Forethought analysis: current AI is more persuasive than professionals in the lab

Forethought author Linch compares laboratory and real-world evidence and judges that current AI's general persuasiveness is roughly between ordinary people and professionals. The article relays experiments by Hackenburg et al.: frontier models are better at changing attitudes in conversations lasting 8 to 15 minutes, and perform better in fundraising, but the experiments involved only very small amounts. The author notes that evidence from real deployment is limited, and some judgments about industry use and impact come from impressions rather than direct measurement, so laboratory advantages cannot be directly extrapolated to large-scale real-world impact; and cautions against making persuasion evaluation a target for frontier companies to chase points.