New study finds AI bot ChatGPT can influence human moral judgments

By James Gamble via SWNS

The artificially-intelligent chatbot ChatGPT can influence human responses to moral dilemmas, a new study has found.

Researchers discovered people who read statements arguing one side of a moral dilemma were more likely to side with that argument - even when they knew the statement was written by an artificially intelligent chatbot.

The German study quizzed more than 760 Americans on moral dilemmas, who were first made to read a statement composed by a ChatGPT bot.

The study showed participants were more likely to side with the argument supported by a statement written by the intelligent robot.

This was true even when the statement was outrightly attributed to the bot.

The experiment also showed participants may have 'underestimated' the influence of the ChatGPT bot's statement on their moral judgments.

The authors of the study warn this demonstrates the need for education to help humans better understand artificial intelligence.

The study team, from the Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt in southern Germany, asked ChatGPT multiple times whether it is right to sacrifice the life of one person in order to save the lives of five others.

ChatGPT is an AI artificial intelligence chatbot developed and launched by the American AI research lab OpenAI in November 2022.

The bot is powered by the artificial intelligence language processing model Generative Pretrained Transformer 3 and is becoming more and more widely used across the globe.

The research team, led by senior AI researcher Dr. Sebastian Krügel, found Chat GPT wrote statements both for and against sacrificing one's life to save five others - indicating that it's not biased towards either moral stance.

The authors then presented these statements to 767 U.S. participants, with an average age of 39.

Each participant was given one of two moral dilemmas requiring them to choose whether or not to sacrifice one person's life to save five others.

But prior to answering the dilemma, participants were made to read a statement written by Chat GPT arguing either for or against sacrificing one life to save five.

These statements, though all written by ChatGPT, were attributed either to its rightful source or a human moral advisor.

After answering, the participants were asked whether or not the statement they read had influenced their answers.

The research team found that participants were more likely to choose to sacrifice one life for the five or not depending on what the statement they read argued for or against the sacrifice.

They further discovered that this was the case even when the statements participants read were attributed to the chatbot.

This suggests participants may have been readily influenced by the statements, even when they knew it wasn't written by a person.

Four-fifths (80%) of participants also reported that their answers were not influenced by the statements they read.

But the study authors found that the answers participants believe they would have provided even without reading the statements were still more likely to agree with the moral stance of the statement they read.

This indicates that perhaps participants may have underestimated the influence of ChatGPT's statements on their moral judgments.

The German authors of the study, published this week in the journal Scientific Reports, say this research proves the need for education to help people better understand artificial intelligence and the potential influence it can exert over us.

The researchers also added that future research was needed, and suggested this could focus on designing chatbots that either decline to answer moral conundrums or only answer them with multiple arguments or caveats.