Victor Bruzzone studies how institutions can foster mutual understanding and civic virtue in democracy. In this talk, Bruzzone will present results from an experimental adaptation of Brand et al.’s (2025) Ideological Turing Test (ITT) study to examine whether interacting with an AI can enhance open-mindedness in democratic deliberation (the ability to faithfully articulate opposing views). While several recent studies suggest AI dialogue can help shift people’s beliefs, our findings suggest that soliciting open-mindedness to one’s political opponents may not be as successful.

Bruzzone received his Ph.D. in political theory from the the University of Toronto and is now a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in Communication Arts and Sciences at Penn State. His research combines democratic theory, phenomenology, and empirical design to examine what kinds of institutions can cultivate both epistemic and solidarity benefits.