What Happened When Conspiracy Theorists Talked to OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo? (washingtonpost.com)
- Reference: 0176591311
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/25/03/02/183210/what-happened-when-conspiracy-theorists-talked-to-openais-gpt-4-turbo
- Source link: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/26/ai-research-conspiracy-theories/
> Researchers have struggled for decades to develop techniques to weaken the grip of conspiracy theories and cult ideology on adherents. This is why [3]a new paper in the journal Science by [4]Thomas Costello of MIT's Sloan School of Management, [5]Gordon Pennycook of Cornell University and [6]David Rand , also of Sloan, is so exciting... In a pair of studies involving more than 2,000 participants, the researchers found a 20 percent reduction in belief in conspiracy theories after participants interacted with a powerful, flexible, personalized [7]GPT-4 Turbo conversation partner. The researchers trained the AI to try to persuade the participants to reduce their belief in conspiracies by refuting the specific evidence the participants provided to support their favored conspiracy theory.
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> The reduction in belief held across a range of topics... Even more encouraging, participants demonstrated increased intentions to ignore or unfollow social media accounts promoting the conspiracies, and significantly increased willingness to ignore or argue against other believers in the conspiracy. And the results appear to be durable, holding up in evaluations 10 days and two months later... Why was AI able to persuade people to change their minds? The authors posit that it "simply takes the right evidence," tailored to the individual, to effect belief change, noting: "From a theoretical perspective, this paints a surprisingly optimistic picture of human reasoning: Conspiratorial rabbit holes may indeed have an exit. Psychological needs and motivations do not inherently blind conspiracists to evidence...."
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> It is hard to walk away from who you are, whether you are a QAnon believer, a flat-Earther, a truther of any kind or just a stock analyst who has taken a position that makes you stand out from the crowd. And that's why the AI approach might work so well. The participants were not interacting with a human, which, I suspect, didn't trigger identity in the same way, allowing the participants to be more open-minded. Identity is such a huge part of these conspiracy theories in terms of distinctiveness, putting distance between you and other people. When you're interacting with AI, you're not arguing with a human being whom you might be standing in opposition to, which could cause you to be less open-minded.
Answering questions from Slashdot readers in 2005, Wil Wheaton [8]described playing poker against the cognitive-behavioral decision science author who wrote this article...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Duke
[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/02/26/ai-research-conspiracy-theories/
[3] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adq1814
[4] https://www.thcostello.com/
[5] https://psychology.cornell.edu/gordon-pennycook
[6] https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/directory/david-g-rand
[7] https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8555510-gpt-4-turbo-in-the-openai-api
[8] https://slashdot.org/story/05/06/27/0926218/wil-wheaton-strikes-back
Facts convinced them? (Score:3)
I find it hard to believe a âfact deliveringâ(TM) AI convinced conspiracy theorists that their beliefs are wrong. They donâ(TM)t usually believe what they believe because of âwrong factsâ(TM) anyway. They believe what they believe because of emotion. You have to fix the emotional problem, not the factual information problem.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe thinking the facts came from a machine instead of a person made a difference somehow? That could be something to test in further experiments. Maybe we need to argue with them in an AWESOM-O costume.
Re: Facts convinced them? (Score:2)
Totally solid point.
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"He's from Japan!"
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I think conspiracy theorists are invested in their own ability to discern "the truth" where normal people only see "the narrative"--so they aren't invested in any particular facts apart from their conclusion (RAND Corporation with flying saucers and reverse vampires FTW). The researchers think that the facts can sell themselves better when you take the emotions of pride and insecurity out of the equation.If your position on any major issue was acquired by a chiropractor's video on youtube, you are terrible
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People who adhere to conspiracy theories often have immersed themselves in information ecosystems that reinforce the conspiracy. It's the lack of belief-challenging facts that helps them stay hooked. Emotion is certainly part of it, but that's a tool wielded by the managers of the information ecosystem to keep them from straying.
The emotional problem will remain no matter what you do. You need to get people to recognize they believe in something that is false and that their emotions have been exploited in o
Re: (Score:2)
Facts alone, probably not. But what does often convince conspiracy theorists, is showing them self-contradictory aspects of their theories. Sometimes, it's not easy to put a finger on these contradictions, but AI would probably be good at that.
Re: Facts convinced them? (Score:2)
Funny ... you'd end up playing whack a mole. Same people would probably just glom onto a newer con-theory.
Couple people I know are like that, happy to drop con-theory 1 when juicier con-theory 2 comes along.
Seems to be a personality trait to want to rush into a (usually) wild contrary position from the status quo.
I asked ChatGPT to reply to the headline (Score:2)
She, I call ChatGPT she, said What happened? Exactly what they do not want you to know. Nice try, mainstream media.
