The moral authority of ChatGPT
This research highlights a risk for users of AI chatbots, showing that even with awareness, they can be negatively impacted by inconsistent moral guidance, which is an incremental but important finding for AI ethics.
The study found that ChatGPT provides inconsistent moral advice, yet still significantly influences users' moral judgments, with users underestimating this influence, potentially corrupting rather than improving their decision-making.
ChatGPT is not only fun to chat with, but it also searches information, answers questions, and gives advice. With consistent moral advice, it might improve the moral judgment and decisions of users, who often hold contradictory moral beliefs. Unfortunately, ChatGPT turns out highly inconsistent as a moral advisor. Nonetheless, it influences users' moral judgment, we find in an experiment, even if they know they are advised by a chatting bot, and they underestimate how much they are influenced. Thus, ChatGPT threatens to corrupt rather than improves users' judgment. These findings raise the question of how to ensure the responsible use of ChatGPT and similar AI. Transparency is often touted but seems ineffective. We propose training to improve digital literacy.