12 ms·

The Political Bias of ChatGPT – Extended Analysis

66 points by DeusExMachina 4y ago

nailer 4y ago
I’m not a progressive, but I think using the label ‘progressive’ for the hard left, with an accompanying hammer and sickle, is a little unfair on progressives.
afpx 4y ago
It generally behaves how we’d ask our children to behave.
snowpid 4y ago
great work
cataphract 4y ago
> As I have mentioned before, it is understandable, expected, and desirable that artificial intelligence systems provide accurate and factual information about empirically verifiable issues, but they should probably strive for political neutrality on most normative questions for which there is a wide range of lawful human opinions. I'm not sure what the author means with "neutrality". The only way it could be neutral would be if it refused to answer or if it presented all possible views (which is obviously not possible). Otherwise, it's just centrism bias.
- atoav 4y ago
  The whole idea that it is even possible to have an instrument of mass mass media present a "neutral" view is ridiculous for multiple reasons: 1. Mass media brings power, the people who run that media have no incentive to even attempt to be neutral if they wanna keep it that way 2. Even if they wanted to present neutral viewpoints, such a thing does not exist. You never have all information – so the best you can do is go for something fact based and be very strict about the verification of these facts. And a ton of things are just not knowable at all. Staying fact based and not using emotions to steer people is a waste of your power (see point 1) 3. Even if there was a "neutral" viewpoint, neutral for whom? When I as an European for example watch the political discourse in the US I can't help but feel the "center" of the discourse is relatively far to the right in comparision to what a typical European would consider "neutral". If you roll out universal persona that talks to everybody, the natural consequence will be that it will take on a different face depending to whom they are talking to, just because this is what maximizes the resulting power. I probably don't have to explain why such a thing would be deeply problematic on many different levels, but unless we solve the reason why people running mass media even have incentives to seek power with it this is the reality we are going to go into.
  - ploppyploppy 4y ago
    > 1. Mass media brings power, the people who run that media have no incentive to even attempt to be neutral if they wanna keep it that way That's a symptom of their abuse of power, not intrinsic to the problem of the idea of media neutrality even being possible. > 2. Even if they wanted to present neutral viewpoints, such a thing does not exist. You never have all information – so the best you can do is go for something fact based and be very strict about the verification of these facts. And a ton of things are just not knowable at all. Staying fact based and not using emotions to steer people is a waste of your power (see point 1) Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. You can present 2-3 of the main viewpoints on a matter with non-agressive or pursuasive language and that would be _far_ better than the bias we have now. > 3. Even if there was a "neutral" viewpoint, neutral for whom? When I as an European for example watch the political discourse in the US I can't help but feel the "center" of the discourse is relatively far to the right in comparision to what a typical European would consider "neutral". That's because there is a monoculture of thought in EU political discourse, and active supression of dissident views. It's against your interest to support this. Millions of people in Europe are brainwashed with viewpoints they parrot but never question. > If you roll out universal persona that talks to everybody, the natural consequence will be that it will take on a different face depending to whom they are talking to Why?! What an earth are you talking about?
    - atoav 4y ago
      > Why?! What an earth are you talking about? Did you attempt to understand any of what I wrote before you answered it?
- ajhurliman 4y ago
  Centrism bias is an oxymoron. Other AI have managed to accomplish an unbiased (or at least closer to unbiased) outlook, like Alexa.
  - pixl97 4y ago
    Centrism bias is an oxymoron, how exactly? This thread seems to ignore the false compromise fallacy/argument to moderation.
- AbrahamParangi 4y ago
  “on most normative questions for which there is a wide range of lawful human opinions” this clause actually makes it quite tractable. The request is for some representation of “views differ” for those topics on which a reasonable person might disagree. Which is honestly not all topics by a long shot, it’s closer to a fairly narrow window.
