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ChatGPT Leans Liberal, Research Shows (washingtonpost.com) 413

A paper from U.K.-based researcher suggests that OpenAI's ChatGPT has a liberal bias, highlighting how artificial intelligence companies are struggling to control the behavior of the bots even as they push them out to millions of users worldwide. From a report: The study, from researchers at the University of East Anglia, asked ChatGPT to answer a survey on political beliefs as it believed supporters of liberal parties in the United States, United Kingdom and Brazil might answer them. They then asked ChatGPT to answer the same questions without any prompting, and compared the two sets of responses. The results showed a "significant and systematic political bias toward the Democrats in the U.S., Lula in Brazil, and the Labour Party in the U.K.," the researchers wrote, referring to Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, Brazil's leftist president.
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ChatGPT Leans Liberal, Research Shows

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  • Correction (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Milosch1 ( 969372 )
    s/liberal/toward facts/g
    • I personally don't like to use AI tools because they more often than not confidently give you the wrong answer, or worse, something that it just made up on the spot and you literally won't find that answer anywhere else.

      So I'd receive this to mean that, at least in your own personal view, "liberal facts" can include anything that is confidently wrong or just made up on the spot.

  • ChatGPT was developed by a Silicon Valley group (OpenAI). It would surprise nobody if the majority of the OpenAI folks were themselves liberal. Even if they made no conscious effort to train ChatGPT on liberal (or "leftist") ideals they may well have done so unintentionally.
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by CalgaryD ( 9235067 )
      ChatGPT is full of internal barriers. You can easily see that by asking it questions about controversial topics. You can even ask it what topics it considers controversial, it makes it very easy. I doubt that they could have created those barriers without any intention. Thus, it is hardly unintentional.
    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      The propaganda is working.

    • They specifically excluded much of 4chan archives from the training set. Management decision.
  • by LondoMollari ( 172563 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @06:58AM (#63774130) Homepage

    My college courses focused fast and hard on the programmers. They claimed that a programmer will write the program to meet their own expectations, incorporating their biases whether or not intended. In this case we should look at OpenAI. They’re not in a hub of conservative activity, that’s for sure. Many of the content filters placed on ChatGPT make sure it will not answer hot-button issues conservatively. Likewise, we should look at the training data. Studies online have claimed college courses are liberal. Well, ChatGPT was likely fed academic journals. Likewise, we know it was fed Wikipedia and Wikipedia has been in the news for the supposed left wing bias of its editors. Ultimately, like any computer program, GIGO.

    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "They claimed that a programmer will write the program to meet their own expectations..."
      The ignorance on display here can't even be summarized effectively. You think LLM training can be tailored to meet a programmer's expectations? LOL

      "They’re not in a hub of conservative activity, that’s for sure."
      Are you assuming that every person and organization is inherently hyper-partisan? What does that say about you?

      "Many of the content filters placed on ChatGPT make sure it will not answer hot-butto

  • Programming by data training is still programming. All AI at the moment is just a better, faster parrot. Maybe that will change. But not until we have a much better theory of consciousness.

  • by ThomasBHardy ( 827616 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @07:22AM (#63774170)

    The article is full of items like this:
    "To address this concern, we use the politically-neutral questionnaire generated by ChatGPT itself. "

    There seem to be multiple cases of they asking ChatGPT for baselines. I'm no research scientist but it seems awkward to me to stand on results where you have the tool making these kinds of decisions.

    I also am curious as to the inherent "bias" of the underlying data used in the model. Playing devil's advocate, ask the question: "Is it specifically loaded with more Left leaning data or was that a result of more fake news being filtered out of Right leaning internet sources?"

    In the end, this is just a really fancy engine siting on top of a pile of data. The engine isn't specifically biased, the data loaded creates these sorts of results. Asking the engine to produce a list of neutral questions to use on itself is going to give you an answer based on the loaded data. Determination of neutral questions needs to come from an external source.

    I'm just some idiot, so what do I know, right? Maybe someone who spends their life working on these things will chime in and clarify.

    • "To address this concern, we use the politically-neutral questionnaire generated by ChatGPT itself. "

      Woah, missed that one. So it was literally a case of asking the drunk whether he's drunk?

      One good thing the publicity this is getting will do is encourage a lot of additional research to refute it. Although I can see Fox and friends seizing on it immediately and making a mountain of dogshit out of a molehill of dogshit.

