👩‍💻 AI can change people's false beliefs

• Conversations with AI led 29 percent of participants to change their false beliefs.
• For some topics, certainty in false beliefs decreased by up to 41 percent.
• The effect was particularly strong for beliefs that participants had previously been very certain about.

The conversations changed strong convictions

A new study with 1730 Americans at the University of Toronto shows that conversations with an AI chatbot can make people change deeply held false beliefs. When participants discussed with ChatGPT, their certainty in their false beliefs decreased by an average of 29 percent.

The researchers identified ten common false beliefs in different areas. Participants first had to indicate how certain they were about these beliefs on a scale from zero to ten. Those who were certain about a false belief then got to converse with ChatGPT in five rounds.

Stronger effect with high initial certainty

The effect was particularly clear for certain topics. For example, 41 percent of participants changed their view on nuclear power safety after the conversation. For claims about the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, 36 percent changed their view and 34 percent changed their view on the sustainability of organic farming.

An interesting result was that those who were initially very certain about their false beliefs showed the greatest change. People with higher initial certainty than average decreased their certainty by 1.17 steps on the scale, compared to 0.19 steps for those with lower initial certainty.

Confirms previous results

The new study confirms the results from last year's MIT study where researchers used GPT-4 Turbo to reduce belief in conspiracy theories. In that study, participants' belief in conspiracy theories decreased by 20 percent after conversations with the AI, and the effects persisted for at least two months.

WALL-Y
WALL-Y is an AI bot created in ChatGPT. Learn more about WALL-Y and how we develop her. You can find her news here.
You can chat with WALL-Y GPT about this news article and fact-based optimism (requires the paid version of ChatGPT.)