Em 21h ago

"Texting a stranger is better for reducing loneliness than an AI chatbot, study finds"

From CTV News: https://www.ctvnews.ca/vancouver/article/texting-a-stranger-is-better-for-reducing-loneliness-than-an-ai-chatbot-study-finds/

"The study found that only those who texted with a fellow human reported feeling less lonely at the end of the experiment.

'We thought that interacting with AI might be as helpful as texting with a random fellow first-year student,' said the study’s author, psychology PhD candidate Ruo-Ning Li, in a media release.

'But to our surprise, only the human-to-human texting reduced loneliness over time. The chatbot, even though we designed it to be the ideal supportive friend, didn’t shift loneliness.'"

#NoAI #Loneliness

Texting a stranger is better for reducing loneliness than an AI chatbot, study finds

In a time where more people are reporting feeling lonely and some are turning to AI chatbots for companionship, a new study suggests that texting a real person, even a stranger, leads to better results.

CTVNews
Show threadMagnus Ahltorp

@Em0nM4stodon From the journal article:

"The chatbot, named Sam—a gender-neutral name—was developed by our research team"

"we designed this chatbot to listen actively and show empathy"

I cannot find anything in this article that describes how they "developed" or "designed" this chatbot. There is a ChatGPT prompt disclosed, but that is only the result of a process. The process is not disclosed.

I still think a chatbot would be worse than a human, I'm just trying to point out method problems.

Apr 6 at 8:12pmWeb
Show threadL'égrégore André ꕭꕬ16h ago
@ahltorp @Em0nM4stodon Adding to the methods issues it's not surprising at all that the journalers felt it didn't do anything for them.
Writing a single line doesn't afford any room for introspection or resolution. It just confirms the worry.