In a randomized, controlled, pre-registered study GPT-4 was better able to change people’s minds during a conversational debate than other humans, at least when it is given access to personal information about the person it is debating (people given the same information were not more persuasive). The effects were significant: the AI increased the chance of someone changing their mind by 87% over a human debater. This might be why a second paper found that GPT-4 could accomplish a famously difficult conversational task: arguing with conspiracy theorists. That controlled trial found that a three-round debate, with GPT-4 arguing the other side, robustly lowers conspiracy theory beliefs. Even more surprisingly, the effects persist over time, even for true believers.
Source: https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/what-just-happened-what-is-happening?
**This was originally posted on Andras Baneth's LinkedIn account.
