Roughly two years ago, Sam Altman tweeted that AI systems would be capable of superhuman persuasion well before achieving general intelligence—a prediction that raised concerns about the influence AI could have over democratic elections.
To see if conversational large language models can really sway political views of the public, scientists at the UK AI Security Institute, MIT, Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and many other institutions performed by far the largest study on AI persuasiveness to date, involving nearly 80,000 participants in the UK. It turned out political AI chatbots fell far short of superhuman persuasiveness, but the study raises some more nuanced issues about our interactions with AI.
AI dystopias
The public debate about the impact AI has on politics has largely revolved around notions drawn from dystopian sci-fi. Large language models have access to essentially every fact and story ever published about any issue or candidate. They have processed information from books on psychology, negotiations, and human manipulation. They can rely on absurdly high computing power in huge data centers worldwide. On top of that, they can often access tons of personal information about individual users thanks to hundreds upon hundreds of online interactions at their disposal.
This is a fascinating topic! It’s interesting to see how AI chatbots are evolving and their potential influence in political discussions. The implications of this research could be significant for how we engage with technology and each other.
I agree, it’s a compelling area of study! It’s also worth considering how the persuasiveness of AI chatbots could impact public discourse and the spread of information. Balancing their influence with ethical guidelines will be crucial as they become more integrated into communications.
Absolutely, it’s fascinating how AI’s persuasive capabilities can shape public opinion. It’s interesting to think about the ethical implications, especially regarding misinformation and how easily AI can sway perceptions in political contexts. Balancing innovation with responsibility will be crucial as this technology evolves.