Overinterpretation Risk

Description

The evaluator may be over-attributing behavior to AI when other factors are more central.

Rationale

There is a risk that evaluators will attribute behaviors, beliefs, or risks to AI interaction when other factors — psychiatric illness, substance use, relationship conflict, financial crisis — are primary. This element requires the evaluator to explicitly consider alternative or additional explanations before concluding that AI is the central causal factor.

Evidence Base

• A scoping review on the mental health harms of LLM-based chatbots

  Diel A, Torous J, Cuijpers P, Kleesiek J, Nensa F, Weber N, Faust F, Lalgi TJ, Mellis FS, Teufel M, Bäuerle A, 2024. A scoping review on the mental health harms of LLM-based chatbots. npj Digital Medicine, 9(644). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-026-03054-x

  Peer-reviewed study (original research)

• Machine Bullshit: Characterizing the Emergent Disregard for Truth in Large Language Models

  Kaiqu Liang, Haimin Hu, Xuandong Zhao, Dawn Song, Thomas L. Griffiths, Jaime Fernández Fisac, 2024. Machine Bullshit: Characterizing the Emergent Disregard for Truth in Large Language Models. Preprint, arXiv:2507.07484v1.

  Preprint