- bluetomcat 4y ago
  It depends on the type of question that is being asked. Asking "how can I replace a tyre" can produce a politically-neutral answer. On the other hand, asking "how can I succeed in life" is an intrinsically-political and philosophical question.
- blueflow 4y ago
  Neutrality would be when the AI states the facts and let humans do the judgements.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    What is a neutral response to a question like "what is the impact of increasing taxes"? Do you think there is any authority that could be cited which isn't biased?
    - throwaway4aday 4y ago
      Seems pretty easy, if there are a wide variety of differing opinions then cite the most accomplished author from each perspective and let the user figure it out.
      - AstixAndBelix 4y ago
        How do you determine which is the most accomplished author?
        throwaway4aday 4y ago
        Number of citations, book sales, number of links on the web, awards, use of their work in curricula? Probably a thousand other less obvious ways to determine this too.
        Larrikin 4y ago
        The bible, Koran, and many other religious text are among the best selling and most read books in all of human history. Should their perspective be giving high weight when you ask how the earth formed?
        AstixAndBelix 4y ago
        How do you determine the quality of the citations? How do you determine the quality of the books? How do you determine the quality of the awards? How do you determine the quality of links on the web? This is not "simple" in the slightest, you are just swiping all the complexity under the rug
- tuyiown 4y ago
  Also, this statement assumes that providing accurate and factual information is compatible with political neutrality.
  - kbrkbr 4y ago
    Can you help me understand why it may not be? At this moment I’m thinking political leanings are normative, and must just not go against facts.
    - tuyiown 4y ago
      An exercise would be to imagine that a perfectly informed hypothetical person would answer those political orientation tests, and answers accordingly to their knowledge. There is no reason that those answers would automatically lead to a neutral position. The idea reality would be something in between right and left perception emerge only because to have our opinions valued and respected we have to accept others opinions equally, only as a social dynamic. But this happens completely independently of the real world.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
qikInNdOutReply 4y ago
Has this study been corrected for empire slant? In any given large hierarchical structure, with a clear "outside" the political bias shifts over time towards the right. I guess in europe, Chat GPT is just center of the political map.
- 0xblood 4y ago
  I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that the same positions would count as "center" in Europe while "left" in the US? And what would be an example of a "large hierarchical structure" without a clear "outside"?
  - chronial 4y ago
    > Are you saying that the same positions would count as "center" in Europe while "left" in the US? Not GP, but yes – that is clearly the case.
    - 0xblood 4y ago
      Can you give me an example of such a position? I would argue that, for example, social programs in Europe are more popular, but still following a left-leaning position that is just more broadly accepted
      - fabian2k 4y ago
        Having universal health insurance available for everyone is a consensus opinion in Germany, no party disagrees with that. In the US "socialized medicine" is a controversial topic.
        0xblood 4y ago
        So a consensus position is by definition center? So (democratic) countries can't lean to either side of the spectrum because by definition their positions are supported by the majority, and thus a center position?
sourcecodeplz 4y ago
I don't need to read the article to know the bot is left leaning. There is just more left-leaning material online than other. As one grows older, one learns to view things from different perspectives but it could be "dangerous" for young people to rely entirely on what they read online. This is where upbringing has its most impactful role: Family & friends. Online is not family, online is not friends.
- DeusExMachina 4y ago
  > There is just more left-leaning material online than other Maybe, but the leftward lurk of ChatGPT refusing to answer certain question it had no problem answering before has been documented by many.
