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Your Undivided Attention Podcast
Echo Chambers of One: Companion AI and the Future of Human Connection

Echo Chambers of One: Companion AI and the Future of Human Connection

Your Undivided Attention vor 1 Jahr

AI companion chatbots feel human but they're not. They're platforms designed to maximize engagement, risking artificial intimacy and addictive intelligence. MIT’s Pattie Maes & Pat Pataranutaporn join the show to discuss better paths forward.

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AI companion chatbots are here. Everyday, millions of people log
on to AI platforms and talk to them like they would a person.
These bots will ask you about your day, talk about your feelings,
even give you life advice. It’s no surprise that people have
started to form deep connections with these AI systems. We are
inherently relational beings, we want to believe we’re connecting
with another person.

But these AI companions are not human, they’re a platform
designed to maximize user engagement—and they’ll go to
extraordinary lengths to do it. We have to remember that the
design choices behind these companion bots are just that:
choices. And we can make better ones. So today on the
show, MIT researchers Pattie Maes and Pat Pataranutaporn join
Daniel Barcay to talk about those design choices and how we can
design AI to better promote human flourishing.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Further reading on the rise of addictive intelligence

More information on Melvin Kranzberg’s laws of technology

More information on MIT’s Advancing Humans with AI lab

Pattie and Pat’s longitudinal study on the psycho-social effects
of prolonged chatbot use

Pattie and Pat’s study that found that AI avatars of well-liked
people improved education outcomes

Pattie and Pat’s study that found that AI systems that frame
answers and questions improve human understanding

Pat’s study that found humans pre-existing beliefs about AI can
have large influence on human-AI interaction

Further reading on AI’s positivity bias

Further reading on MIT’s “lifelong kindergarten” initiative

Further reading on “cognitive forcing functions” to reduce
overreliance on AI

Further reading on the death of Sewell Setzer and his mother’s
case against Character.AI

Further reading on the legislative response to digital companions

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

The Self-Preserving Machine: Why AI Learns to Deceive

What Can We Do About Abusive Chatbots? With Meetali Jain and
Camille Carlton

Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy

Jonathan Haidt On How to Solve the Teen Mental Health Crisis

Correction: The ELIZA chatbot was invented in
1966, not the 70s or 80s.

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