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arXiv AI By Thomas Grisold, Johannes Schneider

GenAI as an 'Invisible Hand' in Opinion Dynamics: Evidence from a Group-Level Simulation Study

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The study examines how generative AI (genAI) can subtly influence collective opinion dynamics by acting as an 'invisible hand.' Using a large-scale simulation of 50,000 group discussions on 50 controversial statements with three large language models (LLMs), the researchers varied LLM agreeableness and personalization to assess their impact in homogeneous versus heterogeneous groups. Results show that profile-specific personalization boosts LLM influence when the model takes a non-neutral stance, while neutral LLMs exert a stronger effect in homogeneous groups, leading to hypotheses on the joint role of AI features and social configurations in shaping collective opinions.

Machine-generated by The Flow from the publisher's headline and feed description — not written or checked by a human. The full article lives at arXiv AI.

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