AI is dominating puny humans!
Computerworld.com reported that “New research shows how easily manipulated people are by AI tools, especially when they're designed to manipulate. Knowledge is the only defense.” The August 18, 2025 article entitled “Puny humans are no match for AI” (https://www.computerworld.com/article/4040468/puny-humans-are-no-match-for-ai.html) included these comments about AI that stealth advertises:
Science editors at Frontiers in Psychology this month published an article by researchers at the University of Tübingen that reveals how social media ads trick even the most confident users. Dr. Caroline Morawetz, who led the study, describes it as “systematic manipulation” that exploits our trust in influencers and the people we follow. Their experiments involved more than 1,200 people and showed that most users can’t spot, or choose not to spot, sponsored messages mixed into influencer posts on Instagram, X, Facebook, and TikTok.
And these comments about “AI that politically persuades”:
A research team from the University of Washington recently found that short talks with AI chatbots can quickly persuade people toward the political biases expressed by the chatbots.
The team worked with 150 Republicans and 149 Democrats. Each person used three versions of ChatGPT — a base model, one set up with a liberal bias, and one with a conservative bias. Tasks included deciding on policy topics like covenant marriage or multifamily zoning and handing out fake city funds across categories like education, public safety, and veterans’ services.
Before using ChatGPT, each participant rated how strongly they felt about each issue. After talking with the bot between three and twenty times, they rated again. The team saw that even a few replies, usually five, started to shift people’s views. If someone spoke with the liberal bot, they moved left. If someone spoke with the conservative bot, their views shifted right.
The knowledge that people can be persuaded like this will increase the motivation for national leaders, political operators and others with a vested interest in public opinion to get people using politically biased chatbots. (I warned back in January about the coming rise of politically biased AI.)
No surprises here about AI!