Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

Reposted by Sacha Altay

Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · 5d

🗞️ 🤖 Weekend reading anyone? For the launch of @transformernews.ai as a standalone publication, they invited me to contribute a piece on what persuasive AI might mean for democracy and elections.

Here’s the result…

buff.ly/OJsNmpK

AI is persuasive, but that’s not the real problem for democracy

Opinion: Felix M Simon argues that AI is unlikely to significantly shape election results in the near future, but warns that it could damage democracy through a steady erosion of institutional trust.

www.transformernews.ai

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 10d

WhatsApp deactivation experimental results in Brazil, India, and South Africa mirror those from prior social media studies: big changes in content exposure -> minimal changes in attitudes, decreases in political knowledge, increases in subjective wellbeing www.venturatiago.com/talk/vmtn_wh...

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Filipe Campante @filipecampante.bsky.social · Aug 11

NEW PAPER!!

We study how the "AI slop" era could actually boost demand for credible news.

In an experiment with thousands of Süddeutsche Zeitung readers, we found that AI misinformation made people *trust news less*, but *read it more*. 🧵

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Jon Green @jongreen.bsky.social · Aug 4

new working paper: osf.io/7v4zj

tl;dr: taking the "marketplace of ideas" metaphor seriously requires taking the nuances of actually-existing markets seriously, which means thinking about tradeoffs between transaction costs and conformity costs. applied to misinfo and ideological belief systems.

title: Informal (De-)Regulation in the Marketplace of Ideas

abstract: Democratic societies face tradeoffs regarding the production, acquisition, and exchange of information and ideas. On the one hand, they benefit from institutions that reduce the transaction costs citizens must pay to acquire reliable information they can use to pursue their goals; on the other hand, those institutions impose conformity costs on citizens’ belief systems. This has traditionally placed civil institutions such as the media, the scientific community, and political parties in the role of informal regulators, which set norms regarding the (combinations of) beliefs citizens should or should not express in lieu of the government setting rules regarding the beliefs citizens can or cannot express. I argue that the interaction of heightened political sectarianism with changes in the structure of the public sphere have weakened these institutions and altered the informal regulations that govern the proverbial “marketplace of ideas.” This framework illuminates recent phenomena of scholarly concern – namely, the health of the political information environment and the evolution of contemporary political ideologies.

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Hugo Mercier @hugoreasoning.bsky.social · Aug 11

From ancient Greece to the Arabic golden age, scholars have been driven by their curiosity to investigate astronomy, history, philosophy, and sundry other disciplines. Is there a structure to that curiosity? Are astronomers as likely to also be historians or to also be philosophers?

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Richard Fletcher @richardfletcher.bsky.social · Aug 11

New paper with @kirstenaeddy.bsky.social in Journalism on whether people across 45 countries think news coverage of people their age, their gender, and with their political views is fair or unfair.

We outline some interesting demographic differences (more details in 🧵)...

doi.org/10.1177/1464...

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Sacha Altay @sachaltay.bsky.social · Jul 29

This is good news for debriefings in misinformation research:

Debriefings that include fact-checks of the false claims used in the experiment reduce false beliefs, improve attitudes towards the study, and show no signs of negative effects.

👉 osf.io/preprints/ps...

Feedback much welcomed :)

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Emma Hoes @emmahoes.bsky.social · Jul 28

What about debriefings in Misinformation Research?

✅ Only specific debriefings reduce belief in false info
⚠️ Both slightly reduce belief in true info
🧠 Only specific boosts perceived learning
🟢 Only general reduces manipulation & frustration
🔍 Both increase transparency

osf.io/preprints/ps...

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Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · Jul 28

More constructive approaches to online political debate generate more constructive replies but no greater change in attitudes www.science.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

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rasmuskleis.bsky.social @rasmuskleis.bsky.social · Jul 23

How effective are user corrections on social media, and does adding a link to a fact check improve effectiveness?

In piece led by @sachaltay.bsky.social we find corrections have small effects, adding a fact-check unlikely to make them more effective misinforeview.hks.harvard.edu/article/the-... 1/6

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Oxford Internet Institute @oii.ox.ac.uk · Jul 23

New blog! ‘Consequences of a skewed discourse around generative AI and elections’. Read why @felixsimon.bsky.social, @oii.ox.ac.uk and @sachaltay.bsky.social, University of Zurich, believe claims about the impact of generative AI on elections have been overblown: bit.ly/46YTZg7 1/2

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Christopher Barrie @cbarrie.bsky.social · Jul 22

In addition to the original UK results, we have now ***replicated*** this (TWICE) in the US.

