Will the Placebo Effect Mold How We See AI?

"The preconceived notions people have about AI - and what they're told before they use it - mold their experiences with these tools," writes Axios, "in ways researchers are beginning to unpack..."A strong placebo effect works to shape what people think of a particular AI tool, one study revealed. Participants who were about to interact with a mental health chatbot were told the bot was caring, was manipulative or was neither and had no motive. After using the chatbot, which is based on OpenAI's generative AI model GPT-3, most people primed to believe the AI was caring said it was. Participants who'd been told the AI had no motives said it didn't. But they were all interacting with the same chatbot. Only 24% of the participants who were told the AI was trying to manipulate them into buying its service said they perceived it as malicious... The intrigue: It wasn't just people's perceptions that were affected by their expectations. Analyzing the words in conversations people had with the chatbot, the researchers found those who were told the AI was caring had increasingly positive conversations with the chatbot, whereas the interaction with the AI became more negative with people who'd been told it was trying to manipulate them... The placebo effect will likely be a "big challenge in the future," says Thomas Kosch, who studies human-AI interaction at Humboldt University in Berlin. For example, someone might be more careless when they think an AI is helping them drive a car, he says. His own work also shows people take more risks when they think they are supported by an AI.

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