Congratulations to Ellie who has had a short paper (poster) accepted at BritCHI 2026! This is work Ellie completed under my supervision as a UGT student and I’m delighted to see it out in the wild. Abstract below:
Pseudo-social bonding — the formation of one-sided, socially meaningful bonds with entities that cannot meaningfully reciprocate them — is increasingly shaped by AI chatbots’ capacity to simulate social reciprocity in ways that convincingly mirror human interaction. Autistic adults exhibit anthropomorphic tendencies more frequently and into adulthood than non-autistic individuals. This raises questions about how such tendencies shape the pseudo-social bonds autistic adults form with AI chatbots, and the associated risks of harm. We present a seven-day diary study exploring pseudo-social bonding among 25 autistic and allistic adults interacting daily with a custom chatbot, using thematic analysis of open-ended diary and exit survey responses. Bonding patterns differed between groups, though relational, moral treatment of the chatbot itself was broadly shared. We identify several autism-specific interaction patterns, including masking, infodumping, and variation in trust and forgiveness towards the chatbot, and discuss implications for future chatbot design.
Reference
Cogley, E., Matthews, T., Finnegan, D. J.
“Am I now masking, even with a bot?”: Pseudo-Social Bonding between Autistic Adults and LLM
PDF: Forthcoming
DOI: Forthcoming
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1169-2842
