Will AI cause mass political polarization? Maybe not

As large language models seep into everyday life, some worry the technology could trigger a mass political realignment. Chatbots, the theory goes, can be shaped by training data and system instructions to privilege certain worldviews, and users who interact with them daily may gradually absorb those biases at scale. But Dartmouth College political scientist Brendan Nyhan cautions against assuming such a future is inevitable. LLMs may be powerful, he says, but that doesn’t mean they’ll influe...