Why Children Treat LLM Chatbots Like Human Friends
Anthropomorphism in Children's Interactions with LLM Chatbots
I analyzed 35 studies to understand why children assign human traits to LLM chatbots. My review reveals that features like human-like personas and supportive companionship drive this anthropomorphism. The results show children forming social ties and navigating complex moral responses, highlighting both the benefits and risks for future child-focused AI design.
Children exhibit paradoxical social and moral responses while forming varying social ties and exploring social boundaries with these digital companions.
- mncharity
Similar issues arose with automated learning companions for XR. Mismatches between a learner's mental model of the companion, and its actual capabilities and limitations, can cause so many problematic misunderstandings. So one idea, is to emphasize non-human non-social sources of behavior - to set up alternative narratives for "why did it do that?". The companion might be "Sparky, the glitching robot dog". So forgetting things, getting them wrong, spacing out, being unhelpful, confused, distracted, missing social cues, giving poor cues, etc... that's just glitchy robot dog glitching, not social signal. Maybe - speculative.
- tolugenius
I'm curious what specific chatbots they used, a companion chatbot is quite different than say chatgpt. And I imagine the former is what children will anthropomorphize, my understand is chatgpt/gemini/the standard is more "do my homework" services. I am curious if the same mechanisms they found with children are the same or at least on the same thread line with the adults who found companions or attachment with certain models (like the gpt 4o saga).
- mmooss
Why allow anthropomorphism in LLM or any computer output, for any age group?
A simple regulation would be that all LLM output must:
* Explicitly identify itself as a computer
* Identify the human or human org controlling it
(e.g., 'This is Claude v8.90 software made by Anthropic.')
* Not attempt to mimic humans except for entertainment
purposes, and then clearly labeled (e.g., 'This is not
a human. It is a computer pretending to be human for
entertainment purposes.').
What violation of those regulations would be for other than defrauding and/or manipulationg people? They are easily complied with and I don't see those regulations impacting the economic productivity gains projected for LLM use.
- lz400
When my daughter was 7yo and she talked to chatgpt, she repeatedly asked, what's your name? are you a boy or a girl? eventually she lost interest at the evasiveness of the answers, like she marked it as not fun to interact with, not a real person. It's different now, that she understands it can help with homework :D