Semester 2, academic year 2023/2024
By Nele Pralat
As AI applications such as ChatGPT or MetaAI continue to advance and integrate into various online spaces, their touchpoints with daily life are growing with some AI’s offering advice, purchase recommendations and more. Yet, in proportion to AI’s growing presence, there is relatively little research focusing on the implications of us interacting with AI. Understanding the nuances of how we interact with AI as a social actor, particularly with AI as an empathetic entity, remains unexplored. However, this is especially relevant when considering the potential of AI not just as a tool, but as an entity capable of influencing trust and decision-making, that is becoming increasingly more challenging to distinguish from human interaction partners.
Displays of empathy have been found to significantly influence trust in interpersonal relationships, whilst trust has been found to positively influence individuals’ patronage intentions. This project explores whether this effect translates into the realm of human-computer communication, by examining the impact of an empathetic AI on patronage intentions toward it, mediated by trust towards the AI’s benevolence and competence.
The project uses two custom AI chatbot interactions, which are created by means of GPT-4 and trained to communicate in either a highly empathetic or non-empathetic manner. Previous studies on conversational agents primarily focused on simulating AI chatbot interactions using basic, pre-scripted dialogues. This research innovates by leveraging advanced machine learning to actively generate empathetic and rational responses, moving beyond mere simulations to actual AI-driven conversations.