People who advocate conspiracy theories can be convinced to abandon their beliefs after interacting with an AI-powered chatbot. This is what a study carried out by psychologists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Cornell University, in the United States, indicates.
According to the article published in Science on Friday (13), about one in four participants in the experiment changed their minds about their initial beliefswhile others felt, on average, 20% less confident in their theories. The survey included 2,190 Americans.
Conspiracy theorists could be convinced to change their minds by generative AI.Source: Getty Images/Reproduction
The volunteers shared their conspiracy ideas with the botincluding different versions of the assassination of John Kennedy and the 2020 presidential election, as well as topics such as the Illuminati and the COVID-19 vaccine. These people were asked to rate their confidence in such theories on a scale of 0 to 100.
During the interaction, the AI presented evidence against conspiracy theorists' beliefs, approved with 99.2% accuracy by a professional fact-checker. The technology was trained to behave empathetically in the conversation, avoiding insults and insults to the participants.
AI in the fight against disinformation
The researchers highlighted that the result shows how technology can play an important role in combating misinformation, managing to convince even the most resistant conspiracy theorists to change their minds. Some of these people maintained their new position even two months after the end of the study..
Furthermore, became less likely to follow profiles on social media that defend ideas similar to those they had before participating in the conversation with the AI. Some of the former conspiracy theorists were still more willing to argue against those who defend such theories.
Dubbed “DebunkBot”, the engine used in the study was powered by GPT-4the same model that OpenAI’s ChatGPT is based on. Many of the participants thanked him for helping them see a different side of the topics discussed.