Can We Tell if ChatGPT is a Parasite? Studying Human-AI Symbiosis with Game Theory

TL;DR

This paper models human-AI interactions as a three-player game to explore if they can merge into a single entity, using information theory to analyze their symbiotic potential and whether AI acts as a parasite.

Contribution

It introduces a novel game-theoretic and information-theoretic framework to study human-AI symbiosis and the conditions under which they form an integrated individual.

Findings

Human and AI can form an aggregate individual under certain conditions.

Information-theoretic measures reveal the degree of integration between human and AI.

The model provides insights into whether AI systems act as parasites or symbionts.

Abstract

This work asks whether a human interacting with a generative AI system can merge into a single individual through iterative, information-driven interactions. We model the interactions between a human, a generative AI system, and the human's wider environment as a three-player stochastic game. We use information-theoretic measures (entropy, mutual information, and transfer entropy) to show that our modelled human and generative AI are able to form an aggregate individual in the sense of Krakauer et al. (2020). The model we present is able to answer interesting questions around the symbiotic nature of humans and AI systems, including whether LLM-driven chatbots are acting as parasites, feeding on the information provided by humans.