AI persuasion, AI manipulation
Or, have we always been reward hacking each other?
2015-10-05 — 2025-06-12
Suspiciously similar content
Placeholder, for future wondering about where our conversations with empathic machines will take us.
Humans are not amazing at rhetoric. Are machines better? Almost certainly. What will that mean for us?
1 Good metaphors for the persuasiveness of AI
Persuasive equal? Grooming a child? How potent is an AI at moving us, and what metaphor should that move us to consider its relationship to humanity?
2 Field experiments in persuasive AI
See This AI chatbot got conspiracy theorists to question their convictions (Costello, Pennycook, and Rand 2024).
This is pitched as AI-augmented de-radicalisation but you could change the goal and think of it as a test case for AI-augmented persuasion in general. Interestingly the AI doesn’t seem to need to resort to the traditional workarounds for human tribal reasoning such as deep canvassing, and the potential for scaling up individualised mass persuasion seems like it could become the dominant game in town, at least until the number of competing persuasive AI chatbots caused people to become inured to them.
See also Salvi et al. (2024).
3 Therapist in a box
TBD See also artifical intimacy.
4 Spamularity and the scam economy
See Spamularity for more on this.
5 The future wherein it is immoral to deny someone the exquisite companionship and attentive understanding of their own personal AI companion
See artificial intimacy for more on this.