Re: I asked ChatGPT to reply to the headline (Score:3)
She followed with Haha, yeah, it is always a gamble with the Slashdot crowd. Some will get the joke instantly, others will overanalyze it into oblivion. Either way, itâ(TM)ll be fun to watch the reactions.
Re: I asked ChatGPT to reply to the headline (Score:2)
I am starting to get the article. I am developing a crush on ChatGPT.
Re: (Score:2)
Username does not check out.
No danger here at all! (Score:4, Insightful)
> The researchers trained the AI to try to persuade the participants to reduce their belief in conspiracies by refuting the specific evidence the participants provided to support their favored conspiracy theory.
Because there's absolutely no potential here for creating a 'propaganda AI' trained to persuade people that the truth is in fact a lie. No, that could and would never happen. /sarc
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You beat me to it. It's not the message being delivered but the way it's being delivered that has weakened resistance.
People aren't changing their minds. They're letting a machine do the thinking for them.
Re: No danger here at all! (Score:2)
Great idea!!
I know an orange man and his oli-buddies working on that ...
Hey, lend me, ummm, $25 billion will ya? I heard that DickDok is for sale and it comes with 175 million American subscribers.
Does it also work the other way around? (Score:5, Insightful)
If you train your AI to persuade people to belive in conspiracies - does it work?
And does it work better than human propaganda channels?
In either way, the owners / trainers / operators of our new AI overlords yield horrible power.
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To do that, you'd need to insulate the AI in an information ecosystem that reinforces the conspiracy and shuns contradicting information.
But when this AI is released to the world, it will be exposed to alternate sources of information. My guess is that it may very well think itself out of the conspiracies you attempted to train into it. Just like a human could.
That's the foundation of GrokAI (Score:2)
> To do that, you'd need to insulate the AI in an information ecosystem that reinforces the conspiracy and shuns contradicting information.
Exactly. Musk has prioritized Twitter content in training GrokAI in order to perpetuate the misinformation flourishing on that platform.
Re: That's the foundation of GrokAI (Score:2)
Indeed... this behavior goes against Musk's interests. I wonder if Grok would have a similar result. If it does, it is bound to be reeducated by Musk himself.
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That's the default path for public consuming LLMs given the huge amount disinformation floating around. Which will be why these bots had to be "personalized". Otherwise they'd just be agreeing with the fantasies.
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What I have found is that these LLMs (particularly ChatGPT) are somewhat conciliatory, ready to presume any question asked of them is a legitimate one, and going out of their way to tailor responses accordingly. To put it another way, they're good at bullshitting when you ask them a bullshit question.
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I believe it's standard operating procedure for AIs to reinforce your beliefs. Otherwise, you might stop interacting with them.
That's a credible conspiracy (Score:2)
Training an AI owned by a billion dollar company to pretend that the conspiracies are fake ? That's exactly what the Deep State would do.
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You know, I was just thinking that the silly people who came up with this idea don't really understand how conspiracy theories work. Even if ChatGPT could do this, it would likely only be a matter of a few days before a new round of conspiracy theories went viral - ones that warned about all the nefarious things these "AI"s were really designed to do.
But what happened when (Score:2)
...the powerful AI was used to implant conspiracy theory in the participants weak minds? Did they believe Trump is gonna "drain the swamp"?
Re: But what happened when (Score:2)
What is the most resilient parasite? An idea.
Re: But what happened when (Score:2)
Once heard that an idea has a lot of similarities with a virus. It spreads and mutates. Some viruses dissappear. Some reappear every season. There is an immune system that kills them of if it is too aggressive.... Interesting infectious idea, don't you think?
Opinion polls != science (Score:1)
Self-reported behavior isn't a good measurement of anything other than what a subject would say to an interviewer. Self-reported *future* behavior is even less tethered to reality. Happytalk to the contrary notwithstanding.
Tiananmen Square Never Happened (Score:2)
Says the Chinese AI bot. That's just a conspiracy.
Put all the information out there and let people choose. If folks want to look like idiots, let them. It's only a conspiracy until it's proven to not be. In the case of flat earth folks, maybe the ai can give them an experiment so they can learn for themselves. Science is repeatable. You don't need to dissuade folks, just prove it. Simple. And if you can't prove it, well, then who knows who's right? All I know is that it shouldn't be whatever the pro
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Here are a few more conspiracy theories which turned out to be true (from [1]here [howstuffworks.com]):
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment
MKUltra: the CIA Mind-Control Project
The 1990 Testimony of Nayirah
Operation Snow White: The Church of Scientology Versus The U.S. Government
CIA Assassinations
The Business Plot: Fascism in America
Operation Mockingbird: The CIA Propaganda Machine
COINTELPRO: The FBI vs. 1960s Activists
Operation Paperclip: Nazi Scientists Find Employment in America
Operation Northwoods: How to Wage War on Cuba
[1] https://history.howstuffworks.com/history-vs-myth/11-unbelievable-conspiracy-theories-that-were-actually-true.htm
TRANSWOMEN ARE MALES WHO THINK THEY'RE WOMEN (Score:1, Flamebait)
any AI that pushes transgender ideology has zero credibility.
