AI researchers want AI to fake "thinking" – by Mike Elgan
AI researchers are advocating for intentionally delayed responses from chatbots to enhance user trust. This approach, based on recent studies, suggests that users perceive slower responses as more thoughtful. However, this raises ethical concerns about reinforcing misconceptions that AI possesses human-like thinking capabilities.
- ▪Researchers found that users preferred slower chatbot responses, believing them to be more thoughtful.
- ▪The study suggests implementing 'Context-Aware Latency' to manipulate response times based on question complexity.
- ▪Critics argue that this approach could mislead users into thinking AI has human-like qualities.
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| Original publisher | Machinesociety |
| Canonical URL | https://www.machinesociety.ai/p/ai-researchers-want-ai-to-fake-thinking-247 |
| Publication time | Tue, 28 Apr 2026 23:52:14 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-04-29T00:27:34.794Z |
| Last seen | 2026-04-29T00:27:34.794Z |
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AI researchers want AI to fake “thinking”They want deliberately slow chatbot responses to make people trust the answer more. And it makes me trust the researchers less. Mike ElganApr 27, 202653ShareAI is getting faster. But slow-responding AI is perceived as better by users. At least that’s the conclusion reached with new research presented at CHI’26, which is the Association for Computing Machinery’s Barcelona conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Researchers named Felicia Fang-Yi Tan and Professor Oded Nov at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering tested 240 adults by having them use an AI chatbot. The answers were artificially delayed by 2, 9, or 20 seconds, and the delay had nothing to do with the question or the answer.
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