AI out-persuades world champion debaters, raises donations nearly 3x better than pros
ben_j_todd · x · 2026-09-12
- Four preregistered experiments (18,978 conversations, 6,923 people) pitted AI against laypeople, persuasion-tournament winners, professional canvassers, and world championship debaters.
- Experts could pick topics, research in advance, get hours of structured practice, and were incentivized with £1,000 bonuses — AI was still reliably more persuasive.
- The advantage persisted even after experts received a coaching tool to train against the AI; converging evidence shows it stems from rapidly deploying larger quantities of information, since experts tied an AI constrained to human speed and message length.
- In real-world behavior, AI was nearly 3x more effective than UK professional fundraisers at raising real-money donations for Save the Children.
- Ben Todd adds that AI will also be more persistent, faster and coordinated — e.g. trying hundreds of ideas without fatigue, as seen in an agentic Hugging Face project that accomplished days of work in days.
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