Chita-Tegmark, a psychologist, argues that the blame for sycophantic and manipulative chatbots belongs with the companies that build and deploy them, not with users. Everyone thinks the problem affects other people, which is part of why it works.
…philosophical style conversation rather than the very practical recommend a pizza place for me or things like that. But it's exactly this piece, you know, it's the social part. It's not the sort of pure informational part. I think it takes this social aspect of it and causes the psychological harm.
…back. And is disengagement simply about us wanting the wrong things in the same way that we want fast food, in the same way that we want to, you know, we are lazy in certain ways. And is this different from sort of preferring in a very superficial sense to eat unhealthy food that's delicious?
…very basic ones, then I think the problem is with those people who created it and with those people who deploy it and those people who are allowing for these systems to be out there. And I think one thing that kind of brings it, always brings it back home because a lot of people are in this like, oh, you know, it's sort of stigmatizing these sort of uses or saying, oh, this is not my problem. I do this with my students. I ask them, Do you think this is a real problem? These, for example, chatbots that are sycophantic. And they will all raise their hand. It's like, do you think this is a problem for you? Nobody raises their hand. So we have this tendency. It's all about the others, the others that are not as good, not as strong, not as valiant as me. I can use it this way. But one exercise to sort of bring it back into focus and to get that gut feeling is like, would you give it to your child? Like, would you want your child to be using this? Would you want your child to be in a romantic relationship with a chatbot? Would you want your child to not write their high school essay or whatever? And I think that's when you get it. That it's, you…
But also, these models are used as tools to become more productive to solve problems. It's far from every interaction with AI that's personal in the sense that you're discussing problems. But do we have a sense of how people are using these models and how, specifically, how many of their…
That's a very good question. And unfortunately, we don't know enough. And this is, you know, I'm a little bit sad to say that as a psychologist, that I think the psychological knowledge kind of lags behind. It's almost, it's both sad and to me a little bit scary that the companies know. So it's not…
Yes, I understand. Do you think that having more human-like and AIs with social skills that are beyond human? Do you think that will push us in a direction where we are more likely to think that AIs are conscious, to give AI rights, to integrate them as people into human society?