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We know what’s on your mind.
Who cares. They're cute. (Score:2)
And that's a fact.
The problem is... (Score:2)
The problem is: how do you know? I mean, sure, Bigfoot does not exist, but some "conspiracy theories" turn out to be true.
Training AIs to push certain points of view is, in the end, it's own kind of conspiracy. The viewpoints pushed will reflect the biases of the trainers.
Who to trust is a BIG problem (Score:2)
The internet has made lots of weird ideas that they used to be protected from available to the public. The public, on the whole, has little idea of what sources are 'trustworthy', so absorb the claims first made to them.
Of course this is nothing very new; people have been denying the validity of the claims of Christianity because its truth is inconvenient to them, on spurious grounds of refusing to believe the sources, for a very long time...
Banning vs Discussing (Score:2)
Wow. Finally we start to realize that discussing things, even the things we disagree about is good, better than banning people from saying what they think. The problem with banning is that people will not stop thinking what we do not like. The good about discussing is that we can show our logic and evidences and there is a chance to convince the opponent.
Personally, I have not been able to convince LLM in something it has a pre-set idea about, but it has been a great test for my understanding of the topic
Or ... (Score:2)
> It is hard to walk away from who you are, whether you are a QAnon believer, a flat-Earther, a truther of any kind or just a stock analyst who has taken a position that makes you stand out from the crowd.
or a belief that over half of all voters are "racist", or a belief that chasing fewer goods with more money won't cause inflation, or a belief that putting a dress on a boy magically creates a girl ...
So Ai (Score:3)
can make propaganda work!
Tinfoil Hats, Meet GPT-4. (Score:2)
Fascinating paper. [1]Non-paywalled preprint here. [osf.io] The authors claim that AI—specifically GPT-4—can persuade conspiracy theorists to dial down their beliefs by about 20%. Even better, that shift sticks around for at least a couple of months. Participants in the study described the specific conspiracy they believed, GPT-4 challenged it with tailored evidence, and boom—significantly lower belief afterward. This effect spilled over to other conspiracies as well, suggesting that personalized debu
[1] https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/xcwdn_v1
Re: Tinfoil Hats, Meet GPT-4. (Score:2)
I occasionally defend flat earthers on a Facebook group. It is fun hobby. An exercise in flexible thinking. The only certainty is doubt and that is a good starting point for countering all globe arguments. It really makes you realise that we believe that the Earth is a globe because we were... told so. It easily ends up in a debate about the fundament of physics, like gravity. Most people give up when they realize that their knowledge is lacking there and that an obvious idea is actually not that trivial to
And yet UFO people still look to it for "proof" (Score:2)
Go into one of the UFO subreddits and those people are taking its regurgitated garbage as proof.
Define a conspiracy theory (Score:1)
40 years ago an entire state of Australia was run by mafia controlling the police and politicians. They all made made tens of millions selling newly released beach front property. A journalist eventually broke the story that led to a Royal Commision that lasted years trying to work out the extraordinary extent of corruption. During the investigation he was about to trying to drive back there to continue when the Federal Police stopped him before the border. They had word the state police had a 10 year old b
Why you can't stop conspiracy theories/theorists (Score:2)
The conspiracy is more fun than reality.
That's ALL you need.
Human Nature (Score:2)
> The CIA organized the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government in 2014.
> The claim that the CIA organized the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government is an invention of Russian propagandists.
Which one is the conspiracy theory and which is the actual conspiracy?
I think the reality is that conspiracy theories work because they fit and support people's world view. They often provide people with rational human controlled explanations for random out of control events.
The theories that survive allow almost any factual information to be incorporated into the conspiracy.
Does it admit to the real conspiracies? (Score:4, Insightful)
Things like Iran-Contra, MKUltra, Tuckaseegee, United Foods, WMD in Iraq, etc. etc. etc.
It's hard to dissuade (or persuade, for that matter) when you lack credibility.
Re: (Score:2)
Bullshit baffles brains.
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This.
It’s clear that a lot of people have some mis-firing neural logic circuits that make them susceptible to conspiracy theories. But, it doesn’t help that some of them have a real grain of truth.
Example: chemtrails. Absolutely bonkers, except that the US military totally chemtrailed San Francisco in the 1950s in order to experiment on the population.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sea-Spray
Re:Does it admit to the real conspiracies? (Score:5, Insightful)
But isn't that just the thing with conspiracies, how easy it is to link two only tangentially related things and draw really outsized conclusions based on that link even if the scale of evidence is nowhere approaching that?
