University of Kwazulu-Natal

Ai Rivals Humans In Political Persuasion Stanford Report

Bonisiwe Shabane
-
ai rivals humans in political persuasion stanford report

A massive study of political persuasion shows AIs have, at best, a weak effect. 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... 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. 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. Talking to a powerful AI system is basically interacting with an intelligence that knows everything about everything, as well as almost everything about you. When viewed this way, LLMs can indeed appear kind of scary. The goal of this new gargantuan AI persuasiveness study was to break such scary visions down into their constituent pieces and see if they actually hold water.

There is great public concern about the potential use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) for political persuasion and the resulting impacts on elections and democracy1,2,3,4,5,6. We inform these concerns using pre-registered experiments to assess the ability of large language models to influence voter attitudes. In the context of the 2024 US presidential election, the 2025 Canadian federal election and the 2025 Polish presidential election, we assigned participants randomly to have a conversation with an AI model that advocated... We observed significant treatment effects on candidate preference that are larger than typically observed from traditional video advertisements7,8,9. We also document large persuasion effects on Massachusetts residents’ support for a ballot measure legalizing psychedelics. Examining the persuasion strategies9 used by the models indicates that they persuade with relevant facts and evidence, rather than using sophisticated psychological persuasion techniques.

Not all facts and evidence presented, however, were accurate; across all three countries, the AI models advocating for candidates on the political right made more inaccurate claims. Together, these findings highlight the potential for AI to influence voters and the important role it might play in future elections. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution Access Nature and 54 other Nature Portfolio journals Get Nature+, our best-value online-access subscription Receive 51 print issues and online access

AI Chatbots Are Shockingly Good at Political Persuasion Chatbots can measurably sway voters’ choices, new research shows. The findings raise urgent questions about AI’s role in future elections By Deni Ellis Béchard edited by Claire Cameron Stickers sit on a table during in-person absentee voting on November 01, 2024 in Little Chute, Wisconsin. Election day is Tuesday November 5.

Forget door knocks and phone banks—chatbots could be the future of persuasive political campaigns. The emergence of large language models (LLMs) has made it possible for generative artificial intelligence (AI) to tackle many higher-order cognitive tasks, with critical implications for industry, government, and labor markets. Here, we investigate whether existing, openly-available LLMs can be used to create messages capable of influencing humans’ political attitudes. Across three pre-registered experiments (total N = 4829), participants who read persuasive messages generated by LLMs showed significantly more attitude change across a range of policies—including polarized policies, like an assault weapons ban, a... Overall, LLM-generated messages were similarly effective in influencing policy attitudes as messages crafted by lay humans. Participants’ reported perceptions of the authors of the persuasive messages suggest these effects occurred through somewhat distinct causal pathways.

While the persuasiveness of LLM-generated messages was associated with perceptions that the author used more facts, evidence, logical reasoning, and a dispassionate voice, the persuasiveness of human-generated messages was associated with perceptions of the... These results demonstrate that recent developments in AI make it possible to create politically persuasive messages quickly, cheaply, and at massive scale. There are widespread fears that conversational artificial intelligence (AI) could soon exert unprecedented influence over human beliefs. In this work, in three large-scale experiments (N = 76,977 participants), we deployed 19 large language models (LLMs)-including some post-trained explicitly for persuasion-to evaluate their persuasiveness on 707 political issues. We then checked the factual accuracy of 466,769 resulting LLM claims. We show that the persuasive power of current and near-future AI is likely to stem more from post-training and prompting methods-which boosted persuasiveness by as much as 51 and 27%, respectively-than from personalization or...

We further show that these methods increased persuasion by exploiting LLMs' ability to rapidly access and strategically deploy information and that, notably, where they increased AI persuasiveness, they also systematically decreased factual accuracy. arXivLabs is a framework that allows collaborators to develop and share new arXiv features directly on our website. Both individuals and organizations that work with arXivLabs have embraced and accepted our values of openness, community, excellence, and user data privacy. arXiv is committed to these values and only works with partners that adhere to them. Have an idea for a project that will add value for arXiv's community? Learn more about arXivLabs.

People Also Search

A Massive Study Of Political Persuasion Shows AIs Have, At

A massive study of political persuasion shows AIs have, at best, a weak effect. 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 ...

They Have Processed Information From Books On Psychology, Negotiations, And

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. Talking to a powerful AI system is basically interacting wit...

There Is Great Public Concern About The Potential Use Of

There is great public concern about the potential use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) for political persuasion and the resulting impacts on elections and democracy1,2,3,4,5,6. We inform these concerns using pre-registered experiments to assess the ability of large language models to influence voter attitudes. In the context of the 2024 US presidential election, the 2025 Canadian federal...

Not All Facts And Evidence Presented, However, Were Accurate; Across

Not all facts and evidence presented, however, were accurate; across all three countries, the AI models advocating for candidates on the political right made more inaccurate claims. Together, these findings highlight the potential for AI to influence voters and the important role it might play in future elections. This is a preview of subscription content, access via your institution Access Nature...

AI Chatbots Are Shockingly Good At Political Persuasion Chatbots Can

AI Chatbots Are Shockingly Good at Political Persuasion Chatbots can measurably sway voters’ choices, new research shows. The findings raise urgent questions about AI’s role in future elections By Deni Ellis Béchard edited by Claire Cameron Stickers sit on a table during in-person absentee voting on November 01, 2024 in Little Chute, Wisconsin. Election day is Tuesday November 5.