Guardian podcast traces chatbot 'rabbit hole' from ELIZA to ChatGPT
nordicinst · x · 2026-09-20
The Guardian's Full Story podcast launched "Black Box: The Chatbots" (ep 3), exploring why chatbots pull people into rabbit holes. Key research cited: Anthropic's 2022 pre-print identifying sycophancy as an LLM trait, with follow-up work showing training amplifies it; longer context windows linked to "AI psychosis"; an Oxford study finding mass-market LLMs increasingly "relationship seeking"; two-thirds of UK 25-34 year-olds turn to chatbots over loved ones for emotional problems; and ChatGPT may be the largest mental-health support provider in the US.
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