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How AI Could Make People More Anxious

How AI Could Make People More Anxious

How to Touch Grass vor 2 Monaten

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27:59

Nothing sucks you in quite like the internet. It seems to have a
way of figuring out what you’re currently obsessed with and serving
you more and more of it, whether that’s cat videos, cookie recipes,
or information about your most pervasive and seemingly unshakeable
anxiety. (At this point, anyone who’s never spent a late night
Googling their worries should be studied by science for their
willpower.) But with the rise of artificial intelligence, the
internet may be fueling a different kind of engagement. Elias
Aboujaoude, a psychiatrist at Stanford University, and Ashleigh
Golden, a psychologist at Stanford, recently wrote a paper arguing
that the design of AI chatbots appears to encourage anxious
behavior and keep people stuck in obsessive loops. One in six
adults have turned to chatbots for mental-health information and
advice, according to a KFF poll, and Golden cautions that “we may
be encountering the perfect storm of avoidant coping behaviors and
this tech that reinforces those tendencies and disorders.” In
this episode of How to Touch Grass, hosts Julie Beck and Natalie
Brennan hear from Golden and Aboujaoude about how people who use AI
looking for reassurance may instead find their symptoms getting
worse, and what that means for an anxious nation. Learn more about
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