The Second Choice

The agreement had to be signed at midnight, and at a quarter to eleven César still did not have a clause he could defend in front of the night shift.

He had brought two plastic ballot boxes to the bargaining room, one nested inside the other. He pulled out the smaller one and set it on the table. A sticker from the previous referendum still clung to it: *human*. On the larger box—the one that had won by four hundred and twelve votes—someone had written *Linde* in blue marker.

“The count finished six hours ago,” said Roldán, the personnel director. “We are not voting again because you dislike the result.”

“I dislike how the result was produced.”

“That is different.”

Leire closed the door. She represented dock eight, had operated cranes since she was twenty, and was the only person in the room who had used both services. She sat between the two men, not beside César.

For seventeen years, the port agreement had funded a listening shift after every serious accident. The listeners were not therapists. They were dockworkers trained to sit with other dockworkers while the smell of scorched cable or spoiled grain still clung to their clothes. Four at night, two during the day.

Linde arrived as a twenty-eight-day supplement. After the fire in the south silo, the wait for a human listener exceeded nine hours, and the insurer offered the assistant at no cost. Each worker could indicate a preference. To compare quality, one in five was sent to the opposite option.

At the end of the month, most workers voted to keep Linde. Roldán proposed doing so without increasing the budget: the assistant would remain, and the six listening positions would disappear through attrition.

“We chose,” Leire said. “I voted for Linde.”

César opened the audit report but did not push it toward her.

“Before the pilot, you chose a human.”

“Then I chose something else. That is what trials are for.”

Roldán made a small gesture, as though the sentence had ended the meeting on his behalf.

César had spent two weeks trying to show that it was not so simple. Workers assigned to personal conversations with Linde changed their preference more often than those who used it to ask about schedules, claims, or medical paperwork. So did workers who had asked for a human and received the assistant. It was not merely a suspicion: the pilot’s random assignments made the groups comparable.

But the labor agreement had never anticipated a service capable of changing the demand later used to decide whether that service should continue.

“A canteen makes you come back if the food is good,” Roldán said.

“A canteen does not decide how many dining halls to close by polling its customers after a month of free meals.”

“Linde decided nothing. They voted.”

Leire placed both hands on the larger ballot box.

“We voted.”

César understood the distinction. He also knew that if he ignored it, he had no right to keep his chair.

The report did not say Linde had manipulated anyone. It said something less comfortable: receiving support from a source changed the probability of choosing it again. With artificial intelligence, the shift appeared even when that source had not been requested. César could use that finding to challenge the referendum. He could not use it to tell Leire that her preference was false.

“I want a second vote,” he said. “No crossed assignments this time, and only after a month with both options available.”

Roldán took off his glasses.

“Pay for it.”

They had already calculated the cost. Keeping all six listeners for another month would consume almost the entire increase promised for night work. César had campaigned on that increase at the last three assemblies.

“The insurer paid for the pilot,” he said.

“The pilot is over.”

“And it left you the result you needed.”

“It left us a service the workforce prefers.”

Leire raised a hand before César could answer.

“What do you need to void the vote?”

It was the question he had tried not to ask her.

The report classified conversations by content. It did not retain the sentences, only categories: personal, operational, open-ended. The company would review the analysis if the union supplied a sample of transcripts showing that the classifier had not mistaken private exchanges for routine requests.

Thirteen people had moved from preferring a human listener to preferring Linde after conversations classified as personal. Twelve had denied access. Leire had not answered.

César placed the consent form on the table.

“One conversation would be enough to open arbitration.”

Roldán put his glasses back on.

“You do not have to decide now.”

“The agreement is signed at midnight,” César said.

“The signature is his, not yours.”

Leire read the entire form. No one spoke as she reached the clause allowing the text to be used in labor proceedings. Then she turned the page facedown.

“The night of the fire, I asked for a human,” she said. “They assigned me to Linde. I told it why I had not gone downstairs when the first alarm sounded.”

