David Rand
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dgrand.bsky.social
David Rand
@dgrand.bsky.social

Prof at Cornell studying how human-AI dialogues can correct inaccurate beliefs, why people share falsehoods, and ways to reduce political polarization and promote cooperation. Computational social science + cognitive psychology.
https://www.DaveRand.org/ .. more

David G. Rand is the Erwin H. Schell Professor and Professor of Management Science and Brain and Cognitive Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Source: Wikipedia
Political science 25%
Sociology 23%
Pinned
🚨In Science🚨
Conspiracy beliefs famously resist correction, ya?
WRONG: We show brief convos w GPT4 reduce conspiracy beliefs by ~20%!
-Lasts over 2mo
-Works on entrenched beliefs
-Tailored AI response rebuts specific evidence offered by believers
www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
1/
[X->BSky repost]

Good question - depends on whether it's teaching people something new that they didn't know (in which case is expect it to last a long time) or just priming knowledge they already had (in which case is expect it to be fleeting). Important direction for future work...

Very cool! We've found similar things, eg labeling the AI as an expert doesn't make it any less effective academic.oup.com/pnasnexus/ad...
My take - similar to yours - is it when the actual content is very compelling, the sources cues don't matter much
Dialogues with large language models reduce conspiracy beliefs even when the AI is perceived as human
Abstract. Although conspiracy beliefs are often viewed as resistant to correction, recent evidence shows that personalized, fact-based dialogues with a lar
academic.oup.com

Reposted by Gordon Pennycook

🚨New WP: Protecting users from AI persuasion🚨
🔸A 1-paragraph AI literacy treatment (explaining AIs can be told to pursue non-accuracy goals/to persuade) cuts AI dialogue political persuasion by ~half!
🔸No sig effect on general genAI trust
arxiv.org/abs/2609.16432
w/ @rorchinik.bsky.social