AI Addicts Are Now a Thing
April 9, 2025
Hey, pal, can you spare a prompt?
Gee, who could have seen this coming? It seems one can become dependent on a chatbot, complete with addition indicators like preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms, loss of control, and mood modification. "Something Bizarre Is Happening to People Who Use ChatGPT a Lot," reports The Byte. Writer Noor Al-Sibai cites a recent joint study by OpenAI and MIT Media Lab as she writes:
"To get there, the MIT and OpenAI team surveyed thousands of ChatGPT users to glean not only how they felt about the chatbot, but also to study what kinds of ‘affective cues,’ which was defined in a joint summary of the research as ‘aspects of interactions that indicate empathy, affection, or support,’ they used when chatting with it. Though the vast majority of people surveyed didn’t engage emotionally with ChatGPT, those who used the chatbot for longer periods of time seemed to start considering it to be a ‘friend.’ The survey participants who chatted with ChatGPT the longest tended to be lonelier and get more stressed out over subtle changes in the model’s behavior, too. Add it all up, and it’s not good. In this study as in other cases we’ve seen, people tend to become dependent upon AI chatbots when their personal lives are lacking. In other words, the neediest people are developing the deepest parasocial relationship with AI — and where that leads could end up being sad, scary, or somewhere entirely unpredictable."
No kidding. Interestingly, the study found those who use the bot as an emotional or psychological sounding board were less likely to become dependent than those who used it for "non-personal" tasks, like brainstorming. Perhaps because the former are well-adjusted enough to examine their emotions at all? (The privacy risks of sharing such personal details with a chatbot are another issue entirely.) Al-Sibai emphasizes the upshot of the research: The more time one spends using ChatGPT, the more likely one is to become emotionally dependent on it. We think parents, especially, should be aware of this finding.
How many AI outfits will offer free AI? You know. Just give folks a taste.
Cynthia Murrell, April 9, 2025
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