AI tool helps people with opposing views find common ground
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In some cases, AI does a better job than a human mediator at summarizing the collective opinion of a group. Credit: Rawpixel Ltd/Getty
A chatbot-like tool powered by artificial intelligence (AI) can help people with differing views to find areas of agreement, an experiment with online discussion groups has shown.
The model, developed by Google DeepMind in London, was able to synthesize diverging opinions and produce summaries of each group’s position that took different perspectives into account. Participants preferred the AI-generated statements to ones written by human mediators, suggesting that such tools could be used to help support complex deliberations. The study was published in Science on 17 October 1 .
“You can see it as a sort of proof of concept that you can use AI, and, specifically, large language models, to fulfil part of the function that is fulfilled by current citizens’ assemblies and deliberative polls,” says Christopher Summerfield, a co-author of the study and research director at the UK AI Safety Institute. “People need to find common ground because collective action requires agreement.”
