Some interesting research from Anthropic, about exactly how persuasive your favourite AI chatbot can be:

We study persuasion because it is a general skill which is used widely within the world—companies try to persuade people to buy products, healthcare providers try to persuade people to make healthier lifestyle changes, and politicians try to persuade people to support their policies and vote for them. Developing ways to measure the persuasive capabilities of AI models is important because it serves as a proxy measure of how well AI models can match human skill in an important domain, and because persuasion may ultimately be tied to certain kinds of misuse, such as using AI to generate disinformation, or persuading people to take actions against their own interests.

This is important work – and very much aligned with Anthropic’s mission to provide “safe” AI.

Read the full report here.