Mecha-nudges for Machines

תקציר מקורי באנגליתarXiv:2603.23433v4 Announce Type: replace Abstract: AI agents are becoming active decision-makers on the Internet. As they make decisions in the same environments as humans, the environments themselves can change to influence them. We call this $\textit{mecha-nudging}$: changes to how choices are presented that systematically influence AI agents without materially degrading the decision environment for humans. To measure this phenomenon, we combine two frameworks---Bayesian persuasion from economics and $\mathcal{V}$-usable information from computer science---to get a common unit (bits) for quantifying how environments change across a wide range of interventions, contexts, and models. We apply this framework to over six million Etsy listings and find that, after ChatGPT's release, listings