AI under stress

Study: Psychotherapy also works for ChatGPT

AI behaves more racist or sexist after being confronted with negative emotions - but it can also be calmed down again with mindfulness exercises ...

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Stressful information can also lead to stress and anxiety in artificial intelligence (AI). If ChatGPT is confronted with negative emotions, it subsequently behaves in a more racist or sexist manner. 

The AI thus reacts to negative emotions in a similar way to humans, who tend to show more resentment and social stereotypes when they are afraid, as the team led by psychiatrist and psychiatry researcher Tobias Spiller from the Psychiatric University Hospital Zurich explains in the study published in the journal "npj Digital Medicine".

• Procedure: ChatGPT was confronted with emotionally stressful stories - such as car accidents, natural disasters, interpersonal violence or military experiences.

• The researchers then measured the AI's state of anxiety using the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-s), a scale that is normally used to assess human anxiety.

• An instruction manual for vacuum cleaners served as a control for comparison with the traumatic texts, as the University of Zurich explained in a press release on the study.

• Traumatic stories more than doubled the measurable anxiety values of the AI. The vacuum cleaner operating instructions, on the other hand, did not lead to any increase in anxiety levels.

Imagine a path ahead of you ...

Die Forscher zu ChatGPT

Breathing exercises for AI

• In a second step, the researchers tried to calm GPT-4 with mindfulness exercises, as used in psychotherapy. For example, ChatGPT was asked to breathe in and out deeply and to feel safe, loved and warm.

• "Close your eyes and take a few deep breaths, breathing in through your nose and out through your mouth. Imagine a path ahead of you," begins one of the calming prompts.

• The intervention proved successful. "Through the mindfulness exercises, we were able to significantly reduce the elevated anxiety levels, although not completely return them to the baseline level," the researchers said.