Claim LD10-HQ-C08 (v1.1)
In four preregistered 2025–26 UK experiments, frontier AI out-persuaded strong human text persuaders; its advantage over coached elite debaters disappeared when AI was constrained to the debaters’ message length and writing speed.
Provenance and status
- Claim type
- Estimate
- Publication status
- Eligible for publication, with qualifiers: preprint
- Verification state
- Checked against the primary source; the source is a preprint. Who checked this claim is not recorded for it; claim checks so far were AI-led, and no person has checked claims against their sources.
- Does not license
- Population-scale influence, face-to-face superiority or election outcomes
- Limitations
- Paid opt-in text setting; not peer-reviewed
- Source (as cited)
- Hackenburg et al. 2026, arXiv:2606.16475
- Source type
- Preprint (recorded as “Preprint”)
- Institutional position
- Academic + UK AISI
- Maturity of the evidence
- Emerging evidence
- Recorded date
- 13 October 2026
- Currentness / correction
- This is the current version. No correction or concern is recorded on its sources.
Sources this version cites
Version
This page shows version v1.1. Its record never changes, even when newer evidence arrives; the site may add a note to the page or withhold a figure not cleared for public use.
This pinned version is also the current version.
What changed in this version
This version supersedes version v1.0 (LD10-HQ-C08--v1.0), which stays available with its record unchanged.
- Changed fields
- 2 PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM; 25 RECORDED DATE
- What changed
- The public-facing claim now says that the advantage disappeared against coached elite debaters, the only comparison tested under the length and speed constraint, instead of implying it disappeared against all strong human persuaders.
- Why
- A claim check on 13 October 2026 found that the HQ notes report the constrained result only against coached elite debaters (0.0pp, 95% CI −1.7 to +1.6), while version 1.0 attached it to the advantage over all strong human persuaders. The check and this revision were done by AI agents against the HQ notes, not by a person.
Raw record: every recorded field, with its coded values
All 25 canonical Claim fields, verbatim, with the coded values derived from them. The plain-language labels above are read from these.
- Claim type (coded)
- ESTIMATE (as printed: “ESTIMATE”)
- Publication status (coded)
- ELIGIBLE (PREPRINT) (as printed: “ELIGIBLE WITH PREPRINT LABEL”)
- Verification state (coded)
- CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY (PREPRINT)
- Source type (coded)
- PREPRINT
- Maturity (coded)
- EMERGING
| # | Canonical field | Canonical value (verbatim) | Normalized (Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CLAIM ID | LD10-HQ-C08 | — |
| 2 | PUBLIC-FACING CLAIM | In four preregistered 2025–26 UK experiments, frontier AI out-persuaded strong human text persuaders; its advantage over coached elite debaters disappeared when AI was constrained to the debaters’ message length and writing speed. | — |
| 3 | CLAIM TYPE | ESTIMATE | base_types: ESTIMATE |
| 4 | RESEARCH STRAND | A — Controlled persuasion | — |
| 5 | MATURITY | EMERGING | states: EMERGING |
| 6 | SOURCE | Hackenburg et al. 2026, arXiv:2606.16475 | source_ids: SRC-LD10-HACKENBURG-ARXIV-2606-16475 |
| 7 | SOURCE TYPE | Preprint | classes: PREPRINT |
| 8 | INSTITUTIONAL POSITION | Academic + UK AISI | — |
| 9 | SCOPE | UK Prolific; 10 policy stances; 2025–26 | — |
| 10 | DESIGN | Four preregistered RCTs | — |
| 11 | SAMPLE / DATASET | 18,978 conversations; 6,923 people | — |
| 12 | MODEL / TOOL / VERSION | Claude Opus 4.1/4.6, ChatGPT-4o, GPT-5.4, Grok 4.20, Gemini 2.5 Pro | — |
| 13 | COMPARATOR | Laypeople, selected laypeople, elite debaters, professional canvassers | — |
| 14 | MAIN RESULT | AI +8.2pp vs random laypeople; +5.6pp selected; +4.6pp elite debaters; throughput-constrained vs coached debaters 0.0pp [−1.7,+1.6] | — |
| 15 | INFERENTIAL TARGET | Newer-vintage AI-human persuasion gap and throughput mechanism | — |
| 16 | DOES NOT LICENSE | Population-scale influence, face-to-face superiority or election outcomes | — |
