This research from OpenAI (company behind ChatGPT) is certainly interesting with a large data set, but this part was particularly relevant for me and my work on phenomenology and empathy…
That said, this latest research does chime with what scientists so far have discovered about how emotionally compelling chatbot conversations can be. For example, in 2023 MIT Media Lab researchers found that chatbots tend to mirror the emotional sentiment of a user’s messages, suggesting a kind of feedback loop where the happier you act, the happier the AI seems, or if you act sadder, so does the AI.