Persuasive Capacity, Not Persuasive Power: A Commentary on Ari Deller’s “The Epistemic Costs of Super-Persuasive AI”

In a recent article in this journal, Ari Deller has argued that there are some severe epistemic costs to super-persuasive AI. In this commentary I explain why, while I agree with Deller about the epistemic costs of super-persuasive AI, I disagree with him about the likely source of the problem. Where Deller focuses on the super-persuasive power of future AI technologies, I focus on the enormous increase in persuasive capacity that is provided by a technology that can produce very large amounts of persuasive content at minimal cost.