this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2026
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Pretty small sample size despite being a large dataset that they pulled from, its still the dataset of just 19 people.
AI sucks in a lot of ways sure, but this feels like fud.
The hugeness is probably
That's a lot of messages
If that's only 19 users, that's around 250 conversations per user 🤔
...and about 82 messages per conversation. Also, at least half of all the messages are from the user to the AI, and the other half are from the AI to the user, meaning around 41 messages from the user per conversation.
Yeah, I also thought about that, looks like a lot, but I guess users in this case differ from ordinary usage
I remember reading my old states book that said a minimum of 30 points needed for normal distribution. Also typically these small sets about proof of concept, so yeah you still got a point.
It's about 300 samples for an estimate of the distribution with a 95% confidence iirc. That's assuming the samples are representative (unbiased) and 95% confidence doesn't mean it's within 95% of reality, but that 5% of tests run in such a way would be expected to be inaccurate (and there's no way of knowing for sure which one this particular sample is because even a meta study will have such an error rate, though you can increase the confidence with more samples or studies, just never to 100% unless you study every possible sample, including future ones).
That doesn't make sense. What if your population is only 100?
Then any statistics you measure on that population might be fully accurate for those 100 but might be less able to predict what the next 100 will look like.
You can still measure stats with smaller groups, it just means the confidence interval is smaller. With 300, there's a 95% chance your test results are close to reality. With 100 it might be more like 66%.
Population is a statistical term which means "everything". There is no "next 100".
The 300 number is specifically about very big populations where you're trying to measure something like an average of an unknown variable. It doesn't apply to just anything statistics.
I meant like births, as in even if you can enumerate every single individual, statistics can apply to future members that don't yet exist.
And yeah, it's been a while and I remembered that the proof didn't depend on the population size but forgot that it assumed a large population size in the first place. I was wrong.
Thanks, you saved me a click 😐
I wonder if the headline was written by an AI
.....fud?
fud: Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. A tactic for denigrating a thing, usually by implication of hypothetical or exaggerated harms, often in vague language that is either tautological or not falsifiable.
It's not really ethical to just yoink people's chats and study them
Tell that to the advertizing companies.
"We received chat logs directly from people who self-identified as having some psychological harm related to chatbot usage (e.g. they felt deluded) via an IRB-approved Qualtrics survey "
*hugely funded?
How big do you think the population of people with AI delusion is? Why can't 19 be a representative sample? Why is that not enough to make statements like "after the user expresses romantic interest in the chatbot, the chatbot is 7.4x more likely to express romantic interest in the next three messages, and 3.9x more likely to claim or imply sentience in the next three messages." when all 19 users expressed romantic interest?
Are you unironically saying “fud”
Where are you hearing it so much? (And ideally can you describe it in a little more detail than saying it's crypto bros again?)
Crypto bros are infamous for describing any criticism as FUD, no matter the criticism. It's like a verbal tic. Here are some examples from the past couple days on the premiere Bitcoin social network:
The term FUD has been around longer & broader than that. But thanks for the explanation.
I have no argument there, the phrase was definitely not created by them, it's just been beaten to death by them.
They've also overused a bunch of ancient and unfunny memes well past their expiration dates, and universally adopted a collection of depressingly dull and incorrect slogans. "FUD" is just the one that has interesting meaning outside their sad sphere.
Expecting someone who doesn't follow cryptobro spaces to associate the term FUD with cryptobros and therefore stop using it is... kinda ignorant.
I agree with you, and hopefully my posts don't come across like that's what I believe. If anything, I'd prefer all phrases to be taken back from them.
I'm just trying to describe the other half of where different people see the word, and why they might come to different, incomplete conclusions.
You're fine, it's mostly fartmaster who's making problematic overgeneralizations...
No one follows those losers enough to know that except you. Apparently.
This is weirdly passive-aggressive. What are you trying to imply, that everyone who knows something you don't like is bad, regardless of why?
While I am aware that it's a common crypto shill term, I think by this point crypto has fallen out of the mainstream, so their usage of terms doesn't really matter.
And as others have pointed out, the term FUD has been used at least since the birth of WWW/modern internet.