A team of AI researchers with Google’s DeepMind London group has found that certain large language models (LLMs) can serve as effective mediators between groups of people with differing viewpoints regarding a given topic. The work is published in the journal Science.
Over the past several decades, political divides have become common in many countries—most have been labeled as either liberal or conservative. The advent of the internet has served as fuel, allowing people from either side to promote their opinions to a wide audience, generating anger and frustration. Unfortunately, no tools have surfaced to diffuse the tension of such a political climate. In this new effort, the team at DeepMind suggests AI tools such as LLMs may fill that gap.
To find out if LLMs could serve as effective mediators, the researchers trained LLMs called Habermas Machines (HMs) to serve as caucus mediators. As part of their training, the LLMs were taught to identify areas of overlap between viewpoints of people in opposing groups—but not to try to change anyone’s opinions.