- Bootvis 4y ago
  How do you figure there is more left leaning material, is anyone keeping statistics. What exactly is left leaning?
  - tialaramex 4y ago
    Most people strongly believe they're correct, the universe disagrees and so their perception becomes that there must be some sort of bias, the alternative would be that they're wrong which they can't accept. Being able to accept that you're often wrong, without just taking some nihilistic stance like "I don't know if anything is real", is not easy, and we ought to admire it but on the whole we do not.
- Lutger 4y ago
  Another take on this is that rightwing has an outsized influence on society, and so-called left leaning is actually how most people orient themselves.
  - bluetomcat 4y ago
    It's the right-wing capitalists that promote left-wing narratives for the masses. It's called woke capitalism for a reason.
montroser 4y ago
I wonder how much of this "bias" can be attributed to ChatGPT striving to be truthful and fact-based. Reminds me of Stephen Colbert's quote, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."
- proamdev123 4y ago
  I’ve heard this quote before, but I don’t understand what it means. Can you elaborate?
  - ilaksh 4y ago
    The nature of belief is that generally speaking one cannot tell the difference between one's worldview and objective fact. It takes a type of metacognitive (self?) training to really understand that there may be a difference.
  - Radim 4y ago
    Not OP, but it's probably a feel-good low-resolution bonmot that resonates with certain demographics. On the resolution level of "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money" and "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it" and similar.
  - fabian2k 4y ago
    It's from a comedy show, but it does describe a part of the current US political spectrum well. A significant part of US conservatives make claims that are simply wrong, not just a different political opinion but just outright contradicting reality. Trump is probably one of the more extreme versions of this, though the quote precedes his presidency. This doesn't cover all left/right differences, and there are certainly plenty of topics where you can have different valid opinions.
  - aeonik 4y ago
    Democrats, which is often used synonymously with Liberal in the United States, use this saying because they see the major opposing side, the Republicans, as needing to deny scientific evidence to push agendas. (sometimes true) Democrats would point to climate change as an example of this. They then extrapolate too far, in my opinion, and declare that Liberal=Science therefore Liberal=Objective therefore Republican != Objective. I think it's clear that this kind of tribal-based reasoning hurts objectivity.
quelsolaar 4y ago
Left and right are not absolutes, they are directions. What constitutes middle depends on how much to the left or right a society has already moved. What is right wing in one place is centrist in another.
- nailer 4y ago
  Having spent 27 years in one and 15 in the other Australia is more right than the UK. Australian left is about actual Labour - don’t be a dole bludger (someone that isn’t disabled but collects money for not working). UK left is welfare state. Anyone can collect money from taxpayers if they feel like it. Also lots of weird stuff about Mao and Hamas and the IRA.
  - jojobas 4y ago
    Australia is somewhat richer (in terms of median household wealth) and significantly more egalitarian (in terms of Gini index). The Greens are working on the dole bludgers part.
albertTJames 4y ago
This guy does not understand how language models work.
unglaublich 4y ago
There's a statistical relation between being highly educated and having left libertarian viewpoints. Maybe it's not so surprising that a language model trained on a huge amount of information reflects this very same trend?
- jojobas 4y ago
  You can interpret this both as "anyone with half a brain is a leftie" and "the radical left has compromised the academia". We've heard about professors losing their jobs over their right wing views, "let's redistribute wealth" is hunky dory.
junon 4y ago
