"Autocomplete suggestions are perhaps one of the most annoying useful tools for writing: increasingly integrated into anything online that requires you to input text, autocomplete harnesses artificial intelligence to suggest what to write in e-mails, surveys, and more. The tools are meant to save time (though many find that assessing and rewriting the suggested text takes longer than writing it from scratch)."
"And now a new study led by researchers at Cornell University suggests AI autocomplete can even change the way you think. Autocomplete is everywhere now, said Mor Naaman, a professor of information science at Cornell, in a statement. The research builds on work, published in 2023 by Naaman and his colleagues, that suggested short autocomplete suggestions could sway opinions."
"It has become clear that bias explicitly built into AI interactions is a very plausible scenario, he said. The researchers asked participants to fill in an online survey with questions about hot-button social and political issues. Some were prompted with an AI autocomplete answer that was deliberately biased toward one side of the issue."
AI-powered autocomplete tools are now ubiquitous in emails, phones, and online text input systems. While designed to save time, these tools increasingly shape how people express themselves and think. Cornell University researchers conducted a study demonstrating that biased autocomplete suggestions can sway users' beliefs on contentious social and political topics. Participants completing surveys received deliberately biased AI autocomplete answers favoring particular viewpoints. The research extends previous 2023 findings showing short autocomplete suggestions influence opinions. As autocomplete usage has exploded, researchers warn that bias explicitly embedded in AI interactions represents a significant concern for how these tools affect human cognition and decision-making.
Read at www.scientificamerican.com
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