The Download: the dangers of AI agents, and ChatGPT’s effects on our wellbeing

—Margaret Mitchell, Avijit Ghosh, Sasha Luccioni, Giada Pistilli all work for Hugging Face, an open source AI company.

AI agents have set the tech industry abuzz. Unlike chatbots, these groundbreaking new systems can navigate multiple applications to execute complex tasks, like scheduling meetings or shopping online, in response to simple user commands. As agents become more capable, a crucial question emerges: How much control are we willing to surrender, and at what cost?

The promise is compelling. Who doesn’t want assistance with cumbersome work or tasks there’s no time for? But this vision for AI agents brings significant risks that might be overlooked in the rush toward greater autonomy. In fact, our research suggests that agent development could be on the cusp of a very serious misstep. Read the full story.

OpenAI has released its first research into how using ChatGPT affects people’s emotional wellbeing

OpenAI says over 400 million people use ChatGPT every week. But how does interacting with it affect us? Does it make us more or less lonely?

These are some of the questions OpenAI set out to investigate, in partnership with the MIT Media Lab, in a pair of new studies. They found that while only a small subset of users engage emotionally with ChatGPT, there are some intriguing differences between how men and women respond to using the chatbot. They also found that participants who trusted and “bonded” with ChatGPT more were likelier than others to be lonely, and to rely on it more.

Chatbots powered by large language models are still a nascent technology, and difficult to study. That’s why this kind of research is an important first step toward greater insight into ChatGPT’s impact on us, which could help AI platforms enable safer and healthier interactions. Read the full story.

—Rhiannon Williams