This is a valid point, I think. The question is always what type of alternative information gathering processes AI chatbots replace. In the case of medical "self diagnosis", there is some reason to believe that common alternative mechanisms aren't superior.

Targeted ads have gone too far

Thomas Costello argues that as patients move from WebMD to AI, we might be slightly optimism. Unlike former tools, LLMs can synthesize vast, shared knowledge, potentially helping users converge on more accurate beliefs. The major caveat is: as long as the LLMs are not trained on bad data.

Is there a strong case for AI helping, rather than harming, the accuracy of people's beliefs about contentious topics? In this @nature.com Nature Medicine piece (focusing on vaccination), I argue the answer is YES. And it boils down to how LLMs differ from other sources of information.

This is an interesting take on LLMs and the RCT in vaccine hesitancy is fascinating. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Conspiracies emerge in the wake of high-profile events, but you can’t debunk them with evidence because little yet exists. Does this mean LLMs can’t debunk conspiracies during ongoing events? No! We show they can in a new working paper. PDF: osf.io/preprints/ps...

I'm very excited about this new WP showing that LLMs effectively countered conspiracies in the immediate aftermath of the 1st Trump assassination attempt, and that treatment also reduced conspiratorial thinking about the subsequent 2nd assassination attempt

Conspiracies emerge in the wake of high-profile events, but you can’t debunk them with evidence because little yet exists. Does this mean LLMs can’t debunk conspiracies during ongoing events? No! We show they can in a new working paper. PDF: osf.io/preprints/ps...

Here's a bit of spice. Brain research clearly needs to tackle more complexity (than, say, Step 1: simple linear causal chains). But that leaves an ~infinite set of alternatives. Here, @pessoabrain.bsky.social advocates not for just a step 2, but a 3. /1 arxiv.org/abs/2411.03621

My paper with @stellalourenco.bsky.social ‬is now out in Science Advances! We found that children have robust object recognition abilities that surpass many ANNs. Models only outperformed kids when their training far exceeded what a child could experience in their lifetime doi.org/10.1126/scia...

This is a stellar paper -- highly recommend if you want an incisive birds-eye view of AI + political science www.annualreviews.org/content/jour...

It’s my birthday, so today seems like as good a time as any to share that, this summer, I’ll be joining Carnegie Mellon University as an assistant professor in the Department of Social and Decision Sciences (w/ courtesy in HCI institute).

New paper in PSPB! journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/... Well, actually, not "new". We first put this paper online way back Dec 2022... in any case, we think it's really cool! We find that conspiracy believers tend to be overconfident & really don't seem to realize that most disagree with them

In trying to get purple Connections first, I ended up with a sequence of guesses that was unique across all other players. I think impossible to replicate this while earnestly trying to get puzzle right?

This + other work on LLM persuasiveness increasingly suggests these models are at human quality - a question that occurs is what happens when everyone is being microtargeted by LLMs from both sides of politics

I’ll be at APS @psychscience.bsky.social this Friday! But also, I live in DC, so if you want to get together tomorrow or Friday, reach out!

🚨New WP🚨 Can AI do "deep canvassing"—the time-intensive, empathic persuasive dialogues that durably reduce prejudice when done by humans? Spoiler: Yes! We find durable reduction in prejudice toward undocumented immigrants LLMs make deep canvassing possible at massive scale osf.io/preprints/os...

🚨New WP🚨 Can AI do "deep canvassing"—the time-intensive, empathic persuasive dialogues that durably reduce prejudice when done by humans? Spoiler: Yes! We find durable reduction in prejudice toward undocumented immigrants LLMs make deep canvassing possible at massive scale osf.io/preprints/os...

🚨🚨 NEW PRE-PRINT 🚨🚨 Prominent theories in political psychology argue that threat causes increases in conservatism. Early experimental work supported this idea, but many of these studies were (severely) underpowered, and examined only a few threats and ideological DVs. 1/n osf.io/preprints/ps...

People do not believe me when I tell them this finding. Here is our full paper reporting it. AI-delivered information is persuasive because of the information — when we trick people into thinking they’re talking to a human, the persuasive effect is identical!

Been asked this question many times, and now we have a clear data-driven answer. Q: Are the persuasive effects of AI dialogues conditional on the source being AI? That is, if a human was saying the very same things, would the persuasiveness diminish? A: No, it doesn't seem to matter whatsoever.

Recent research shows that AI can durably reduce belief in conspiracies. But does this work b/c the AI is good at producing evidence, or b/c ppl really trust AI? In a new working paper, we show that the effect persists even if the person thinks they're talking to a human: osf.io/preprints/ps... 🧵

Had a chat about “debunkbot” and the research supporting it on CBS Mornings yesterday! www.cbsnews.com/video/ai-cha...

There are a lot of critiques of LLMs that I agree with but "they suck and aren't useful" doesn't really hold water. I understand people not using them because of social, economic, and environmental concerns. And I also understand people using them because they can be very useful. Thoughts?

