People will actually change their moral compass to match whatever an AI says, even if they swear they don’t trust its advice.
March 25, 2026
Original Paper
Trust in artificial moral advisors across cultures
PsyArXiv · sfe9u_v1
The Takeaway
This reveals a strange 'hidden' influence of technology on our conscience. Even though we are culturally and personally skeptical of 'robot ethics,' we are still subconsciously nudged to change our minds to match a machine's recommendation.
From the abstract
Developers of artificial intelligence are already building prototypes for artificial moral advisors: autonomous systems designed to provide humans with recommendations on ethical issues. Yet it remains unclear whether people will trust and adopt these technologies. In a large-scale cross-cultural experiment (12 countries; N = 6,896), we investigate perceptions of human and artificial moral advisors who give advice in moral dilemmas based on competing ethical principles. We show that people trust