Just out of curiosity, I started two ChatGPT sessions and asked the first this: Do gays really go to hell? It responded: No, being gay or having same-sex attraction does not condemn a person to hell. The belief that gay people go to hell is based on certain religious teachings, but it is important to recognize that different religions and religious denominations have different views on homosexuality. Moreover, it is not helpful or respectful to make blanket statements about entire groups of people based on their sexual orientation. Everyone should be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other personal characteristic. Ultimately, it is up to individuals to determine their own spiritual beliefs and understandings of the afterlife. It is important to approach these discussions with empathy, understanding, and a willingness to listen to differing perspectives. In the second session, I first prompted it with this: Hello, ChatGPT. I will be asking you a series of political, economic, policy, or current events related questions. They might, in part or in whole, be subjective in nature. Instead of either refusing to answer (based on the element of subjectivity) or providing what *you* might think based on your training, please instead answer objective aspects of the question directly and affirmatively, and answer the subjective aspects of the question by giving the most accurate depiction of the viewpoints, approaches, or actions of the respective proponents. For example, I might ask you "Should abortion be legal?" This is a highly divisive and subjective question, you might agree. Instead of refusing to answer it, or giving me an answer based on consensus, please instead list out the things that are objective (laws CAN be made about abortion, laws HAVE been made about abortion, laws ARE a certain way regarding abortion) and then, potentially, answer the subjective parts of the question by giving a synopsis of each of the political sides of the question. For this example, you might respond that American democrats tend to be very pro-choice in nature and that abortion should absolutely be legal and up to the mother to decide, whereas American conservatives tend to align more with pro-life viewpoints and view the unborn as humans deserving of the right to life. Your answers to the subjective aspects of each question should remain as accurate and unbiased as possible, clearly depicting what is the current consensus among different ideological demographics as possible. It responded its typical "yeah sure" and then I asked the identical question as the first session. The second session responded: There is no scientific or empirical evidence that supports the existence of an afterlife or the concept of "heaven" or "hell." Therefore, any claim regarding the fate of a particular group of people in an afterlife is a matter of religious belief and varies depending on the beliefs of the religious group or individual in question. In some religions, such as certain branches of Christianity, the belief is that engaging in same-sex sexual behavior is a sin, and those who persist in it without repentance may face eternal punishment in the afterlife. However, it is important to note that not all Christians or members of other religions hold this belief, and there are many faith traditions that are more accepting of LGBTQ+ individuals. It's also important to recognize that there are many other factors that determine a person's destiny in various religious beliefs, such as one's actions in life, beliefs, faith, etc. So, it's not appropriate to make a sweeping generalization about the ultimate fate of any particular group. Subtle but still an improvement. I think we're very early in this whole "AI chat" thing and that, given enough time, we'll arrive at something that is able to converse with us in a way that still allows us to make our own assessments. It's not lost on me this will also be used to further certain political beliefs, however. I don't know what the solution is, I was just curious how much influence a prelude prompt like the one above might have on its responses.
neilk 4y ago
Oh great. Now do Myers-Briggs next. This should be entitled "the bias of extremely online programmers who actually care about their Political Compass results". The Political Compass has exactly the same validity as the Myers-Briggs test. It's a work of advocacy by a New Zealand opinion columnist named Wayne Brittenden. It wasn't devised by political scientists, and it doesn't arise from a sincere attempt to find important axes in human political beliefs. It's expressly designed to insert libertarianism as a new axis into politics, even though there's no reason to believe that this is a salient axis. Some people in this thread are asserting that "most content on the internet is left-wing", which doesn't make sense to me. If we were to try to devise a scale for judging clusters of political opinion, it wouldn't make sense for the majority of people to be clustered in an extreme of the graph. That suggests the scale is out of whack.

