JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

How does using large-language model (LLM) based offerings, such as ChatGPT, make users feel? To what extent, if at all, does it influence users’ well-being? To answer these novel and important questions, we conducted exploratory interviews with postgraduate students who have been using LLM offerings, such as ChatGPT. The current findings demonstrate that users note the functional support they receive from ChatGPT as well as forms of escapism and fantasy fulfilment, but also angst; a sense of anxiety, dependency, deskilling, despair, and the inevitability of being replaced.

Objective:

The present study explores the role of LLM based offerings, such as ChatGPT, in students’ lives; namely, how postgraduate students use such offerings and how it makes students feel and effects on students’ well-being.

Methods:

As part of this study, we employed an exploratory approach, using in-depth, qualitative, face-to-face interviews with sixteen users of ChatGPT 4o. Interviewees were invited to reflect upon how they use ChatGPT, how it makes them feel and how it may influence their lives.

Results:

The current findings from the exploratory, qualitative interviews show that users appreciate the functional support they receive from LLM based offerings such as ChatGPT, but at the same time such usage is seen as a ‘double-edged sword’ with respondents indicating feelings of dependency, despair, anxiety of being replaced and becoming de-skilled, worthless, and ‘being doomed’.

Conclusions:

This study employed exploratory in-depth interviews to examine how the usage of LLM based offerings such as ChatGPT makes users feel. The findings show that students used ChatGPT to make their lives easier and felt a sense of cognitive escapism and even fantasy fulfilment but it came at the cost of feeling anxious and pessimistic about their future.