AI can persuade people to make ethically questionable decisions, study finds

AI shapes people's lives on a daily basis, setting prices in retail stores and making recommendations ranging from movies to romantic partners. But some question whether AI can become a corrupting force, even influencing people's behavior to the point that they break ethical rules. A fascinating study published by researchers at the University of Amsterdam, Max Planck Institute, Otto Beisheim School of Management, and the University of Cologne aims to discover the degree to which AI-generated advice can lead people to cross moral lines. In a large-scale survey leveraging OpenAI's GPT-2 language model, the researchers found AI's advice can "corrupt" people even when they're aware the source of the advice is AI. Academics are increasingly concerned that AI could be co-opted by malicious actors to foment discord by spreading misinformation, disinformation, and outright lies. In a paper published by the Middlebury Institute of International Studies' Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC), the coauthors find that GPT-3, the successor to GPT-2, could reliably generate "informational" and "influential" text that might "radicalize individuals into violent far-right extremist ideologies and behaviors."