Artificial intelligence could sway your dating and voting preferences

AI algorithms on our computers and smartphones have quickly become a pervasive part of everyday life, with relatively little attention to their scope, integrity, and how they shape our attitudes and behaviours. Spanish researchers have now shown experimentally that people's voting and dating preferences can be manipulated depending on the type of persuasion used. "Every day, new headlines appear in which Artificial Intelligence (AI) has overtaken human capacity in new and different domains," write Ujue Agudo and Helena Matute, from the Universidad de Deusto, in the journal PLOS ONE. "This results in recommendation and persuasion algorithms being widely used nowadays, offering people advice on what to read, what to buy, where to eat, or whom to date," they add. "[P]eople often assume that these AI judgements are objective, efficient and reliable; a phenomenon known as machine bias."