AI companions, other forms of personalized AI content and persuasion and related issues continue to be a hot topic. What do people use companions for? Are we headed for a goonpocalypse? Mostly no, companions are used mostly not used for romantic relationships or erotica, although perhaps that could change. How worried should we be about personalization maximized for persuasion or engagement?

Table of Contents

Persuasion Should Be In Your Preparedness Framework.
Personalization By Default Gets Used To Maximize Engagement.
Companion.
Goonpocalypse Now.
Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon.

Persuasion Should Be In Your Preparedness Framework

Kobi Hackenburg leads on the latest paper on AI persuasion. Kobi Hackenberg: RESULTS (pp = percentage points): 1⃣Scale increases persuasion, +1.6pp per OOM 2⃣Post-training more so, +3.5pp 3⃣Personalization less so, <1pp 4⃣Information density drives persuasion gains 5⃣Increasing persuasion decreased factual accuracy 6⃣Convo > static, +40% Zero is on [...]

---

Outline:

(00:35) Persuasion Should Be In Your Preparedness Framework

(04:33) Personalization By Default Gets Used To Maximize Engagement

(13:04) Companion

(16:50) Goonpocalypse Now

(24:09) Deepfaketown and Botpocalypse Soon

---

First published:
July 28th, 2025

Source:
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Rm3FD6646NDSCGxqM/ai-companion-piece

---

Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

“AI Companion Piece” by Zvi

LessWrong (30+ Karma)