They are then asked if they agree or disagree with a (presumably hypothetical?) company's proposal to reduce employees' welfare, such as replacing a meal with a shake. Two groups showed a different preference.
This makes me think about that old question of whether you thank LLM or not. That is treating LLMs more like humans, so if what this paper found holds, maybe that'd nudge our brain subtly toward dehumanizing other real humans!? That's so counter intuitive...
But that's beside the point of the paper. They are talking about how the humans perciving the "socio-emotional capabilities of autonomous agents" change their behavior toward other humans. Whether people get that perception because "LLMs hack our brain" or something else is largely irrelevant.