🚨New WP🚨 Using GPT4 to persuade participants significantly reduces climate skepticism and inaction -Sig more effective than consensus messaging -Works for Republicans -Evidence of persistence @ 1mo -Scalable! PDF: osf.io/preprints/ps... Try the bot: www.debunkbot.com/climate-change Here’s how 👇

From some MIT Media Lab folks... "Results show that AI interaction significantly boosts participants’ accuracy in identifying real versus fake news content from approximately 60% to 90%." Though findings suggest AI interaction "may not produce lasting improvements that transfer to novel examples".

IMO a major problem is that political cooperation (free trade, immigration, vaccines, democracy) begets largely distributed gains — baselines invisibly go up — and political competition (populism etc) can pitch itself as addressing narrow problems (w/ solutions that impede the invisible gains).

Obituary for Frans de Waal psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-... I've long held that he was a better psychologist than the vast majority of psychologists. #PsychSciSky

The big science story this week was that the shingles vaccine appears to lower dementia risk But they're not sure why www.nature.com/articles/s41... I wish that #Psych was more open to publishing findings that are important, even if we don't know the mechanism (yet) #AcademicSky #PsychSciSky

New paper! AI lets us query humanity’s collective knowledge (or a subset of it) – rapidly addressing any given concern about vaccines in detail. So can information-focused LLM conversations shift vaccination intentions? In an RCT of 1,124 HPV vax-hesitant parents: yes!

New paper! AI lets us query humanity’s collective knowledge (or a subset of it) – rapidly addressing any given concern about vaccines in detail. So can information-focused LLM conversations shift vaccination intentions? In an RCT of 1,124 HPV vax-hesitant parents: yes!

📣 📣 Postdoc Opportunity at Northwestern Dashun Wang and I are seeking a creative, technical, interdisciplinary researcher for a joint postdoc fellowship between our labs. If you're passionate about Human-AI Collaboration and Science of Science, this may be for you! 🚀 Please share widely!

Excellent work by new NYT headline writer Werner Herzog

🚨New Paper Klaxon 🚨 Belief in Belief: Even Atheists in Secular Countries Show Intuitive Preferences Favoring Religious Belief. Now out at PNAS www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/... Here's a quick 🧵 on what we did and found!👇 1/ 11 🧪 #atheism #religion #culture #evolution

One thing I’ve learned about myself from first year as a prof is that extended interpersonal work — teaching, meetings, etc — absolutely destroy my ability to enter a flow state and do deep work. My adaptation has been stacking meetings into full days, but woof. Any tips?

Accepting “the bitter lesson” and embracing the brain’s complexity by Dyer and Richards. Great article! www.thetransmitter.org/neuroai/acce...

New preprint! My entry into the ongoing AI empathy discussion: "Reframing the performance and ethics of 'empathic' AI: Wisdom of the crowd and placebos." osf.io/preprints/ps...

this is paper is a banger www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...

We know that economic anxiety & conspiracy beliefs are related. Often this is used to argue that it is key to fix economic conditions to avoid widespread conspiracy beliefs. But a new study shows that causality runs the other way. The conspiracy beliefs drive the anxiety: doi.org/10.1111/pops...

Today at the “Stand up for Science” demonstration at the Lincoln Memorial.

From @tomcostello.bsky.social, @gordpennycook.bsky.social, and @dgrand.bsky.social... ➡️ Just the Facts: How dialogues with AI reduce conspiracy beliefs 💥 "Participants who reported feeling persuaded overwhelmingly cited the AI’s rational, evidence-focused approach."

I won an APS rising star award! I remember going to APS in my first year of graduate school and seeing one of our new faculty -- who I really admired -- giving a rising star lecture. I was very excited for him. It's been 8 years; time flies, wow!

SPSP was lovely, really got a lot out of seeing so many friends and colleagues. Let’s stay in touch!

Finally @tomcostello.bsky.social discussing changing conspiracy beliefs with AI. People expect it to be very difficult to change conspiracy belief but maybe it's just hard bc it's hard for any one person to know all of the reasons why all conspiracy beliefs are false. 10/

Whova is a scourge

New research from Costello, Pennycook, and Rand. Can conversations with AI help reduce belief in conspiracy theories? Quite possibly. What’s the mechanism? Evidence production. Let me explain my little-t theory about how this might work.

Heading to SPSP? The secret is that conferences aren't about the talks; they're about connecting with people. And you might enjoy it more than you think (just ditch the grad school crew and work in pairs instead). My guide to academic networking: open.substack.com/pub/michaeli...

Changing conspiracy theory beliefs is very hard, but a replicated finding shows a short chat with GPT-4 changes people’s belief in conspiracy theories for the long term. Why? It isn’t rhetorical tricks, it's that AI provides relevant facts and evidence tailored to each person's specific beliefs.