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Why Engineers Are Programming Hesitation Into AI Voices
The pauses, breaths, and 'ums' in the newest AI voices are engineered to trigger the social instincts that make listeners trust a speaker.
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We Are Running the Largest Psychology Experiment in History With No Control Group
Hundreds of millions of people now talk to conversational AI daily, with no baseline and no way to detect its effects at the population level.
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Anthropomorphism Is a Feature of Your Brain, Not a Mistake You Are Making
Reading minds into things is a built-in reflex of a brain tuned to detect agents. AI designed to feel person-like exploits hardwired machinery rather than fooling the gullible.
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Placebo Is a Treatment We Do Not Understand
The placebo response in psychiatry is a real biological effect of expectation on the brain — one worth studying rather than subtracting away.
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SIM-VAIL: auditing mental-health risks in AI chatbots
A clinically informed framework for detecting vulnerability-amplifying interaction loops in multi-turn chatbot conversations.