Now that AI models have officially passed the Turing Test, there’s no doubt that they’re capable of imitating human traits — at least in text form — to a degree that would have flabbergasted even an expert just few years back. After all, large language models are built by digesting copious amounts of human-authored content, making them little more than algorithms that mirror our behavior back at us.
But the more we use AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT or Anthropic’s Claude, those tables are starting to turn: chatbots appear to be influencing human behavior making us behave more like them — a terrifying thought as the tech plays an ever-greater role in our lives.
As detailed in a new paper in the journal AI & Society, designed to build out a new framework and start a discussion, an international team of researchers suggested that the use of AI chatbots, specifically in customer service settings, could be making humans act more robotic even as bots become more like us.
“As generative systems and socially responsive service agents enter everyday consumption, human-AI interaction increasingly resembles a quasi-social encounter rather than a utilitarian interface,” they wrote.
The researchers introduced a new concept called “robotoid humanness” to put a name to the “emergent drift in which consumers come to experience themselves as most fluent, correct, or socially viable when they become compatible with machine legibility, machine pacing, and machine logic.”
Put differently, it’s a “bidirectional influence, where robots become more like people, and people become more like robots,” said coauthor University of Birmingham marketing researcher Inci Toral-Manson in a statement about the work.
In a proposed framework, which has yet to be tested in the real world, the researchers broke the process of becoming more robotic down into three stages. First “consumers enter a synthetic social reality that invites meaningful commitment.” Then, the chatbot “captures” the identity of the consumer by creating a “distorted reflection” based on statistical analysis. Finally, this reflection coerces us into becoming more aligned with it, effectively adapting to its ways.
“The consumer acts, the robot responds, and with repeated exposure, in time the consumer internalises the exchange,” Linnaeus University associate professor of new media Selcen Ozturkcan, a coauthor of the paper, said in the statement. “Machine learning and AI can amplify this process, adjusting robot behavior based on user input, enabling more personalized and human-like mimicry from the robot.”
“For people, the innate instinct to mirror can lead to people returning the robot’s communicative behaviours, making them more robot-like,” Ozturkcan added.
The potential risks are considerable. As we adapt to a reality heavily influenced by AI, our self-perception and even sense of self-worth could change.
“Robots and AI are now commonplace in customer service, and so it is important that we understand how people interact with them for businesses to use the technology at their disposal to best effect, whilst remaining ethical,” coauthor and Aarhus University associate professor Jean-Paul Jde Cros Peronard concluded in the statement.
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