Artificial Intelligence promises to help people with different ideas find the same topic. A new tool developed by Google DeepMind uses artificial intelligence to mediate conversations and combine insights into balanced summaries. In recent experiments, participants preferred AI-generated summaries over summaries generated by human moderators, suggesting that AI can be an effective mediator for complex conversations. This was indicated in a study published in Science on October 17, 2024.
The Habermas machine was named after the philosopher Jürgen Habermas, the system was created by a group led by by Christopher Summerfield, director of research at the UK’s Artificial Intelligence Safety. The University. The AI tool was tested with groups of participants discussing topics related to UK public policy. It’s the AI’s job to summarize their disparate thoughts into a meaningful and symbolic message. These summaries are determined by the participants. Surprisingly, 56 percent prefer AI-generated summaries, while the rest prefer human-generated output. Independent reviewers also gave AI-generated summaries higher scores for accuracy and clarity.
Artificial Intelligence in Citizen Debate
Summerfield explained that the AI model was designed to generate summaries that would be most acceptable to group members by learning from group members’ preferences. While this is an encouraging step towards improving the process of negotiation, it also highlights the challenges of expanding such democratic initiatives(AI Tool Helps).
The study involved an experiment with 439 British residents in which participants shared their views on public policy issues. Each group’s responses were processed through artificial intelligence, and a composite summary was then created. In particular, the study found that the AI tool increased the consensus among team members, indicating the ability to make policies in real-world situations.
Ethan Busby, an artificial intelligence researcher at Brigham Young University, says this is a good approach, but others, like Sammy McKinney of Cambridge University, caution against underestimating it. the human touch in those conversations.
