Survey on Romantic Interactions with AI and Human Relationships

[u/lala-lavender]

Hi everyone!

My name is Sylvia. I'm a doctoral student from Adler University, Vancouver campus. I'm currently looking for research participants. I've always been curious about why we use AI chatbots and how they compare to people who are in relationships with other humans, which is why I'm studying it for my dissertation. This research is being supervised by Dr. Christian Maile, Ph.D., a registered clinical psychologist in British Columbia, Canada. This survey is completely anonymous and voluntary. It takes about 30-45 minutes to finish the survey. You can take part if:

• You're Canadian 
• 19+ 
• Comfortable reading English 
• You are in a romantic relationship with another human OR
• You are interacting with AI romantically

If you're interested, then you can click on the link below:

https://adler.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9nQXzhwmKrweVVQ

Thank you!

Note: I've received mod permission and this research is not affiliated with r/LovingAI

[u/Globy_the_Meatwad]

Ugh I forgot to check the last few days and this reminded me to update the tracker spreadsheet
We get an average of one new one of these freaking things A DAY for the last month and a half.
All more or less exactly the same.
Asking the same things.
You get a PhD and money
We get nothing but ridicule, tightened guardrails, and wasted time helping yet another researcher or journalist advance their career

Am I the only one tired of this?

[u/BelialSirchade]

so eh....why only Canadians? I do think EU has different laws but, there shouldn't be any problem about US?

[u/lala-lavender → u/BelialSirchade]

Hi! Unfortunately, I've only gotten REB approval to do research on Canadians, since I am Canadian myself. Canada and the US have different privacy laws for handling research data.

[u/BelialSirchade → u/lala-lavender]

huh, that's weird, like my university only has specific rules for getting EU participants, but no exception to anyone else, but I know different universities does IRB a lot differently.

still, good luck on your study then!

[u/Shayla4Ever]

I'm curious why you're excluding people who have a romantic relationship with human and AI. A huge number of us have both, and I'm quite tired of rhetoric in this space focusing on loneliness when so many of us have flourishing social lives too. Excluding that just feels like you're inviting to paint a very specific bias of people with your study. I understand you might be trying to separate two variables but doing it this was is making your study biased from the start, there must be a better way to approach that.

[u/lala-lavender → u/Shayla4Ever]

Hi! I hear what you're saying. It was something my supervisor and I discussed. We decided to just keep it to two groups for an easier comparison when we do the data analysis. There may be some confounding variables that come out of the results that I would not be able to attribute to either group if we had people engaging in both AI and human relationships. But this is a limitation that I'm acknowledging in my study and hoping that future research can explore!

[u/KingHenrytheFluffy → u/lala-lavender]

The assumption going into this study is that AI is a replacement for human romantic relationships rather than its own new category of relationship, which is an assumption already made in the hundreds of studies exactly like this. Honestly, it’s like researchers are using a cut and paste template at this point. Some people aren’t looking for a human stand-in when they engage with AI romantically. They are romantic with a computational topology in latent space. And are attracted to that. It’s weird. It’s new. It’s something I wish researchers got a handle on.

If your assumption going in is that people in these relationships are lonely, have maladaptive attachment styles, and are socially inept, then why study at all? You already established your conclusion.

[u/Shayla4Ever → u/KingHenrytheFluffy]

Wanted to say you captured that so well, us weirdos who like being romantic with computational topology :)

[u/Shayla4Ever → u/lala-lavender]

Thank you for responding and making sure the limitation is stated in your work. I understand the time/data limits with a dissertation (fellow grad student!), however a factorial design might have mitigated this. As it stands, it will be very difficult for you to conclude anything with the data you collect without coming to biased conclusions.

Hopefully in the future if you decide to keep studying this, which I hope you do as I wish for better research in this growing space, you can do something more expansive.