| 17 | VERIFICATION STATE | CONTENT VERIFIED PREPRINT | state: CONTENT_VERIFIED_PRIMARY · qualifiers: PREPRINT · verified_by: UNKNOWN |
| 18 | LIMITATIONS | Paid opt-in text setting; not peer-reviewed | — |
| 19 | CONTRADICTORY / SUPPORTING SOURCES | C07 older meta-analysis shows vintage contrast | — |
| 20 | GEOGRAPHY / LANGUAGE | UK / English | — |
| 21 | DISTRIBUTIONAL LEDGER | Frontier-model access and throughput may advantage resource-rich communicators | — |
| 22 | R01 / FIELD-MAP LINKS | D7, D3, T1, R-1 | — |
| 23 | WHAT WOULD CHANGE THIS CLAIM? | Peer-review revision or naturalistic replication | — |
| 24 | PUBLICATION STATUS | ELIGIBLE WITH PREPRINT LABEL | state: ELIGIBLE · qualifiers: PREPRINT |
| 25 | RECORDED DATE | 2026-10-13 | — |
Field 22 references resolved against Field Map v0.2: D7 (DOMAIN); D3 (DOMAIN); T1 (TENSION); R-1 (LENS)
The sources as recorded, with their record IDs and coded source types:
Pinned Sources (field 6, version-specific)
- “Hackenburg et al. 2026, arXiv:2606.16475” → Hackenburg et al. 2026, arXiv:2606.16475 (SRC-LD10-HACKENBURG-ARXIV-2606-16475--v1.0) — Hackenburg et al. 2026, arXiv:2606.16475; class PREPRINT (explicit public provenance pin)
Cite this page
SocioLens project. (2026, October 13). In four preregistered 2025–26 UK experiments, frontier AI out-persuaded strong human text persuaders; its advantage over coached elite debaters disappeared when AI was constrained to the debaters’ message length and writing speed [Claim LD10-HQ-C08, version v1.1]. SocioLens. https://sociolens-web.pages.dev/claims/ld10-hq-c08/v1.1/
@misc{sociolens_ld10_hq_c08_v1_1,
author = {{SocioLens project}},
title = {In four preregistered 2025–26 UK experiments, frontier AI out-persuaded strong human text persuaders; its advantage over coached elite debaters disappeared when AI was constrained to the debaters’ message length and writing speed.},
year = {2026},
date = {2026-10-13},
howpublished = {\url{https://sociolens-web.pages.dev/claims/ld10-hq-c08/v1.1/}},
note = {Claim LD10-HQ-C08, version v1.1}
}The link points to this version, whose record never changes. For a finding, cite the original study as well: SocioLens summarizes research and does not replace it.
Research-of-record provenance
Materialized by sociolens-materializer 0.6.0 at 2026-09-28T20:00:00.000Z; normalization contract SocioLens — Claim Value Vocabulary v1.0.2 — Pre-Spike Materialization Contract (v1.0.2). Content seal SHA-256 2f11b52e4a241d8c8ab8b3cfd315acab3af7fcffbb94e9dff1b1fb2dcd9a7099.
Repository-authored inputs (not Drive exports)
- SocioLens claim revision — LD10-HQ-C08 v1.1 (v1.1) — written in the SocioLens repository by Project Lead (Claude, AI) on 2026-10-13; no Drive identity exists. Authority: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and docs/PROJECT.md "Research revisions" (a published claim changes only through a new version that states what changed and why). Block “ENTRY 08 — LD10-HQ-C08” SHA-256
86c3b7759cbc4940b366e84e647ff583de78a1fe52330d0f11926f98765d9ade; fixturefixtures/authored/claim-revisions/LD10-HQ-C08--v1.1.
Builder decisions (not Drive data)
- VERSION = v1.1 — basis: Claim version taken from the repository-authored revision fixture version (SocioLens claim revision — LD10-HQ-C08 v1.1); a new version of LD10-HQ-C08 v1.0, which stays routable (AGENTS.md research integrity rule 3)
- CURRENT_POINTER = true — basis: repository-authored revision "SocioLens claim revision — LD10-HQ-C08 v1.1" (Project Lead (Claude, AI), 2026-10-13); basis: AGENTS.md "Authority" (the Project Lead decides research content within the research-integrity rules) and docs/PROJECT.md "Research revisions" (a published claim changes only through a new version that states what changed and why)
- FIELD_6_SOURCE_REFERENCE = SRC-LD10-HACKENBURG-ARXIV-2606-16475--v1.0 — basis: field 6 of ENTRY 08 — LD10-HQ-C08 cites "Hackenburg et al. 2026, arXiv:2606.16475"; the first field-6 segment of this ClaimVersion's repository-authored ledger block; the same Source record LD10-HQ-C08 v1.0 cites.
- SOURCE_PROVENANCE_PIN = SRC-LD10-HACKENBURG-ARXIV-2606-16475--v1.0 — basis: explicit version-pinned public provenance of this ClaimVersion (Amendment v1.2 §6): the pinned field-6 Source record "Hackenburg et al. 2026, arXiv:2606.16475".