Cornell researchers have received a $1.49 million grant to study whether artificial intelligence can help people assess evidence and remain open to changing their minds. The three-year project will examine both how beliefs change and the ethical questions raised when AI is used to influence that process.
The John Templeton Foundation awarded the grant to Gordon Pennycook, an associate professor of psychology in Cornell's College of Arts and Sciences, and David Rand, a professor of management and information science whose appointments also span marketing and psychology at the university. They are the project's principal investigators.
The researchers distinguish open-mindedness from simply changing a belief. In their account, it means being willing to engage seriously with new evidence and to revise a belief when doing so is warranted.
One part of the project will investigate the cognitive and social conditions under which people change their beliefs when the evidence calls for it. The team plans to develop behavioral and AI-based ways to assess open-mindedness, including dialogues between research participants and large language models.
Those conversations will help the researchers examine how open-mindedness can be measured and whether AI systems can encourage it. The grant funds a study of those questions; Cornell has not announced findings from this new project or established that an AI intervention works.
The second part will approach open-mindedness through philosophy. The researchers plan to examine when it qualifies as an intellectual virtue — for example, when it is motivated by, or produces, knowledge and true beliefs — and consider questions about personal autonomy when AI plays a role in shaping beliefs.
The work builds on earlier research by Pennycook and Rand using evidence-based conversations with AI to reduce confidence in conspiracy beliefs. The new project broadens that inquiry beyond any one type of belief to ask how people evaluate information and when a change of mind is justified.
Researchers from four other universities will collaborate on the grant: philosophers Neil Levy of Macquarie University and Heather Battaly of the University of Connecticut, and psychologists Thomas Costello of Carnegie Mellon University and Tennelle Porter of Rowan University.
Pennycook and Rand said in their grant proposal that understanding why people become willing to reconsider a view could help them learn from one another. Their next step is to develop the assessments and investigate the psychological and philosophical questions over the grant's three-year term.
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