A recent study discovered that engaging in a brief conversation with a chatbot for under 10 minutes had a calming effect on conspiracy theorists, including those who strongly believed in conspiracy theories related to the COVID-19 pandemic.
A team of researchers, including those from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US, created an AI model called ChatGPT, which was specifically designed to be persuasive and to engage in customised conversations with participants, effectively countering their conspiratorial claims with factual rebuttals.
To achieve this, the researchers utilized the capabilities of GPT-4, a powerful language model that powers ChatGPT, giving it access to extensive information and the ability to generate tailored arguments. A large language model like GPT-4 is a type of artificial intelligence that is trained on massive amounts of textual data and can respond to users' requests using natural language.
The study found that among more than 2,000 individuals who identified themselves as conspiracy believers, conversations with the AI model ChatGPT led to an average reduction of about 20 per cent in their beliefs.
Additionally, approximately a quarter of the participants, all of whom previously believed in a specific conspiracy, no longer endorsed it after interacting with the AI-powered chatbot, according to the researchers.
"Large language models can thereby directly refute particular evidence each individual cites as supporting their conspiratorial beliefs," the authors wrote in the study published in the journal Science.
In two separate experiments, the participants were asked to describe a conspiracy theory they believed in and provide supporting evidence, following which they engaged in a conversation with the chatbot.
"The conversation lasted 8.4 min on average and comprised three rounds of back-and-forth interaction (not counting the initial elicitation of reasons for belief from the participant), ..." the authors wrote. A control group of participants discussed an unrelated topic with the AI.
"The treatment reduced participants' belief in their chosen conspiracy theory by 20 per cent on average. This effect persisted undiminished for at least 2 months..." the authors wrote.
Lead author Thomas Costello, an assistant professor of psychology at the American University, said, "Many conspiracy believers were indeed willing to update their views when presented with compelling counter-evidence." Costello added, "The AI provided page-long, highly detailed accounts of why the given conspiracy was false in each round of conversation -- and was also adept at being amiable and building rapport with the participants." The researchers explained that until now, delivering persuasive, factual messages to a large sample of conspiracy theorists in a lab experiment has proved challenging.
For one, conspiracy theorists are often well-informed about the conspiracy -- sometimes more so than skeptics, they said, and added that conspiracies also vary widely, such that evidence supporting a certain theory can differ from one theorist to another.
"Previous efforts to debunk dubious beliefs have a major limitation: One needs to guess what people's actual beliefs are in order to debunk them -- not a simple task," said co-author Gordon Pennycook, an associate professor of psychology at Cornell University, US.
"In contrast, the AI can respond directly to people's specific arguments using strong counter-evidence. This provides a unique opportunity to test just how responsive people are to counter-evidence," Pennycook said.
As society debates the pros and cons of AI, the authors said that the AI's ability to connect across diverse topics within seconds can help tailor counterarguments to specific conspiracies of a believer in ways that aren't possible for a human to do.
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