Human persuasion tricks may not work on AI agents

Early research suggests many expensive techniques built to attract human attention and influence choice fail when the chooser is an autonomous agent

For one thing, most techniques that firms have spent millions of dollars on to attract human eyeballs and affect choices…don’t work with AI agents. Preview of some work with Leo Burzstyn and @brian_jabarian .
Ranked #19 on backlist 2026-05-16 (16 May 2026 UTC) · by (Alex Imas) ·

How it ranks: Backlist reads my Twitter/X timeline, scores every tweet for substance with an LLM rubric (not engagement), and publishes the daily top picks with a one-line takeaway. Curated by Surya Dantuluri.