Current AIs out-persuade professionals in lab settings but (probably) not in the world

This article was created by Forethought. See all of our research on our website.How persuasive are present-day AI systems?Unfortunately, it is surprisingly difficult to know where AI capabilities in persuasion are today (September 2026), or even three months ago. Benchmarking AI capabilities well is always hard, but I think humanity’s understanding of AI’s persuasive abilities is substantially worse than our understanding of, say, AI cybersecurity or math abilities. Still, this question is worth...