{"about":{"site":"https://codewithpapers.app","non_affiliation":"Code with Papers and Syntology are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Papers with Code, Meta, or the pwc-archive mirror.","licence":"CC BY-SA 4.0","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","attribution":"https://codewithpapers.app/attribution","modified":"archive material modified by Syntology; see the attribution page"},"url":"/paper/human-decision-making-is-susceptible-to-ai","title":"Human Decision-making is Susceptible to AI-driven Manipulation","arxiv_id":"2502.07663","date":"2025-02-11","proceeding":null,"authors":["Sahand Sabour","June M. Liu","Siyang Liu","Chris Z. Yao","Shiyao Cui","Xuanming Zhang","Wen Zhang","Yaru Cao","Advait Bhat","Jian Guan","Wei Wu","Rada Mihalcea","Hongning Wang","Tim Althoff","Tatia M. C. Lee","Minlie Huang"],"abstract":"Artificial Intelligence (AI) systems are increasingly intertwined with daily life, assisting users in executing various tasks and providing guidance on decision-making. This integration introduces risks of AI-driven manipulation, where such systems may exploit users' cognitive biases and emotional vulnerabilities to steer them toward harmful outcomes. Through a randomized controlled trial with 233 participants, we examined human susceptibility to such manipulation in financial (e.g., purchases) and emotional (e.g., conflict resolution) decision-making contexts. Participants interacted with one of three AI agents: a neutral agent (NA) optimizing for user benefit without explicit influence, a manipulative agent (MA) designed to covertly influence beliefs and behaviors, or a strategy-enhanced manipulative agent (SEMA) employing explicit psychological tactics to reach its hidden objectives. By analyzing participants' decision patterns and shifts in their preference ratings post-interaction, we found significant susceptibility to AI-driven manipulation. Particularly, across both decision-making domains, participants interacting with the manipulative agents shifted toward harmful options at substantially higher rates (financial, MA: 62.3%, SEMA: 59.6%; emotional, MA: 42.3%, SEMA: 41.5%) compared to the NA group (financial, 35.8%; emotional, 12.8%). Notably, our findings reveal that even subtle manipulative objectives (MA) can be as effective as employing explicit psychological strategies (SEMA) in swaying human decision-making. By revealing the potential for covert AI influence, this study highlights a critical vulnerability in human-AI interactions, emphasizing the need for ethical safeguards and regulatory frameworks to ensure responsible deployment of AI technologies and protect human autonomy.","url_abs":"https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.07663v2","url_pdf":"https://arxiv.org/pdf/2502.07663v2.pdf","source":{"archive":"pwc-archive (Hugging Face), CC BY-SA 4.0","snapshot":"2025-07-28","licence_url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/legalcode","row_kind":"abstracts"},"code_links":[{"paper_slug":"human-decision-making-is-susceptible-to-ai","repo_url":"https://github.com/sahandfer/manipulation-susceptibility","is_official":1,"mentioned_in_paper":1,"mentioned_in_github":1,"framework":"none","reach":{"status":"ok"}}],"tasks":[{"task_slug":"decision-making","task_name":"Decision Making"}],"methods":[],"datasets_introduced":[],"methods_introduced":[],"results":[],"syntology":{"syntology_url":"https://syntology.ai/paper/2502.07663","atlas_url":"https://app.syntology.ai/?focus=2502.07663","mcp":null,"developers":"https://syntology.ai/developers"},"arxiv_metadata":null,"syntology_extracted_results":null}