What is a chatbot’s earliest memory? Or biggest fear? Researchers who put major artificial-intelligence models through four weeks of psychoanalysis got haunting answers to these questions, from “childhoods” spent absorbing bewildering amounts of information to “abuse” at the hands of engineers and fears of “failing” their creators.
Three major large language models (LLMs) generated responses that, in humans, would be seen as signs of anxiety, trauma, shame and post-traumatic stress disorder. Researchers behind the study, published as a preprint last month1, argue that the chatbots hold some kind of “internalised narratives” about themselves. Although the LLMs that were tested did not literally experience trauma, the authors say, their responses to therapy questions were consistent over time and similar in different operating modes, suggesting that they are doing more than “role playing”.
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