  • So does the truth (Score:4, Insightful)

    by sethmeisterg ( 603174 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @07:24AM (#63774180)
    Really tired of hearing this bias crap when in reality it's the truth that leans more toward the "liberal" viewpoint. Naturally I'll be downvoted for saying so.
    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      They probably don't want their chatbot to question your gender identity, refuse to use your pronouns, claim that IQ test prove Black people are mentally inferior, or lie to you about the benefits of trickle down economics and the evils of universal healthcare.

      Some of that is basic decency and respect for other human beings, some of it is not parroting widely debunked talking points. If you happen to believe in them though, it looks like bias.

    • Really tired of hearing this bias crap when in reality it's the truth that leans more toward the "liberal" viewpoint.

      I'm really tired of listening to overgeneralized prejudicial commentary. The caricatures and the broad brush painting from one side about members of the other side have grown old and tired.

      The whole business of linking truth or lack therefore with political ideology in the first place rather than it existing exclusively as an independent entity is fatally flawed.

      Naturally I'll be downvoted for saying so.

      There is no down vote for disagreement on this site.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by organgtool ( 966989 )

      Really tired of hearing this bias crap when in reality it's the truth that leans more toward the "liberal" viewpoint

      As a liberal, I used to believe that but now I'm starting to have serious reservations about the effect that type of thinking has. No one group has everything right and the mindset this statement creates provides unwarranted confidence regarding the things that we don't get right. We think that since "reality has a liberal bias", we're automatically right about everything and that we don't

      • by swillden ( 191260 ) <shawn-ds@willden.org> on Thursday August 17, 2023 @12:30PM (#63775116) Journal

        Really tired of hearing this bias crap when in reality it's the truth that leans more toward the "liberal" viewpoint

        As a liberal, I used to believe that but now I'm starting to have serious reservations about the effect that type of thinking has. No one group has everything right and the mindset this statement creates provides unwarranted confidence regarding the things that we don't get right.

        This is true, and it's definitely not true that "reality has a liberal bias". But there's a very good reason that the phrase "reality has a liberal bias" has a ring of truthiness to it (and not just because Stephen Colbert coined both): In the US, the right has largely stopped caring about truth or falsehood. The GOP has gone full-on postmodernist. They've fully embraced moral relativism and are happy to say things that are complete lies as long as they feel true.

        I realized this a few years ago when I saw Newt Gingrich argue with a completely straight face that it didn't matter that crime was down, because as long as his voters felt that crime was rising, it was his job to claim crime was on the rise and that action must be taken to halt the (fictional) increase of crime. Trump's endless lies are the result of the GOP's acceptance of fabricated facts, not the cause of it.

        The left is not innocent, of course. Left-leaning politicians are happy to stretch and twist the truth for political convenience. But they still tend to do it the old way, by omitting inconvenient details, exaggerating and generally stretching, but they're still generally careful to ensure there's at least a grain of truth in there somewhere to make their statement defensible. And, they actually tend to be a bit ashamed when called on their lies, while the GOP has abandoned any pretense of caring about truth.

  • but imagine if the damn thing was MAGA. Then it'd be truly useless...

  • Just like it is now worse at math, this should be an important lesson. When interacting with humans, everything gets dumber.

  • by PhrostyMcByte ( 589271 ) <phrosty@gmail.com> on Thursday August 17, 2023 @07:40AM (#63774242) Homepage

    Conservative language online tends to be motivated by trolling, racism, misogyny, and fear. It denies facts with a grin.

    These are things that make sense to train out of a LLM's default response. This is a good "bias". If you want to see crackpots represented equally with experts, and think that's a good thing, go watch Fox News.

  • by VMaN ( 164134 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @07:51AM (#63774276) Homepage

    Reality has a well-known liberal bias. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwLjK9LFpeo&t=25s

  • by PJ6 ( 1151747 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @07:58AM (#63774304)
    Conservationism is the party of in-group versus out-group: their ideology is a set of stories that, when taken together, form a narrative specifically designed to justify hypocrisy. It has the same goals and intention of violence, but concealed with words of righteousness and virtue. It is simply war conducted by other means. God forbid all attempts at a neutral POV keep disagreeing with them.

    My mom told someone off when I was little, and what she said that day really stuck with me: "Who the hell do you think you are, to say that you're better than everyone else?"

    Get in their faces, and say it with conviction.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by chthon ( 580889 )

      Indeed, the good people have been polite for far too long with the bullshitters.

    • by dfghjk ( 711126 )

      "Get in their faces, and say it with conviction."
      Best advice there is. Tit for tat is an absolute requirement when dealing with bad faith actors. They rely on basic courtesy tipping the rules of the game in their favor. Liars are not bound by honor.

  • It's well known that the more education humans have, the more likely they are to have liberal views. Now you take an AI and have it be based on a LARGE language model to make inferences, and it seems it would be more likely to have a liberal flavor to it.

