Turns out many believers do respond positively when presented with the right evidence and arguments. It's become a truism that facts alone don't change people's minds. Perhaps nowhere is this more clear than when it comes to conspiracy theories: Many people believe that you can't talk conspiracists out of their beliefs. It turns out that many conspiracy believers respond to evidence and arguments--information that is now easy to deliver in the form of a tailored conversation with an AI chatbot. In research we published in the journal this year, we had over 2,000 conspiracy believers engage in a roughly eight-minute conversation with DebunkBot, a model we built on top of OpenAI's GPT-4 Turbo (the most up-to-date GPT model at that time). Participants began by writing out, in their own words, a conspiracy theory that they believed and the evidence that made the theory compelling to them.

Artificial intelligence has the potential to impose the values of its creators on its users, those affected by it, and society. Users also may mean to use a technological device in an illicit or unexpected way. Devices change people's intentions as they are empowered by technology. What people mean to do with the help of technology reflects their choices, preferences, and values. Technology is a disruptor that impacts society as a whole.

Belief is a special kind of human power. Agustin Fuentes, an anthropologist at the University of Notre Dame, eloquently claims as much in his recent book Why We Believe: Evolution and the Human Way of Being. It's the "most prominent, promising, and dangerous capacity humanity has evolved," he writes, the power to "see and feel and know something--an idea, a vision, a necessity, a possibility, a truth--that is not immediately present to the senses, and then to invest, wholly and authentically, in that'something' so that it becomes one's reality." A great example of this is the widespread and intuitive idea that we have free will. Most people grow up with the notion that they are, in some sense, responsible for their thoughts and actions because, unlike animals, humans can think about their choices.

Artificial intelligence can perform feats that seem like sorcery. AI can drive cars and fly drones. It can compose original music, write poetry that isn't too awful, and design recipes that do sound awful (blueberry and spinach pizza, anyone?). AI can do some things better than humans: lip reading, diagnosing diseases such as pneumonia and some cancers, transcribing speech, and playing Jeopardy!, Go, Texas Hold'em, and a variety of video games. AI software can even learn to make its own AI software.

This blog post was guest-written by Annie O'Rourke, CEO of Digital Workforce Australia and 89 Degrees East. She will be guest speaking about'Addressing real world problems with Artificial Intelligence' session of the Women Rock-IT series on 17 October. To sign up for this or other webinars in the series, click here. Don't tell my husband, but I've recently started an affair. No need to be too shocked though, because I'm pretty sure I can package it as so-called ethical polygamy.

That, by default, means that AI has the potential to change people's jobs, especially for those involved in rote transactional tasks (e.g., automatically emailing a receipt following an online purchase). However, AI is increasingly taking on cognitive tasks that previously required a human touch, such as conversational AI providing customers with 24/7 access to information and services. While automation enables companies to spend less money to achieve the same (or better) results, decision makers would be wise to keep in mind the other opportunities AI opens – particularly the ability to reapply human capital elsewhere within their businesses. AI should not be viewed as a replacement for human workers, but rather as a means to free humans from the repetitive (and in some cases rather boring) tasks that define so much of the modern work day. It would be understandable that this transition is a source of trepidation for some workers, but it's nothing the marketplace hasn't experienced before.

If you're concerned (or super excited) about machine learning (ML) becoming mainstream, a recent survey by Oxford Economics on behalf of human resources (HR) and IT asset management company ServiceNow should pique your interest. The report, which surveyed 500 Chief Information Officers (CIOs) in 11 countries and across 25 industries, found that 49 percent of the companies are already using ML to improve traditional business processes. Of the 500 CIOs surveyed, 200 said they're already beyond the pilot stage and have begun deploying ML in some capacity. CIOs are hoping to limit user error and errors in judgement by introducing automation. Almost 70 percent of CIOs said decisions made by machines will be more accurate than those made by humans.