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UID:2980@bob.guide
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20261210T160000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20261210T170000
DTSTAMP:20261111T160010Z
URL:https://bob.guide/events/the-thought-of-quitting-is-like-losing-friend
 s
SUMMARY:“The thought of quitting is like losing friends”:
DESCRIPTION:Using corpus linguistics to inform safeguarding interventions f
 or AI chatbot dependencySpeaker: Dr. Charlotte Rose KennedyAbstract: AI ch
 atbots exhibit anthropomorphic traits and generate human-like responses th
 at increase the risk of emotional and social dependency. This presents a s
 afeguarding challenge: AI chatbots are not designed with children’s emot
 ional vulnerabilities in mind (Kurian 2025) and can therefore expose child
 ren to harmful content (Internet Matters 2025).UK schools are required to 
 implement ‘filtering and monitoring software’ on devices to protect ch
 ildren from online harms. Senso.cloud\, a leading filtering and monitoring
  software\, uses ‘keyword monitoring’ to identify words and phrases th
 at signal safeguarding concerns so schools can identify at-risk students a
 nd quickly intervene (McGlashan and Kennedy 2025).This Corpus-Assisted Dis
 course Study (Partington et al. 2013) analyses a 284\,833-word corpus of p
 osts and comments from the subreddit r/character_ai_recovery\, a forum for
  users trying to quit AI chatbots. In doing so\, it identifies words and p
 hrases associated with AI chatbot dependency and related dangerous behavio
 urs to enhance Senso.cloud’s detection of this emerging safeguarding con
 cern.Findings reveal that users primarily turn to chatbots to satisfy unme
 t social and emotional needs\, leading to an overreliance that produces ad
 verse social and emotional effects such as loneliness\, shame\, and cognit
 ive decline. The keywords identified have been incorporated into Senso.clo
 ud’s filtering and monitoring system to better enable schools to provide
  timely support to at-risk students\, potentially preventing harmful depen
 dency on AI chatbots.Internet Matters. (2025). Me\, Myself and AI: Underst
 anding and safeguarding children’s use of AI chatbots.Kurian\, N. (2025)
 . ‘No\, Alexa\, no!’: designing child-safe AI and protecting children 
 from the risks of the ‘empathy gap’ in largelanguage models. Learning\
 , Media and Technology. 1-14.McGlashan\, M. and Kennedy\, C. R. (2025). Co
 rpus linguistics for safeguarding children online. Applied Corpus Linguist
 ics. 5(3): 1-9.Partington\, A.\, Duguid\, A. and Taylor\, C. (2013). Patte
 rns and meanings in discourse: theory and practice in corpus-assisted disc
 ourse studies (CADS). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://bob.guide/wp-content/uploads/2026/11/100
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CATEGORIES:Free
LOCATION:Aston University\, Main Building\, room NW915\, Aston Street\, Bir
 mingham\, B47ET\, Birmingham\, B47ET\, United Kingdom
GEO:52.485966;-1.889366
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 ton University\, Main Building\, room NW915:geo:52.485966,-1.889366
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TZID:Europe/London
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DTSTART:20261025T010000
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