Writing with AI help can shift your opinions

Artificial intelligence-powered writing assistants that autocomplete sentences or offer "smart replies" not only put words into people's mouths, they also put ideas into their heads, according to new research. Maurice Jakesch, a doctoral student in the field of information science asked more than 1,500 participants to write a paragraph answering the question, "Is social media good for society?" People who used an AI writing assistant that was biased for or against social media were twice as likely to write a paragraph agreeing with the assistant, and significantly more likely to say they held the same opinion, compared with people who wrote without AI's help. The study suggests that the biases baked into AI writing tools – whether intentional or unintentional – could have concerning repercussions for culture and politics, researchers said. "We're rushing to implement these AI models in all walks of life, but we need to better understand the implications," said co-author Mor Naaman, professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech and of information science in the Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science.