Artificial intelligence (AI) is growing in popularity, used by individuals and businesses alike for both personal and practical objectives. Like most technology, it can be corrupted, and recent studies are revealing a prevalent left leaning political bias, presenting a serious dilemma ahead of a presidential election.
Breitbart News reports:
ScienceAlert reports that in an increasingly digital world, AI chatbots are becoming a go-to source for information and guidance especially for young people. However, a new study conducted by David Rozado, a computer scientist from Otago Polytechnic in New Zealand, has revealed that these AI engines may have a political bias that could unknowingly sway society's values and attitudes.
The study, published in academic journal PLOS ONE, involved testing 24 different LLMs, including popular chatbots like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini, using 11 standard political questionnaires such as The Political Compass test. The results showed that the average political stance across all the models was not neutral but rather left-leaning.
This is a cause for concern, especially as search engines like Google rely on the tool to answer a large share of inquiries, and people turn from search engines in favor of chatbots in growing numbers. When people ask questions about issues mentioned in the presidential debate or current events, they may be prompted with biased and manipulated answers as opposed to factual information.
This has happened already. After a shooter attempted to assassinate former President Trump at his Pennsylvania rally, multiple AI chatbots denied that it happened, and Google was also accused of intentionally burying search prompts for it.
AI presents a similar challenge to “fact checking,” which ran rampant throughout the 2020 presidential election, especially with regards to the Hunter Biden laptop story, election integrity, vaccine efficacy, COVID, and the Biden-Harris administration in general. Many statements that “fact checkers” flagged on social media as “misinformation” (often leading to account holders being suspended or banned from social media platforms) were revealed to be true. Neither the “fact checkers” or social media companies were ever held accountable for what they got wrong.
Readers should also note that the Biden-Harris administration has been caught pressuring employees at conglomerates like X (formerly known as Twitter) and Meta (that owns Facebook and Instagram) to target accounts and posts hostile to their agenda.
Breitbart News continues:
As AI chatbots increasingly replace traditional information sources like search engines and Wikipedia, the societal implications of embedded political biases become substantial. With tech giants like Google incorporating AI answers into search results and more people turning to AI bots for information, there is a growing concern that these systems could influence users' thinking through the responses they provide.
The exact cause of this bias remains unclear. One possible explanation is an imbalance of left-leaning material in the vast amounts of online text used to train these models. Additionally, the dominance of ChatGPT in training other models could be a contributing factor, as the bot has previously been shown to have a left-of-center political perspective.
Despite evidence of overwhelming left leaning bias in many AI chatbots, some progressives argue that not enough is being done to combat “hate speech.”
Democratic Congressman Seth Magaziner of Rhode Island wrote on X, “AI technology is being used to misinform voters, cause confusion and spread dangerous lies. We need to address this issue for the sake of our democracy. That's why I am calling on @FEC to clarify rules around AI and deep fakes in order to combat misinformation.”
California's Attorney General wrote in a letter to social media and AI companies, “I am urging social media and AI companies to understand existing California laws and address the deception that our voters are being exposed to when it comes to their constitutional right to vote. Those deceptive activities must be better identified and reported to law enforcement — I am fully committed to working with the companies to that end. We cannot allow bad actors, whether foreign or domestic, to continue to threaten the sanctity of our democracy.”