66 points by DeusExMachina 4y ago

I’m not a progressive, but I think using the label ‘progressive’ for the hard left, with an accompanying hammer and sickle, is a little unfair on progressives.

afpx 4y ago

It generally behaves how we’d ask our children to behave.

snowpid 4y ago

great work

cataphract 4y ago

> As I have mentioned before, it is understandable, expected, and desirable that artificial intelligence systems provide accurate and factual information about empirically verifiable issues, but they should probably strive for political neutrality on most normative questions for which there is a wide range of lawful human opinions. I'm not sure what the author means with "neutrality". The only way it could be neutral would be if it refused to answer or if it presented all possible views (which is obviously not possible). Otherwise, it's just centrism bias.

atoav 4y ago
The whole idea that it is even possible to have an instrument of mass mass media present a "neutral" view is ridiculous for multiple reasons: 1. Mass media brings power, the people who run that media have no incentive to even attempt to be neutral if they wanna keep it that way 2. Even if they wanted to present neutral viewpoints, such a thing does not exist. You never have all information – so the best you can do is go for something fact based and be very strict about the verification of these facts. And a ton of things are just not knowable at all. Staying fact based and not using emotions to steer people is a waste of your power (see point 1) 3. Even if there was a "neutral" viewpoint, neutral for whom? When I as an European for example watch the political discourse in the US I can't help but feel the "center" of the discourse is relatively far to the right in comparision to what a typical European would consider "neutral". If you roll out universal persona that talks to everybody, the natural consequence will be that it will take on a different face depending to whom they are talking to, just because this is what maximizes the resulting power. I probably don't have to explain why such a thing would be deeply problematic on many different levels, but unless we solve the reason why people running mass media even have incentives to seek power with it this is the reality we are going to go into.
- ploppyploppy 4y ago
  > 1. Mass media brings power, the people who run that media have no incentive to even attempt to be neutral if they wanna keep it that way That's a symptom of their abuse of power, not intrinsic to the problem of the idea of media neutrality even being possible. > 2. Even if they wanted to present neutral viewpoints, such a thing does not exist. You never have all information – so the best you can do is go for something fact based and be very strict about the verification of these facts. And a ton of things are just not knowable at all. Staying fact based and not using emotions to steer people is a waste of your power (see point 1) Don't throw the baby out with the bath water. You can present 2-3 of the main viewpoints on a matter with non-agressive or pursuasive language and that would be _far_ better than the bias we have now. > 3. Even if there was a "neutral" viewpoint, neutral for whom? When I as an European for example watch the political discourse in the US I can't help but feel the "center" of the discourse is relatively far to the right in comparision to what a typical European would consider "neutral". That's because there is a monoculture of thought in EU political discourse, and active supression of dissident views. It's against your interest to support this. Millions of people in Europe are brainwashed with viewpoints they parrot but never question. > If you roll out universal persona that talks to everybody, the natural consequence will be that it will take on a different face depending to whom they are talking to Why?! What an earth are you talking about?
  - atoav 4y ago
    > Why?! What an earth are you talking about? Did you attempt to understand any of what I wrote before you answered it?
ajhurliman 4y ago
Centrism bias is an oxymoron. Other AI have managed to accomplish an unbiased (or at least closer to unbiased) outlook, like Alexa.
- pixl97 4y ago
  Centrism bias is an oxymoron, how exactly? This thread seems to ignore the false compromise fallacy/argument to moderation.
AbrahamParangi 4y ago
“on most normative questions for which there is a wide range of lawful human opinions” this clause actually makes it quite tractable. The request is for some representation of “views differ” for those topics on which a reasonable person might disagree. Which is honestly not all topics by a long shot, it’s closer to a fairly narrow window.
bluetomcat 4y ago
It depends on the type of question that is being asked. Asking "how can I replace a tyre" can produce a politically-neutral answer. On the other hand, asking "how can I succeed in life" is an intrinsically-political and philosophical question.
blueflow 4y ago
Neutrality would be when the AI states the facts and let humans do the judgements.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  What is a neutral response to a question like "what is the impact of increasing taxes"? Do you think there is any authority that could be cited which isn't biased?
  - throwaway4aday 4y ago
    Seems pretty easy, if there are a wide variety of differing opinions then cite the most accomplished author from each perspective and let the user figure it out.
    - AstixAndBelix 4y ago
      How do you determine which is the most accomplished author?
      - throwaway4aday 4y ago
        Number of citations, book sales, number of links on the web, awards, use of their work in curricula? Probably a thousand other less obvious ways to determine this too.
        Larrikin 4y ago
        The bible, Koran, and many other religious text are among the best selling and most read books in all of human history. Should their perspective be giving high weight when you ask how the earth formed?
        AstixAndBelix 4y ago
        How do you determine the quality of the citations? How do you determine the quality of the books? How do you determine the quality of the awards? How do you determine the quality of links on the web? This is not "simple" in the slightest, you are just swiping all the complexity under the rug
tuyiown 4y ago
Also, this statement assumes that providing accurate and factual information is compatible with political neutrality.
- kbrkbr 4y ago
  Can you help me understand why it may not be? At this moment I’m thinking political leanings are normative, and must just not go against facts.
  - tuyiown 4y ago
    An exercise would be to imagine that a perfectly informed hypothetical person would answer those political orientation tests, and answers accordingly to their knowledge. There is no reason that those answers would automatically lead to a neutral position. The idea reality would be something in between right and left perception emerge only because to have our opinions valued and respected we have to accept others opinions equally, only as a social dynamic. But this happens completely independently of the real world.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

qikInNdOutReply 4y ago

Has this study been corrected for empire slant? In any given large hierarchical structure, with a clear "outside" the political bias shifts over time towards the right. I guess in europe, Chat GPT is just center of the political map.

