The transformation underway goes beyond the commercial plane, a new lucrative market is in its infancy following the logic of the so-called ‘economy of intent’, notes the analysis of the University of Cambridge, in a publication of ‘Harvard Data Science Review’.

The explosion of generative AI and the increasing familiarity of humans with chatbots open up a new frontier for alleged ‘persuasive technologies’, hinted at in recent corporate announcements by tech giants, argue researchers at the British university’s Leverhulme Center for the Future of Intelligence (LCFI).

In the experts’ view, anthropomorphic AI agents, from chatbot assistants to digital tutors, will have access to vast amounts of psychological and intimate behavioral data, often obtained through informal, conversational spoken dialogues.

This AI will combine knowledge of people’s online habits with an uncanny ability to tune into them to generate levels of trust and understanding that enable social manipulation on an industrial scale, ethics specialists said.

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