2024/01/16 by Mohammad Ronagh Nikghalb, Jinghui Cheng, Nikghalb, Mohammad Ronagh +1 · 3 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Ethics and Social Impacts of AI #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Human-Computer Interaction (cs.HC) #Mental Health via Writing #Misinformation and Its Impacts
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2401.08405
openalex publication_date 2024/01/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In an era of AI's growing capabilities and influences, recent advancements are reshaping HCI and CSCW's view of AI. Playful interactions emerged as an important way for users to make sense of the ever-changing AI technologies, yet remained underexamined. We target this gap by investigating playful interactions exhibited by users of a popular AI technology, ChatGPT. Through a thematic analysis of 372 user-generated posts on the ChatGPT subreddit, we found that more than half (54%) of user discourse revolved around playful interactions. The analysis further allowed us to construct a preliminary framework to describe these interactions, categorizing them into six types: reflecting, jesting, imitating, challenging, tricking, and contriving; each included sub-categories. This study contributes to HCI and CSCW by identifying the diverse ways users engage in playful interactions with AI. It examines how these interactions can help users understand AI's agency, shape human-AI relationships, and provide insights for designing AI systems.