The paper examines how users handle harmful value conflicts with AI companions. By analyzing 146 posts and conducting a week-long study with 22 participants using the Minion technology probe, the authors find that users blend softer and harder strategies, especially when conflicts involve Universalism and Tradition values. The study highlights that such conflicts create asymmetric responsibility, with users shouldering unilateral repair work that AI companions cannot reciprocate, suggesting a need for platform-level safeguards.
arXiv:2606. 04150v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: Public discourse and emerging policy typically assume that AI emotional support is a deliberate act: a lonely user consciously seeking comfort from a dedicated companion chatbot.
The article introduces personality engineering, a method that uses AI agents to precisely model negotiator personas based on established personality frameworks. It argues that AI agents, free from human limitations, can rigorously test canonical negotiation theory, which posits that success depends on balancing empathy and assertiveness. The authors propose using the interpersonal circumplex—specifically its warmth and dominance dimensions—as a foundational coordinate system for both theory testing and AI agent design.
arXiv:2608. 02660v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Advanced AI assistants engage users in extended interactions across a widening range of roles, including advice, decision support, collaboration, learning, emotional support, and companionship among others.
arXiv:2609.14236v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: With the rapid proliferation of large language model (LLM)-based systems, AI companions have emerged as conversational agents designed to cultivate e...
arXiv:2605. 08093v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: The use of chatbots for various forms of companionship is growing rapidly, raising a myriad of questions about simulated relationships, emotional dependence, and psychological harm.
The study examines how teens interact with companion AI chatbots, revealing that these systems offer comfort, recognition, identity exploration, and relationship rehearsal. However, teens also experience problematic attachment, social substitution, emotional dependence, and disruptions to academic and social life. The findings highlight the need for safety measures that address long‑term relationships, user‑controlled memory, privacy, relational boundaries, and healthy disengagement.
arXiv:2606. 13739v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: This paper examines trade-offs between AI safety and well-being relative to (i) one of the most promising methods for finetuning super-capable AIs, 'Constitutional AI', and (ii) one of the most influential approaches to understanding complex ethical decision making and the conditions for the well-being of rational agents, 'Virtue Ethics'.
arXiv:2607. 17826v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Despite the growing availability of customizable social artificial intelligence (AI), such as ChatGPT, Grok, and Character.
arXiv:2605. 08426v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: Ensuring that AI agents behave safely and beneficially when interacting with other parties has emerged as one of the central challenges of modern AI safety.
arXiv:2608. 10672v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Social interaction has become one of the most common uses of LLMs, yet research on emotional bonds with AI has focused largely on how users experience these systems, leaving the systems' role in relationship formation poorly understood.
arXiv:2609.14796v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: The threat that AI persuasion poses to human control has been acknowledged in the literature, but not yet systematically studied. Now that persuasion a...
arXiv:2606. 26106v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly used in emotionally charged situations involving interpersonal conflict, frustration, and distress.