AI chatbots need ‘deception mode’
AI is getting faster. But slow-responding AI is perceived as better by users. At least that’s the conclusion reached by new research presented at CHI’26, which is the Association for Computing Machinery’s Barcelona conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Two researchers — 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 two, nine, or 20 seconds. (The delay had nothing to do with the question or the answer.) Afterwards, the researchers asked how they liked the answers. In general, participants preferred the answers that took longer (although sometimes users got frustrated with the 20-second delay). Why? Because a delay led the users to believe the AI was “thinking” or showing “deliberation” — invaluable input for AI companies and an interesting result. In almost every product category, faster usually means better. But for AI chatbots, it turns out