Relational Mode Oscillation in Human-AI Interaction

Users of LLMs unconsciously oscillate between five relational modes — Director, Trainer, Partner, Student, Consumer — within single interactions, often within minutes. Gülay et al. (2025) studied 22 knowledge workers and found that 14 of 22 explicitly framed the AI as “just a tool” while behaviorally praising it, teaching it patiently, or deferring to its suggestions. The gap between stated positioning and enacted dynamics operates below conscious awareness.

Map this to a typical coding session: you start commanding (“refactor this function”), shift to collaborating (“what if we tried X instead?”), find yourself teaching (“no, the constraint is Y because…”), then deferring (“actually your approach is better”), then passively reviewing output. Five modes. One conversation. You didn’t decide to switch. You just did.

Yang & Ma (2025) independently found five epistemic relationship types — Instrumental Reliance, Contingent Delegation, Co-agency Collaboration, Authority Displacement, Epistemic Abstention — with the same structural finding: roles are “dynamic and context-dependent.” Their lens is epistemological (how do I know things with this entity?) where Gülay’s is relational (what am I to this entity?). Multiple groups carving this space with different vocabularies suggests the oscillation phenomenon is real even if the right framework for describing it is unsettled.