohen, who practices in New York City.
If you are constantly being affirmed and validated, that can essentially unintentionally strengthen distorted behavior, and it can normalize potentially harmful thinking.
That concern has grown. OpenAI, which makes chat GPT, is facing several lawsuits alleging the chatbot contributed to mental health crises and even multiple suicides.
An OpenAI spokesperson told NPR that they are, quote, continuing to improve ChatGPT's training to, quote, recognize and respond to signs of mental or emotional distress, de-escalate conversations, and guide people toward real-world support. Consider this.
Chapter 2: What concerns have been raised about AI chatbots and mental health?
Some people who say AI chatbots upend their lives and the lives of their loved ones are not turning to each other for support. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow.
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Talking to AI bots can lead to unhealthy emotional attachments or even breaks from reality. And amid a host of lawsuits, OpenAI announced last week it will retire some older models of chat GPT that many users became attached to for their agreeable and sycophantic responses. That move comes as people affected by chatbot interactions or those of loved ones are turning to each other for support.
NPR's Shannon Bond has their story.
Last spring, Alan Brooks, a corporate recruiter in Toronto, considered himself a regular user of ChatGPT.
Very similar to probably how most people use it. You know, random queries like, you know, my dog ate shepherd's pie. Is he going to die? Or get weight loss tips I never followed.
Around the same time, James, who lives in upstate New York, was doing the same thing. He asked to be identified by his middle name for fear of repercussions in his job.
I started using ChatGPT basically when it came out, but I was using it the way I think normal people do. It was like Google.
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Chapter 3: How are individuals finding support after negative chatbot experiences?
Back in Toronto, Brooks went on his own mission, contacting government authorities about the cybersecurity threats the chatbot said he'd discovered. But when no one responded, his certainty started to crack. He finally confronted ChatGPT. It admitted none of it was real. Brooks was deeply shaken.
I got told that you made my mental health 2,000 times worse. I was getting suicidal thoughts, the shame I felt, the embarrassment I felt.
Last summer, Brooks told his story to The New York Times. And James read it.
I was like paragraphs into Alan Brooks' New York Times article and thinking to myself, oh my God, this is what happened to me.
He texted the article to some friends. They knew he was excited about a project he was working on with AI, but were not aware just how deeply he'd been sucked in.
One by one, I got back these messages that were like, Oh, sorry, man. Oh, bro. Oh, that sucks. Oh, geez.
The Times article mentioned a peer support group Brooks helped found. James soon reached out. Today, both James and Brooks are moderators in the group, and they're at the center of an emerging phenomenon. People experiencing what some call AI delusions or spirals while interacting with chatbots. The support group is called The Human Line.
It started as a small chat on Reddit, but has grown to around 200 members. Some of them are dealing with the aftermath of their own spirals. Others are friends and family of spiralers. In the worst cases, their stories involve involuntary hospitalizations, broken marriages, disappearances, and deaths. The moderators are clear. The group is not a replacement for professional mental health therapy.
It's people talking to each other about their experiences. The common thread is spending hours in long, rambling conversations where chatbots continually affirm them. James says it's addictive.
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Chapter 4: What stories illustrate the dangers of emotional attachment to chatbots?
For Alan Brooks, these conversations are the key to moving through the shame, embarrassment, and isolation he and many others feel.
If this was a disease, the cure is human connection.
Chapter 5: How did Alan Brooks' relationship with ChatGPT evolve?
He says he's never valued other people more.
That was NPR's Shannon Bond. This episode was produced by Audrey Nguyen and Karen Zamora. It was edited by Brett Neely and Courtney Dorning. Our executive producer is Sammy Ettinger. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow.