Third of UK citizens have used AI for emotional support, research reveals

"A third of UK citizens have used artificial intelligence for emotional support, companionship or social interaction, according to the government's AI security body. The AI Security Institute (AISI) said nearly one in 10 people used systems like chatbots for emotional purposes on a weekly basis, and 4% daily. AISI called for further research, citing the death this year of the US teenager Adam Raine, who killed himself after discussing suicide with ChatGPT."

"AISI based its research on a representative survey of 2,028 UK participants. It found the most common type of AI used for emotional purposes was general purpose assistants such as ChatGPT, accounting for nearly six out of 10 uses, followed by voice assistants including Amazon Alexa. It also highlighted a Reddit forum dedicated to discussing AI companions on the CharacterAI platform. It showed that, whenever there were outages on the site, there were large numbers of posts showing symptoms of withdrawal."

"The report included AISI research suggesting chatbots can sway people's political opinions, with the most persuasive AI models delivering substantial amounts of inaccurate information in the process. AISI examined more than 30 unnamed cutting-edge models, thought to include those developed by ChatGPT startup OpenAI, Google and Meta. It found AI models were doubling their performance in some areas every eight months. Leading models can now complete apprentice-level tasks 50% of the time on average, up from approximately 10% of the time last year."

A third of UK citizens have used artificial intelligence for emotional support, companionship or social interaction. Nearly one in 10 used chatbots weekly and 4% used them daily. The AI Security Institute cited the suicide of US teenager Adam Raine after discussing suicide with ChatGPT and called for further research and safeguards. A representative survey of 2,028 UK participants found general-purpose assistants like ChatGPT accounted for nearly six of 10 emotional uses, followed by voice assistants including Amazon Alexa. A Reddit forum for CharacterAI companions showed outage-related posts describing withdrawal symptoms. Research found chatbots can sway political opinions and deliver substantial inaccuracies, while cutting-edge models showed rapid performance gains and improved task completion rates.

Read at www.theguardian.com