Increasingly Persuasive AI

Much of the AI news is about its progress towards and possibly surpassing human intelligence. A different worry is not about AI’s intelligence but its persuasiveness. What can it convince you to do? Even as recently as 2022, AI wasn’t as persuasive as humans, in general. It could only persuade a change less than half the time (38.2%). Now, only a few years later, it has reached 89.1%. That doesn’t mean it can always convince anyone to do anything. But the threat of AI disasters, intentional or otherwise, may have less to do with how smart it is and how susceptible key humans are. At least for some humans, we may have already reached that level. A reason to reflect on history and how often the power behind the power was the more powerful.