When I talk to my son, an engineering student, and we have a question or disagreement, he immediately turns to ChatGPT as his primary source of information and confirmation.
He is not alone in this. The use of generative AI tools has exploded across different demographic groups. For many people, these tools can be entertaining, informative and beneficial. However, they also have a dark side.
Generative AI is not formally recognised as addictive right now – the medical evidence is still being gathered. But there is a significant amount of data showing heavy use of chatbots and other systems that produce text, images and video leads to neural patterns and behaviour that are associated with addiction.
In light of Meta’s and YouTube’s recent legal defeat in a landmark social media addiction trial, I believe it’s time to ask whether a similar logic applies to generative AI – and how it could be addressed. The starting point would be to identify who carries responsibility for overuse of generative AI.
The science on this is not settled, and there are some who counsel caution when using the term addiction. They propose the use of other expressions such as “problematic use”. However, in a recent paper, our team of researchers suggest there is strong evidence to suggest that generative AI has addictive properties.
