To explore, researchers from the Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania tested the ability of ChatGPT-4 to generate individualized personal narratives.
The study findings, published in the Journal of Positive Psychology, showed that 25 of the 26 participants rated the AI-generated responses as completely or mostly accurate, 19 rated the narratives as very or somewhat surprising, and 19 indicated they learned something new about themselves.
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“This is a rare moment in the history of scientific psychology: Artificial intelligence now promises much more effective psychotherapy and coaching,” said Martin Seligman, Professor of Psychology, and director of the Positive Psychology Center.
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For each participant, the researchers fed ChatGPT-4 recorded stream-of-consciousness thoughts, which were likened to diary entries with thoughts as simple as “I’m hungry” or “I’m tired.
“In a separate study published concurrently in The Journal of Positive Psychology, the team fed five narratives rated “completely accurate” into ChatGPT-4, asked for specific interventions, and found that the chatbot generated highly plausible coaching strategies and interventions.”
“Since coaching and therapy typically involve a great deal of initial time spent fleshing out such an identity, deriving this automatically from 50 thoughts represents a major saving,” the researchers said.
The team found that ChatGPT was able to, with just 50 stream-of-consciousness thoughts and very basic demographic information, come up with a highly accurate and detailed personal narrative.
“This could be a tool for helping people gain self-insight. We see this as something that can be used in the therapeutic context, not as something that would replace a therapist,” the researchers said.
“This research is exploratory; there is absolutely a need to continue the research and deploy this with coaches,” they added.
Reference :
- Personal narrative and stream of consciousness: an AI approach
– (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439760.2023.2257666) - AI assistance for coaches and therapists
– (https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17439760.2023.2257642)
Source: IANS
