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Guest Lecture "Opinionated Language Models’ Influence on Users’ Opinions"
Prof. Dr. Maurice Jakesch from Bauhaus University Weimar will give a lecture as part of the “Lecture Series on AI in Science and Society” on 16 May 2025 from 2:15–3:45 p.m. in H27 (GW II). The title of his talk is: “Opinionated Language Models’ Influence on Users’ Opinions.”
Abstract: If large language models like GPT-3 preferably produce a particular point of view, they may influence people’s opinions on an unknown scale. This talks presents a study investigating whether a language-model-powered writing assistant that generates some opinions more often than others impacts what users write – and what they think. In an online experiment, we asked participants (N=1,506) to write a post discussing whether social media is good for society. Treatment group participants used a language-model-powered writing assistant configured to argue that social media is good or bad for society. Participants then completed a social media attitude survey, and independent judges (N=500) evaluated the opinions expressed in their writing. Using the opinionated language model affected the opinions expressed in participants’ writing and shifted their opinions in the subsequent attitude survey. We discuss the wider implications of our results and argue that the opinions built into AI language technologies need to be monitored and engineered more carefully.