Can AI be as irrational as we are? (Or even more so?)
Illustration by Judy Blomquist/Harvard Staff Science & Tech Can AI be as irrational as we are? (Or even more so?) Christy DeSmith Harvard Staff Writer July 1, 2025 6 min read Psychologists found OpenAI’s GPT-4o showing humanlike patterns of cognitive dissonance, sensitivity to free choice It appears AI can rival humans when it comes to being irrational. A group of psychologists recently put OpenAI’s GPT-4o through a test for cognitive dissonance. The researchers set out to see whether the large language model would alter its attitude on Russian President Vladamir Putin after generating positive or negative essays. Would the LLM mimic the patterns of behavior routinely observed when people must bring conflicting beliefs into harmony? The results, published last month in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show the system altering its opinion to match the tenor of any material it generated. But GPT swung even further — and to a far greater extent than in humans —...