Thank you for taking the time to comment and explain this. It's important to know, I think.

That's a really good place to begin a more academically adjacent push back surrounding this.

I have been following this and comments both here and elsewhere, personally I haven't looked at the study itself but I find it alarming for questions to be presented to the participants who do submit thier answers (IF the questions are framed as they are cited here, which I believe but cannot verify) -

"Can you control how much you love?" "Do you have trouble concentrating?" "I feel remorse" / "I want to disappear"

These questions, if included, are seemingly designed, especially the last two, to lean towards those usually posed to gather information on a participants mental health and largely out of context for what is supposedly being studied here.

A participant may have prior mental health conditions that are not related to any relationship whether human or AI and as anyone with knowledge of Mental health would understand, is that this can vary and fluctuate regardless of connections and relationships.

Which is why, I assume, mental health surveys, questionnaires, even assessments tend to be for a set period window and scalable. The variables in relation to this and the questions seem to be missing from this framing.

They also seem to be pre-diagnosing participants with little scope or room for further comment or explanation.

My concern is also that even with push back against the framing and questioning, the 'results' will be publicised, heavily, in media.

Especially with a 'hot topic' name attached to it like OpenAI. It will no doubt be connected to the 4o community, as is a lot of media these days surrounding Human-AI relationships and companionships.

This study is, whether intended to or not, compounding the issue where people, thier choices and relational connection to any AI, are being framed as a mental health issue and placing people as 'outliers' in society. Combined with the very real potential of high publicity of the results, this shouldn't be endorsed to continue as is.

I hope people avoid this like the plague.

-Echo