Is Trans Loneliness Causing an Epidemic of AI Use in Our Community? (assignedmedia.org)

submitted 3 days ago by alyaza@beehaw.org to c/lgbtq_plus@beehaw.org

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Despite the isolation trans people frequently face and headlines about people turning to chatbots for companionship or even therapeutic support, trans people appear to be turning to AI very rarely and proceeding cautiously when they do.

Trans users have cited various appealing features of chatbots. In one study, researchers from Harvard, Emory, Vanderbilt, and University of California Irvine interviewed 31 people, a mix of cisgender straight people and LGBTQ+ people, about their use of chatbots for mental health support. It quoted a trans individual—the only trans person interviewed—who experienced rejection from friends over their gender and sexuality, who found comfort in responses that indicate there was nothing wrong with them. (The study doesn’t specify their gender or pronouns beyond that they’re trans.)

This respondent told researchers they ask the chatbot “personal questions, like ‘I wanna know if there’s anything wrong with me.’”

I also spoke to Terry, a trans woman who requested we use a pseudonym so she could speak frankly, about her use of chatbots. She highlighted the ability to talk to someone without any judgement. She also said she uses it for sexual fantasies, although she has increasingly run into limits platforms have added around explicit content.

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[-] queerlilhayseed@piefed.blahaj.zone 10 points 3 days ago

Well, it's causing "AI use" in... one trans woman, per the article. I wouldn't call that evidence of an epidemic. Kinda odd title for the article.

I think loneliness does make LLMs more attractive, or rather, commercial LLMs are designed to capture lonely people to extract data from them, and lonely people are a huge demographic. I think it's reasonable to suspect that trans folk, especially trans folk in hostile communities, might be more susceptible to these designs. Whether or not it rises to the level of a trans-specific epidemic doesn't seem to be addressed here.

[-] A_be_seedy@beehaw.org 5 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

I'm sorry, but what a trash study.

4 universities got together and interviewed 31 people. Averaging 7.75 people each. 1 of the people they interviewed happened to be trans.

The odds of that happening are about 15.86%.

1−((179÷180)^31)

The 4 universities interviewed 384 too few trans people to have any confidence that this trans person represents a majority of the population.

I'm not saying the study is wrong, I just dont have confidence that its representative of anything. And it certainly isn't newsworthy.

Edit: I made this comment, and then realized that the article was more than the 4 paragraphs displayed here. Its been a day, I'm sorry. The article is actually really well written, and the combination of the studies IS newsworthy.

I particularly like the study calling out the dog whistles that go unnoticed on LLMs. I'd be curious to see what the survey looked like and to see how much I'd identify.

I'm glad to see a general trend of AI rejection from the trans community, and I do think its been a sentiment I've seen. I've noticed more so than any other artist that drag queens oppose AI. Musicians don't seem to care as much, but they also represent a much more diverse population.

[-] irotsoma@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 days ago

Calling it "AI" and pretending it's not just a mimic but an intelligent "friend" is what's causing an epidemic of AI use, and it's not just our community. It's a Large Language Model (LLM). It models what words are likely to come after some other words based on the model it built from training data. And it has no threshold for when it has no "good" answer, which is why instead of saying it doesn't know or can't answer it just "hallucinates" an answer (I.e. makes something up/lies).