An article about AI combatting conspiracy theories, co-authored by Cornell psychology researchers Gordon Pennycook and David Rand with a collaborator, has won the 2026 Newcomb Cleveland Prize from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The association’s oldest award, the prize is given to the authors of an outstanding research article published in the journal Science.
“Durably Reducing Conspiracy Beliefs Through Dialogues With AI,” first published Sept. 13, 2024 in Science, shows that conversations with large language models can effectively reduce individuals’ belief in conspiracy theories – and that these reductions last for at least two months. The finding offers new insights into the psychological mechanisms behind the phenomenon as well as potential tools to fight conspiracies’ spread.
The award includes a $25,000 prize and will be presented during the AAAS Annual Meeting, held Feb. 12-14 in Phoenix.
“We are very honored to receive this prize and delighted that the committee saw the value of leveraging new technological innovations in generative AI to better understand our own psychology,” Pennycook said.
Pennycook, associate professor of psychology and Dorothy and Ariz Mehta Faculty Leadership Fellow in College of Arts and Sciences (A&S) and David Rand, professor in Cornell Ann S. Bowers College of Computing and Information Science, the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business and A&S, authored the study with Thomas Costello, lead author and assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
According to Pennycook, the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize last went to a social science article in 1981, to a foundational paper by political scientist Robert Axelrod and evolutionary biologist William Hamilton, “The Evolution of Cooperation.”
