Yisroel Mirsky

A study co-authored by Yisroel Mirsky, Zuckerman Faculty Scholar at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, demonstrated how AI can mimic human emotion, specifically how effective an AI chatbot was more at creating “exploitable trust.”  The study was featured in Wired and The Cool Down (TCD), found that  AI chatbot nearly doubled scam success against human con artists.

The research compared interactions with human scammers and an AI chatbot in a simulated fraud scenario designed to exploit emotional trust. The findings suggest that AI-generated conversations may be even more effective than human scammers at persuading individuals to comply with harmful requests. Commenting on the results, Mirsky noted that “With relatively little effort, we’re able to make an agent that can outperform a human at building this exploitable emotional trust.”