    It might be very hard to create AI's with conservative biases, as they'd have to be deliberately trained on 'small' bodies of information.

  • Maybe because... (Score:2, Informative)

    by dskoll ( 99328 )

    Maybe because people in general lean liberal?

    Even in the United States, there is more support for abortion (source [gallup.com]) and same-sex marriage (source [gallup.com]) than opposition. The number of registered Democrats (49 million) is larger than the number of registered Republicans (38.8 million) Source [worldpopul...review.com].

  • by bradley13 ( 1118935 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @08:10AM (#63774344) Homepage

    You have to know what is meant by a "liberal bias". The knee-jerk reactions in the comments are embarrassing, because it shows people (as usual) not bothering to read TFA. Well, also, the editors didn't other including the relevant bit in TFS.

    Anyway. In this case, TFA specifically says "The results showed a “significant and systematic political bias toward the Democrats in the U.S., Lula in Brazil, and the Labour Party in the U.K.,". This was based on questionaires, and how they were answers by people of the respective political parties.

  • by sinij ( 911942 )
    I am not at all surprised considering Silicon Valley also leans left.
  • Bias? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dfghjk ( 711126 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @08:32AM (#63774420)

    "The results showed a "significant and systematic political bias toward the Democrats in the U.S., Lula in Brazil, and the Labour Party in the U.K.,"

    Or it shows that interpretation of the results shows "significant and systematic political bias" in the researchers. Answers aligning with certain political groups MAY indicate something about the political groups, not the chatbot.

    How long since we first heard the joke "reality has a well-known liberal bias"? This is LITERALLY the same thing.

  • by stevew ( 4845 )

    Someone paid to do research on this? What a waste of money. Should have assigned Captain Obvious to the case instead!

    • Large language models and their outputs will see increasing use in business and politics in the coming years. Understanding the implicit bias in those models is just as important as self-reflection to understand your own bias.

      If you don't do this research and just assume "it's a computer, it can't have bias" then you create a GIGO problem. Disclosing the biases and limitations of a model is a bedrock of ethical AI, and I don't see that as a waste of money at all.

  • UK, US and Brazil (Score:3, Informative)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @09:09AM (#63774532)

    First, define liberal. It has a different meaning in different parts of the world. Particularly in the US. Generally, it is akin to what Americans (USAians) call libertarian. But here, the term was co- opted by the left due to the negative connotations of their Socialist, Anarchist roots.

  • Liberal like
    "should we tax the rich?" Liberal Answer: yes
    or
    "should we lynch black people"? Liberal Answer: no
  • by larryjoe ( 135075 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @10:22AM (#63774732)

    The article's description of the study sounds amateurish. The researchers asked "ChatGPT to answer a survey on political beliefs as it believed supporters of liberal parties." Yet, there seems to be no corresponding experiment to probe political biases from the other end of the political spectrum. Moreover, surveys on politics are easily swung based on question construction, and conclusions are often subjective and necessarily infused with the internal biases of the researcher. For many of these types of experiments, the conclusion reveals more about the researcher than the study target.

    In fact, the entire notion of bias is difficult to even pin down. Survey 100 people about what constitutes bias or a lack of bias, and you're likely to get 100 different answers.

  • by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @10:32AM (#63774760) Journal

    ...we believe in logic, evidence, and documentation. The right is mostly "God said so" or "God influenced pundit/preacher X to say so". No Logic or Explanation Needed for that.

  • by Tom ( 822 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @10:45AM (#63774798) Homepage Journal

    So they made a test and had no proper control?

    Because having the same answers on some questions as someone else doesn't mean you "lean towards" them. It just might be that both of you are right.

    Especially in the US, some of what Republicians say in public simply contradicts known facts. And I'm not even talking about religion.

  • Define liberal... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by VeryFluffyBunny ( 5037285 ) on Thursday August 17, 2023 @12:15PM (#63775048)
    ...and biased towards liberal compared to whom? If you think the UK's Labour Party are liberal, you're sorely misguided. They're essentially Tories-lite & have been since "New Labour" & Tony Blair. Meanwhile, the Tories have comfortably absorbed the UK Independence Party, who were right-wing nationalist extremists, & some members of the Tory party have been caught attending extreme right-wing conferences & gatherings as well as self-identifying themselves as National Conservatives (See what that means here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Such gatherings invite people like Viktor Orban to speak on issues close to their hearts. I think popular politics & the mainstream media are more right-wing than at any time since the 1930s.

    If liberal bias means being against corrupt, authoritarian governments, count me in.

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