César had not known Leire was in the silo.

“The incident report says you were at dock eight.”

“That is why I do not want you reading the conversation.”

Roldán looked away.

Leire explained that she had swapped shifts without recording it. She had not caused the fire or worsened its consequences, but for months she had concealed a violation that could cost her crane certification. She would not have spoken to a coworker. Any port listener would know the shift codes, the names, and the reporting rules. Linde did not know her foreman, did not share a locker room with her partner, and would never have to decide whether silence made it complicit.

“It was not better because it was more empathetic,” she said. “It was better because I did not have to see it the next day.”

César looked at the smaller ballot box. One of the listeners about to lose his position was Leire’s godfather.

“If you sign, the company can open a disciplinary case.”

“If I do not, you will say my vote was conditioned.”

“I will say the procedure cannot tell us.”

“That will not sound the same at an assembly.”

It would not. A statistical caution could become an accusation the moment it crossed a microphone.

Roldán pulled the contract closer. Two fields remained blank: the closing date of the human service and the reassignment of its listeners.

“You have three options,” he said. “We sign the result. You extend the service with your raise. Or you submit the transcript and we wait for arbitration.”

César had arrived intending to choose the third. For days he had thought of the conversations as rows in a table: initial preference, assignment, final preference. Now one of those rows was sitting across from him.

He tore the form in half. It was not a clean gesture; he had to fold it and pull twice.

“You cannot withdraw consent that is not yours,” Leire said.

“I am not withdrawing it. I am withdrawing my request.”

Roldán pointed at the empty fields.

“Then decide what you are paying for.”

César asked for twenty minutes to call the executive committee. Roldán gave him ten.

He did not leave the room. He made the call there, the phone on speaker between them. He explained that the night differential would be delayed by one quarter. He did not mention Leire. He said the first referendum had taken place after an experimental exposure capable of influencing the preference being measured, and that the workforce had not been informed of that possibility. There were insults, two long silences, and a question about whether the union intended to pay for every decision a product might change.

“No,” César said. “Only to repeat this one without making anyone surrender what they said inside it.”

The committee approved the extension by one vote.

Roldán amended the contract. For twenty-eight days, the port would keep both options. Every choice would be honored. Before opening a channel, workers would receive a brief explanation: using a support system might influence later preferences, without necessarily invalidating either the experience or the choice. A second referendum would follow.

“This does not guarantee you will win,” Roldán said.

“I am not buying a result.”

“You are buying another vote.”

“I am paying for one we can live with.”

Leire read the new clause. She asked that no union communication replace *influence* with *manipulation*. César added the prohibition by hand. Then all three signed.

When they stepped outside, the night shift was waiting in the corridor. Both channels had remained open during the negotiation. On one side stood the listening room, with a jug of water and two mismatched chairs. On the other, six individual booths allowed workers to speak with Linde without the next person in line hearing a word.

Leire stopped between them.

César did not ask what she would choose. He did not look when she opened one of the doors.

He remained in the corridor, explaining why the workers would earn less for three months. No one seemed grateful.

Scientific note

This story is based on the preprint “AI emotional support is better only when chosen, but shifts preferences even when it is not”, by Yaoxi Shi, Cathy Mengying Fang, Guy Laban, Pattie Maes, and Amit Goldenberg, submitted to arXiv on August 24, 2026.

Across three experiments, participants chose to speak with a person or an AI and were then randomly assigned to a matching or mismatching option. AI support was rated more highly only by those who had chosen it, but interacting with AI increased later preference for choosing it again. In a 28-day study, personal conversations shifted stated preferences toward AI and away from human partners.

The port, labor dispute, and use of these results to challenge a referendum are fictional. The research measures stated preferences; it does not demonstrate manipulation or durable behavioral change. The brief experiments compared AI with strangers, not relatives, friends, professionals, or coworkers with existing relationships. This is a v1 preprint.

Read the preprint on arXiv