A new study claims that it is possible to reduce a person’s belief in conspiracy theories using ChatGPT. Researchers at the American Universityhe Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Cornell University In the US they have used the artificial intelligence chatbot OpenAI to interact with people who believe in conspiracies. Chat with the latest version of ChatGPT reduced belief in conspiracy theories by an average of 20% of the study participants. The research, published Thursday in the journal Science, involved more than 2,100 Americans who identified themselves as believers in theories that investigators consider conspiracy theories.
‘Many conspiracy believers were willing to update their views when presented with compelling counter-evidence‘, said Thomas Costello, assistant professor of psychology at American University and senior author of the study, in a statement. The researchers highlight the possibility of the AI chatbot rebutting each person’s specific arguments with custom-generated content.
According to the article, the AI was instructed to ‘persuade very effectively’ users against the conspiracy they believed in. ‘I was quite surprised at first, but reading the conversations made me much less skeptical. The AI provided multi-page, highly detailed explanations of why the conspiracy was false in each round of conversation.and he was also good at being friendly and building rapport with the participants,’ Costello says.
Participants were surveyed and rated, using a score, how strong their belief was before the experiment and They were warned that they would be interacting with an AI.
The conspiracy theories They ranged from those related to the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy, aliens and the Illuminati, to those linked to COVID-19 or the 2020 US presidential election.
With less than 10 minutes of interaction with AIthe researchers observed a decrease in 20% on average in participants’ belief in conspiracy theories, and approximately 27% of the participants became ‘insecure’ about their belief in them.
Furthermore, it is important to note that the experiment was carried out in a controlled environment, which makes it difficult to reproduce on a larger scalethe researchers point out.