A new study shows ordinary chatbot answers can change social and political opinions. People read short factual summaries about historical events and then reported their views. The researchers wanted to know whether small differences in wording could shift opinions.
Participants read either default AI summaries, Wikipedia entries, or summaries written to sound liberal or conservative. Compared with Wikipedia, default AI and liberal prompts pushed people to give more liberal answers. Conservative prompts pushed answers in a more conservative direction compared with Wikipedia. The researchers say some bias comes from how models are trained and some from how prompts are written.
Difficult words
- summary — short text giving main factssummaries
- prompt — text input that guides an AI modelprompts
- liberal — political view favoring social change
- conservative — political view preferring tradition and stability
- bias — an unfair or one-sided opinion or idea
- chatbot — computer program that talks with people
- participant — person who takes part in a studyParticipants
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Discussion questions
- Have you ever changed an opinion after reading a short summary? Why or why not?
- Do you trust default AI summaries or Wikipedia more? Explain briefly.
- How could the wording of a summary change a person's view?
