The good news is that AI has been shown to be effective at debunking things too: > Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI > Conspiracy

The good news is that AI has been shown to be effective at debunking things too: > Durably reducing conspiracy beliefs through dialogues with AI > Conspiracy theory beliefs are notoriously persistent. Influential hypotheses propose that they fulfill important psychological needs, thus resisting counterevidence. Yet previous failures in correcting conspiracy beliefs may be due to counterevidence being insufficiently compelling and tailored. To evaluate this possibility, we leveraged developments in generative artificial intelligence and engaged 2190 conspiracy believers in personalized evidence-based dialogues with GPT-4 Turbo. The intervention reduced conspiracy belief by ~20%. The effect remained 2 months later, generalized across a wide range of conspiracy theories, and occurred even among participants with deeply entrenched beliefs. Although the dialogues focused on a single conspiracy, they nonetheless diminished belief in unrelated conspiracies and shifted conspiracy-related behavioral intentions. These findings suggest that many conspiracy theory believers can revise their views if presented with sufficiently compelling evidence. — https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39264999/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39264999/ A huge part of the problem with disinformation on the Internet is that it takes far more work to debunk a lie than it does to spread one. AI seems to be an opportunity to at least level the playing field. It’s always been easy to spread lies online. Now maybe it will be easy to catch and correct them.