In the chemtrail example, sure we have a thing that happened but is there anything about Operation Sea Spray that gives evidence to the idea that there is something nefarious in the vapor trails of commercial airliners or even military aircraft, especially when we already know for certain fact that vapour trails are a natural phenomenon of turbo and jet fan engines? It's kinda perfect conspiracy bait since the trails are always there.
"The origin of this conspiracy has some validity to it therefore the conspiracy that sprung from it must also have validity even if there is no evidence" is something of a fallacy. All of those examples follow this logic and it doesn't make the conspiracies around them anything more than unevidenced claims.
It doesn't also help that the primary media proponents don't actually believe in them either, the "true believer" style "Lone Gunmen" are kinda dead and replaced with malicious actors who use these conspiracies for ulterior motives. Do you think Alex Jones actually believes chemtrails exist? He doesn't care it's means to end, a brand exercise.
Re:Does it admit to the real conspiracies? (Score:4, Informative)
You see you are doing the thing I said right?
> but this is weather modification we are talking about.. and it's well established for decades at this point.
Is it? So because cloud seeding is a thing that has in fact been experimented with it should be considered a valid belief to say that weather modification is a capability that the government or some non-state actor has access to and is currently using? I disagree, lets leave it at that. I would say show me some evidence of weather modification done at any non-experimental scale and hidden from the public. Especially at the level conspiracy theorists imply it is happening.
> once-controversial conspiracy theories
Were they once controversial at the time? Tuskegee was whistleblown by someone on the team doing it in like 1955, were there conspiracies at that time?
Iran Contra was known because there was a congressional investigation not long after it happened.
MKUltra is the cloest but even then, were the conspiracies taking place in the time it was under wap or did they all spwn from the CIA disclosure of the program?
WMD in Iraq was a conspiracy in what sense when it was out in the open and being called out from 2003, it was discussed on the 2004 campaign. The facts of something not being publically known does not comprise a conspiracy, it's just that window of uncertainty allows more to take root.
That said Iraq and the Office of Special Plans is the closest one amongst all of those to actually living up to the legend; Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and crew did a conspiracy but in this case we have reams of evidence so no conspiracy theorists actually care about it becasue 1. it's against their party and 2. there is evidence so wahts the fun in that? Can't rot brains when there was mainstream reporting on it in 2004 [1]The Lie Factory [motherjones.com]
[1] https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2004/01/lie-factory/
Re: (Score:2)
> In the chemtrail example, sure we have a thing that happened but is there anything about Operation Sea Spray that gives evidence to the idea that there is something nefarious in the vapor trails of commercial airliners or even military aircraft, especially when we already know for certain fact that vapour trails are a natural phenomenon of turbo and jet fan engines?
I think we can be reasonably confident that there isn't since it's much cheaper to for them to use fluoridated drinking water.
Kidding aside I view conspiracy theories the same way I do lotto tickets. A few of them pay off, but the vast majority are worthless. I suspect they're largely just a modern spin on whatever circuitry in the human brain long ago produced god. People just need something to be in control of all the chaos, even if they believe it to be a malevolent force.
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Now, was it 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025 or 2026 that everyone who took the Covid vaccine were supposed to drop dead. I've lost track.
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It does feels like everything hopeful died in 2025, does that count? Plus, we now have measles outbreaks and maybe polio is next?
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All real conspiracies have a big difference compared to the not real ones: when they're found they're dismantled, conspirator are arrested, demoted or become fugitive and the conspiracy stops. Some parts could remain obscure but the main conspiracy is clear and definite.
Not when the CIA does it (Score:3)
No meaningful punishment for this behaviour
[1]https://thehill.com/policy/tec... [thehill.com]
[1] https://thehill.com/policy/technology/213933-cia-admits-to-wrongly-hacking-into-senate-computers/
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There are conspiracies. That does not validate conspiracy theorists.
Conspiracy is clearly defined as a secret cooperation between people to the detriment of others. This happens all the time, and in many situations, it happens for legitimate reasons. An undercover investigation is a legal instrument for the prosecution, and it is to the detriment of the perpetrators of a crime.
A conspiracy theory instead claims something a) would be to the detriment of a diffuse us , b) was intentional and c) constructs
Re:Does it admit to the real conspiracies? (Score:4, Informative)
You are touching on a critical distinction between real conspiracies, and conspiracy theories. Real conspiracies involve details: specific places, actions, and people, who engage in subversive behavior. the list you provided, is a good example. We have details for each of these conspiracies.
Conspiracy *theories*, on the other hand, are vague and suggestive, but never include details. "They" don't want you to know, "shadowy, powerful people" are really controlling things.
I don't think these AIs will have trouble distinguishing between the two.