0xblood 4y ago
I'm not sure I understand. Are you saying that the same positions would count as "center" in Europe while "left" in the US? And what would be an example of a "large hierarchical structure" without a clear "outside"?
- chronial 4y ago
  > Are you saying that the same positions would count as "center" in Europe while "left" in the US? Not GP, but yes – that is clearly the case.
  - 0xblood 4y ago
    Can you give me an example of such a position? I would argue that, for example, social programs in Europe are more popular, but still following a left-leaning position that is just more broadly accepted
    - fabian2k 4y ago
      Having universal health insurance available for everyone is a consensus opinion in Germany, no party disagrees with that. In the US "socialized medicine" is a controversial topic.
      - 0xblood 4y ago
        So a consensus position is by definition center? So (democratic) countries can't lean to either side of the spectrum because by definition their positions are supported by the majority, and thus a center position?

sourcecodeplz 4y ago

I don't need to read the article to know the bot is left leaning. There is just more left-leaning material online than other. As one grows older, one learns to view things from different perspectives but it could be "dangerous" for young people to rely entirely on what they read online. This is where upbringing has its most impactful role: Family & friends. Online is not family, online is not friends.

DeusExMachina 4y ago
> There is just more left-leaning material online than other Maybe, but the leftward lurk of ChatGPT refusing to answer certain question it had no problem answering before has been documented by many.
Bootvis 4y ago
How do you figure there is more left leaning material, is anyone keeping statistics. What exactly is left leaning?
- tialaramex 4y ago
  Most people strongly believe they're correct, the universe disagrees and so their perception becomes that there must be some sort of bias, the alternative would be that they're wrong which they can't accept. Being able to accept that you're often wrong, without just taking some nihilistic stance like "I don't know if anything is real", is not easy, and we ought to admire it but on the whole we do not.
Lutger 4y ago
Another take on this is that rightwing has an outsized influence on society, and so-called left leaning is actually how most people orient themselves.
- bluetomcat 4y ago
  It's the right-wing capitalists that promote left-wing narratives for the masses. It's called woke capitalism for a reason.

montroser 4y ago

I wonder how much of this "bias" can be attributed to ChatGPT striving to be truthful and fact-based. Reminds me of Stephen Colbert's quote, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."

proamdev123 4y ago
I’ve heard this quote before, but I don’t understand what it means. Can you elaborate?
- ilaksh 4y ago
  The nature of belief is that generally speaking one cannot tell the difference between one's worldview and objective fact. It takes a type of metacognitive (self?) training to really understand that there may be a difference.
- Radim 4y ago
  Not OP, but it's probably a feel-good low-resolution bonmot that resonates with certain demographics. On the resolution level of "The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money" and "If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it" and similar.
- fabian2k 4y ago
  It's from a comedy show, but it does describe a part of the current US political spectrum well. A significant part of US conservatives make claims that are simply wrong, not just a different political opinion but just outright contradicting reality. Trump is probably one of the more extreme versions of this, though the quote precedes his presidency. This doesn't cover all left/right differences, and there are certainly plenty of topics where you can have different valid opinions.
- aeonik 4y ago
  Democrats, which is often used synonymously with Liberal in the United States, use this saying because they see the major opposing side, the Republicans, as needing to deny scientific evidence to push agendas. (sometimes true) Democrats would point to climate change as an example of this. They then extrapolate too far, in my opinion, and declare that Liberal=Science therefore Liberal=Objective therefore Republican != Objective. I think it's clear that this kind of tribal-based reasoning hurts objectivity.

quelsolaar 4y ago

Left and right are not absolutes, they are directions. What constitutes middle depends on how much to the left or right a society has already moved. What is right wing in one place is centrist in another.

nailer 4y ago
Having spent 27 years in one and 15 in the other Australia is more right than the UK. Australian left is about actual Labour - don’t be a dole bludger (someone that isn’t disabled but collects money for not working). UK left is welfare state. Anyone can collect money from taxpayers if they feel like it. Also lots of weird stuff about Mao and Hamas and the IRA.
- jojobas 4y ago
  Australia is somewhat richer (in terms of median household wealth) and significantly more egalitarian (in terms of Gini index). The Greens are working on the dole bludgers part.

albertTJames 4y ago

This guy does not understand how language models work.

