The Dynamics of Delusion: Modeling Bidirectional False Belief Amplification in Human-Chatbot Dialogue

ArXi:2604.25096v1 Announce Type: new There is growing concern that AI chatbots might fuel delusional beliefs in users. Some have suggested that humans and chatbots mutually reinforce false beliefs over time, but quantitative evidence is lacking. Using a unique dataset of chat logs from individuals who exhibited delusional thinking, we developed a latent state model that captures accumulating and decaying influences between humans and chatbots. We find that a bidirectional influence model substantially outperforms a unidirectional alternative where humans are the primary driver of delusion.