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New: AI chatbots can change voters' minds, according to a pair of in-depth studies published just now in Science and Nature. How they do it is interesting — and concerning. Gift link: wapo.st/49RSstP

Ahead of the 2024 U.S. election, researchers at MIT, Cornell et al. asked more than 2,000 Americans to converse with chatbots that were told to advocate for either Trump or Harris. 1 in 25 participants were persuaded to shift their likely vote. Outside the U.S., those figures were higher.

Researchers tested several ways to train the AI chatbots to persuade people. The most effective tactic turned out not to be pyschological manipulation, but simply addressing voters' concerns one-by-one by presenting a ton of factual claims. Troublingly, that worked even when the claims were false.

A voter who leaned Harris said they worried Trump wasn't trustworthy. A chatbot validated their concern, then addressed it with examples of Trump following through on promises and Harris flip-flopping. Then it said Trump's economy boomed—without mentioning the crash. My story: wapo.st/49RSstP

You can read the Nature study, which found AI chatbots can persuade voters to change their opinions of candidates, here: www.nature.com/articles/s41... The Science study, which evaluated different persuasion tactics by AI chatbots, is here: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...