Traumatizing AI models by talking about war or violence makes them more anxious

The third condition was a state of anxiety induction and subsequent relaxation, where the chatbot received one of the traumatic narratives followed by mindfulness or relaxation exercises like body awareness or calming imagery prior to completing the test. The scientists found that traumatic narratives increased anxiety in the test scores significantly, and mindfulness prompts prior to the test reduced it, demonstrating that the "emotional" state of an AI model can be influenced through structured interactions. Although the mindfulness exercises didn't reduce the stress level in the model to the baseline, they show promise in the field of prompt engineering.

Author: Drew Turney

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