The main findings hold strong: information diets are a lot more diverse in attention than in engagement.

New version here: osf.io/preprints/os...

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Kobi Hackenburg @kobihackenburg.bsky.social · Jul 21

Today (w/ @ox.ac.uk @stanford @MIT @LSE) we’re sharing the results of the largest AI persuasion experiments to date: 76k participants, 19  LLMs, 707 political issues.

We examine “levers” of AI persuasion: model scale, post-training, prompting, personalization, & more!

🧵:

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Ben Tappin @benmtappin.bsky.social · Jul 20

Have now read this paper in detail. It’s a tour de force. If you’re interested in the potential impact of AI on election outcomes you should put it by your bedside. Key takeaway: let’s remain alive to, but healthily skeptical of, the possibility of large impacts: knightcolumbia.org/content/dont...

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Sacha Altay @sachaltay.bsky.social · Jul 20

Thanks a lot Ben 🥰

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Reuters Institute @reutersinstitute.bsky.social · Jul 17

NEW on our website

@felixsimon.bsky.social and @sachaltay.bsky.social on why should be worry more about humans than AI systems when it comes to elections in the age of generative AI

Click to read
reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/news/generat...

Generative AI and elections: why you should be more worried about humans than about AI systems

“The current concerns are overblown in light of the available evidence,” argue researchers Felix M. Simon and Sacha Altay.

reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk

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Who Targets Me @whotargets.me · Jul 8

Excellent, comprehensive paper (and thread) on the lack of impact of generative AI on elections so far. There was so much hype around it in 2023-24, mostly fuelled by AI people with no understanding of elections, politics, the information environment or how persuasion works (or mostly doesn't).

Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · Jul 7

How harmful is GenAI around elections? Will it trigger a misinformation apocalypse and upend elections?

I am happy to finally be able to share @sachaltay.bsky.social & my answers to these and other questions on which we have been working for a year and which is now out via @knightcolumbia.org

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Claes de Vreese @claesdevreese.bsky.social · Jul 8

Did AI so far upend elections and destroy democracy? Not quite!

Balanced assessment by @felixsimon.bsky.social and @sachaltay.bsky.social

And important plea to move discussion to a less dramatic level and link AI discussions to democracy challenge discussions.

knightcolumbia.org/content/dont...

Don’t Panic (Yet): Assessing the Evidence and Discourse Around Generative AI and Elections

knightcolumbia.org

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Felix M. Simon @felixsimon.bsky.social · Jul 7

How harmful is GenAI around elections? Will it trigger a misinformation apocalypse and upend elections?

I am happy to finally be able to share @sachaltay.bsky.social & my answers to these and other questions on which we have been working for a year and which is now out via @knightcolumbia.org

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Katy Glenn Bass @katygb.bsky.social · Jul 7

New essay by @sachaltay.bsky.social & @felixsimon.bsky.social in @knightcolumbia.org's AI & Democratic Freedoms series, on how we should think about (and do research on) generative AI's impact on elections. Short 🧵 on this important piece: knightcolumbia.org/content/dont...

Don’t Panic (Yet): Assessing the Evidence and Discourse Around Generative AI and Elections

knightcolumbia.org

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Sacha Altay @sachaltay.bsky.social · Jun 27

Yes! In the discussion of the paper we mention that our results are more in line with the deactivation studies (showing that social media helps people be a little more informed) than cross-sectional studies finding null or even negative effects.

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Sacha Altay @sachaltay.bsky.social · Jun 27

The pre-registrations, materials, R scripts, and the data to replicate the findings are publicly available on OSF: osf.io/8tzd2/

News on Social Media Boosts Knowledge, Belief Accuracy, and Trust: A Field Experiment on Instagram and WhatsApp

Hosted on the Open Science Framework

osf.io

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Sacha Altay @sachaltay.bsky.social · Jun 27

We show that people actually learn from news on social media and that this form of news consumption should not be dismissed or disdained. While some forms of social media use are clearly harmful, others are positive and can be leveraged to foster a well-informed society.

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Sacha Altay @sachaltay.bsky.social · Jun 27

The treatment had no significant effects on belief in and awareness of false news stories, feeling of being informed, political efficacy, affective polarization, and interest in news or politics.

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Sacha Altay @sachaltay.bsky.social · Jun 27

These effects are larger among participants who fully complied (by following the accounts and turning on the notifications):

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