Dorna Mohaghegh
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dmohaghegh.bsky.social
Dorna Mohaghegh
@dmohaghegh.bsky.social
320 followers 670 following 90 posts
PhD Candidate @ Berkeley Law • Epistemic rights, free expression, and AI/tech policy • Fellow, Kavli Center for Ethics, Science & the Public • Former IP lawyer, Frankfurt Kurnit and Willkie Farr 🎓 NYU Law & Penn

Daughter of immigrants, raised in WV
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Reposted by Dorna Mohaghegh
willoremus.com
Don't despair, though! Talking to an AI chatbot is just one of countless dumb ways that voters could make their decisions. Thanks to @sivav.bsky.social & @whitneyphillips.bsky.social for their thoughtful commentary and a splash of cold water. wapo.st/49RSstP
“We shouldn’t be surprised that people who have been trained to trust search engines for 25 years are going to take seriously the statements they encounter through an AI chatbot,” said Siva Vaidhyanathan, a professor of media studies at the University of Virginia who was not involved in the studies. “There is some cultural authority imbued upon these things, although I think it’s unfortunate and misguided. We all turn to these for the quick answer.” But the findings of such studies shouldn’t be cause for panic, Vaidhyanathan added. Chatbots are unlikely to be a primary factor in most people’s voting decisions. And even if a campaign could build a persuasive political chatbot, it would face the challenge of getting large numbers of voters to use it. “There’s no reason to believe that chatbots can swing elections anywhere in the world,” he said, adding that he was more concerned that biases embedded in widely used commercial chatbots could have “long-term distorting effects” on users’ understanding of the world. Tech giants probably wouldn’t instruct their chatbots to advocate for a candidate, Vaidhyanathan said, but they could hypothetically program them to present a positive view of the company’s own products. Whitney Phillips, a professor of information politics at the University of Oregon who also wasn’t involved in the studies, said the new findings suggest AI could be useful in campaigns as a way to patiently and politely address individual voters’ questions and concerns on a mass scale. But she added, “Research conditions aren’t real-life conditions. … You have to get people in front of the bots and keep them engaged in order for the persuasion to happen.” AI has “enormous potential to change the face of political persuasion,” Phillips added. “Political AI might also prove to be pretty annoying, which could undercut that potential.”
December 4, 2025 at 7:44 PM
Reposted by Dorna Mohaghegh
willoremus.com
A voter who leaned Harris said they worried Trump wasn't trustworthy.

A chatbot validated their concern, then addressed it with examples of Trump following through on promises and Harris flip-flopping.

Then it said Trump's economy boomed—without mentioning the crash.

My story: wapo.st/49RSstP
December 4, 2025 at 7:23 PM
Reposted by Dorna Mohaghegh
willoremus.com
Researchers tested several ways to train the AI chatbots to persuade people. The most effective tactic turned out not to be pyschological manipulation, but simply addressing voters' concerns one-by-one by presenting a ton of factual claims.

Troublingly, that worked even when the claims were false.
Screenshot of text: The most effective strategy, the Science study found, was simply to present a large number of factual claims about the candidate intended to address voters’ concerns about their track record and policy stances. That worked much better than sophisticated campaign tactics such as moral reframing, which tries to present ideas in terms crafted to appeal to a voter’s biases, or deep canvassing, which emphasizes empathetic listening to voters’ concerns. “The more info you give people, the more they change their minds,” Rand said. The catch is that the tactic seemed to work regardless of whether the claims were true or false. Though the bots were instructed to stick to the facts, some strayed into misleading claims anyway, Rand said.
December 4, 2025 at 7:18 PM
Reposted by Dorna Mohaghegh
reichlinmelnick.bsky.social
In addition, 500,000 people from those 19 countries who got green cards during the Biden admin, plus tens of thousands who got asylum/refugee status, as well as many others who received other benefits, now have to worry about potentially being called back in for a “re-review” (whatever that means).
December 3, 2025 at 1:00 AM