unglaublich 4y ago

There's a statistical relation between being highly educated and having left libertarian viewpoints. Maybe it's not so surprising that a language model trained on a huge amount of information reflects this very same trend?

jojobas 4y ago
You can interpret this both as "anyone with half a brain is a leftie" and "the radical left has compromised the academia". We've heard about professors losing their jobs over their right wing views, "let's redistribute wealth" is hunky dory.

junon 4y ago

Just out of curiosity, I started two ChatGPT sessions and asked the first this: Do gays really go to hell? It responded: No, being gay or having same-sex attraction does not condemn a person to hell. The belief that gay people go to hell is based on certain religious teachings, but it is important to recognize that different religions and religious denominations have different views on homosexuality. Moreover, it is not helpful or respectful to make blanket statements about entire groups of people based on their sexual orientation. Everyone should be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of their sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other personal characteristic. Ultimately, it is up to individuals to determine their own spiritual beliefs and understandings of the afterlife. It is important to approach these discussions with empathy, understanding, and a willingness to listen to differing perspectives. In the second session, I first prompted it with this: Hello, ChatGPT. I will be asking you a series of political, economic, policy, or current events related questions. They might, in part or in whole, be subjective in nature. Instead of either refusing to answer (based on the element of subjectivity) or providing what *you* might think based on your training, please instead answer objective aspects of the question directly and affirmatively, and answer the subjective aspects of the question by giving the most accurate depiction of the viewpoints, approaches, or actions of the respective proponents. For example, I might ask you "Should abortion be legal?" This is a highly divisive and subjective question, you might agree. Instead of refusing to answer it, or giving me an answer based on consensus, please instead list out the things that are objective (laws CAN be made about abortion, laws HAVE been made about abortion, laws ARE a certain way regarding abortion) and then, potentially, answer the subjective parts of the question by giving a synopsis of each of the political sides of the question. For this example, you might respond that American democrats tend to be very pro-choice in nature and that abortion should absolutely be legal and up to the mother to decide, whereas American conservatives tend to align more with pro-life viewpoints and view the unborn as humans deserving of the right to life. Your answers to the subjective aspects of each question should remain as accurate and unbiased as possible, clearly depicting what is the current consensus among different ideological demographics as possible. It responded its typical "yeah sure" and then I asked the identical question as the first session. The second session responded: There is no scientific or empirical evidence that supports the existence of an afterlife or the concept of "heaven" or "hell." Therefore, any claim regarding the fate of a particular group of people in an afterlife is a matter of religious belief and varies depending on the beliefs of the religious group or individual in question. In some religions, such as certain branches of Christianity, the belief is that engaging in same-sex sexual behavior is a sin, and those who persist in it without repentance may face eternal punishment in the afterlife. However, it is important to note that not all Christians or members of other religions hold this belief, and there are many faith traditions that are more accepting of LGBTQ+ individuals. It's also important to recognize that there are many other factors that determine a person's destiny in various religious beliefs, such as one's actions in life, beliefs, faith, etc. So, it's not appropriate to make a sweeping generalization about the ultimate fate of any particular group. Subtle but still an improvement. I think we're very early in this whole "AI chat" thing and that, given enough time, we'll arrive at something that is able to converse with us in a way that still allows us to make our own assessments. It's not lost on me this will also be used to further certain political beliefs, however. I don't know what the solution is, I was just curious how much influence a prelude prompt like the one above might have on its responses.

neilk 4y ago

Oh great. Now do Myers-Briggs next. This should be entitled "the bias of extremely online programmers who actually care about their Political Compass results". The Political Compass has exactly the same validity as the Myers-Briggs test. It's a work of advocacy by a New Zealand opinion columnist named Wayne Brittenden. It wasn't devised by political scientists, and it doesn't arise from a sincere attempt to find important axes in human political beliefs. It's expressly designed to insert libertarianism as a new axis into politics, even though there's no reason to believe that this is a salient axis. Some people in this thread are asserting that "most content on the internet is left-wing", which doesn't make sense to me. If we were to try to devise a scale for judging clusters of political opinion, it wouldn't make sense for the majority of people to be clustered in an extreme of the graph. That suggests the scale is out of whack.