Comment by jameshart

I think it’s very important to be clear what studies like this are actually doing.

This study, although it has been produced by a computer science department, belongs more to the field of sociology or media studies than it does to computer science.

This is a study about the way in which human beings consume a particular media product - a consumer AI chatbot - not a study about the technological limitations or capabilities of LLMs.

The social impact of particular pieces of software is a legitimate field of study and I can see the argument that it belongs in the broadly defined field of computer science. But this sort of question is much more similar to ‘how does the adoption of spreadsheet software in finance impact the ease of committing fraud’ or ‘how does the use of presentation software to condense ideas down to bulletpoints impact organizational decision making’. Software has a social dimension and it needs to be examined.

But the question of which models were used is of much less relevance to such a study than that they used ‘whatever capability is currently offered to consumers who commonly use chat software’. Just like in a media studies investigation into how viewing cop dramas impacts jury verdicts the question is less ‘which cop dramas did they pick to study?’ So long as the ones they picked were representative of what typical viewers see.