Scientists surprised themselves when they found they could instruct a version of ChatGPT to gently dissuade people of their beliefs in conspiracy theories — such as notions that COVID-19 was a deliberate attempt at population control or that 9/11 was an inside job.
The most important revelation wasn’t about the power of AI, but about the workings of the human mind. The experiment punctured the popular myth that we’re in a post-truth era where evidence no longer matters and it flew in the face of a prevailing view in psychology that people cling to conspiracy theories for emotional reasons and that no amount of evidence can ever disabuse them.
"It’s really the most uplifting research I’ve ever I done,” said psychologist Gordon Pennycook of Cornell University and one of the authors of the study. Study subjects were surprisingly amenable to evidence when it was presented the right way.
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