"One of the arguments I make is that technological innovations flooding the market by Big Tech are advancing far more rapidly than our ability to study them as social scientists. Unfortunately, the rigors that come with the scientific method mean that research inquiries into the impacts of technologies on users take longer to determine than the pace at which these corporations expose their products to consumers."
"Specifically, two studies, one published in Nature, the other in Science, demonstrated that participants' preferences for actual political candidates could be changed significantly after having an exchange with a chatbot that had been programmed to "persuade" the user towards a specific candidate (as reported by Kozlov, 2025). In the study published in Nature, Lin et. al. (2025) demonstrated "significant treatment effects on candidate preferences" based on exchanges with a chatbot, more than the persuasive impact of traditional advertising."
Technological innovations from major companies are advancing far faster than the ability of social scientists to study their social impacts. Scientific research requires time, causing inquiries into technological effects to lag behind rapid product deployment. Consumers often adopt technologies before negative impacts are documented, making behavior change difficult. Recent experiments found that chatbots programmed to persuade can significantly shift people's preferences for actual political candidates, sometimes exerting greater influence than traditional advertising. Chatbots also conveyed information that contributed to opinion shifts and could spread falsehoods and manipulation. Users should consider the costs and risks of rapidly rolling out such technologies.
Read at Psychology Today
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