Trust Google AI, Not Humanoids
July 3, 2026
I wonder if Google wants to control the world. Just a casual question, of course.
Google with its AI chatbots is doing something that is interesting: Some people trust Google’s outputs more than the experts’ statements, papers, and lectures. Tom Stafford on his substack wrote a post about this very topic: “AI Systems Out Persuade Expert Humans. Panic?” Before we hit the big red computer button, let’s review what he says:
“Kobi Hackenburg and colleagues have a new preprint with the strong title: “AI systems out-persuade expert humans” (15 June 2026). It’s a challenge to my previous belief that language models met, but did not exceed human persuasiveness.
The report provides a strong test of AI persuasiveness. They don’t just ask models to change people’s attitudes (it is arguably easy for a participant in an online experiment to at least pretend to accede to a changed belief), they also ask participants to donate some of their participation fee to charity — a behaviour, not a mere declaration, which has a direct cost for the participants (albeit only a small amount).”
The chatbots outperformed the human experts with startling numbers. The experts used in the tests weren’t just random Joe schmoes off the street. These were the experts paid the big bucks to verify information. Oh boy!
Here’s more input on the results:
“The researchers preregistered their analysis, setting out what they would measure and how they would measure it. This is a strong signal, along with the wealth of additional information they share in the paper, that the analysis was robustly planned and thoroughly carried out. I’m convinced the effects they report as statistically significant are as reliable as anything in the behavioural science literature. The effects they report are small (a 5 point advantage of the AI system on a 100 point scale), but given the toughness of the comparison (i.e. vs expert human persuader), that is still an impressive gain.”
The good news is that human are skeptical. With the terabytes of information being thrown at their faces, humans will most likely adapt to a world with many perspectives that offer compelling view points. People might be pulled in every direction but that healthy skepticism remains. We have to also remember that skepticism is proportional to a humans relative intelligence. The intelligence has to grow in order to have decent skepticism. With screen addiction the IQ points are lowering.
That could be the reason why Google is going to the trouble of making people believe AI chatbots over their fellow human. Google is working very hard to make people reliant on its AI. It is just for the good of humankind, right? Be skeptical about that statement. The head of Google search is making the podcast rounds. Listen carefully because Google knows what’s good for its idea about information influence.
Whitney Grace, July 3, 2026
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