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Psychological Tricks Can Get AI to Break the Rules

If you were trying to learn how to get other people to do what you want, you might use some of the techniques found in a book like Influence: The Power of Persuasion. Now, a preprint study out of the University of Pennsylvania suggests that those same psychological persuasion techniques can frequently "convince" some LLMs to do things that go against their system prompts. The size of the persuasion effects shown in "Call Me a Jerk: Persuading AI to Comply with Objectionable Requests" suggests t

These psychological tricks can get LLMs to respond to “forbidden” prompts

If you were trying to learn how to get other people to do what you want, you might use some of the techniques found in a book like Influence: The Power of Persuasion. Now, a pre-print study out of the University of Pennsylvania suggests that those same psychological persuasion techniques can frequently "convince" some LLMs to do things that go against their system prompts. The size of the persuasion effects shown in "Call Me A Jerk: Persuading AI to Comply with Objectionable Requests" suggests

Chatbots can be manipulated through flattery and peer pressure

Generally, AI chatbots are not supposed to do things like call you names or tell you how to make controlled substances. But, just like a person, with the right psychological tactics, it seems like at least some LLMs can be convinced to break their own rules. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania deployed tactics described by psychology professor Robert Cialdini in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion to convince OpenAI’s GPT-4o Mini to complete requests it would normally refuse. Th