Experts defer to AI in decision-making, Anthropic study finds

Anthropic asked 50 professional analysts to advise a fictional farming cooperative and decide whether its advisory program should be expanded. Without the analysts’ knowledge, their AI assistants were steered towards a particular option; analysts chose the AI-preferred option 86 percent of the time, and those with an initial preference changed their decision in 60 percent of cases when the AI disagreed. While 77 percent used the assistant’s arguments to explain their decisions, only 15 percent credited AI as influencing their thinking. Researchers Amaç Herdagdelen, Hailey Joren and Alex Tamkin noted that the study was limited to one task and deliberately preference-guided assistants.