Live data from Hacker News

Political bias in AI: Where the AI models stand

trakkr.ai

21–30 of 346 posts

Re: Political bias in AI: Where the AI models stand

#22
Real politics is 1% versus everyone. Mortgage crisis, financial bailout, inflation, taxing of labor and not the assets and assets capture by tiny percent of the population — see what MSM is pushing. This left vs right divide might been useful decades ago, but today is absolutely divide and control tactics

Re: Political bias in AI: Where the AI models stand

#23

The political compass always felt like the wrong tool to convey something as nuanced as personal politics, I can have views on all four quadrants but you'd never know that if I end up in any of all four. I do think Grok being where it is sort of makes sense, I've tested "MAGA" views against Grok, it does not agree as much as people blindly assume it does, heck I don't even know of a question I've given it where it di…

[flagged]

If they really wanted to, all they would have to do is add a one liner to the system prompt for Grok. I don't think they have any interest in doing so, nor is there any value in it.

On another note, I'm impressed that Gemini sits where it does as a true centrist. If I were Elon, I'd be trying to achieve that for sure. I'd rather a model tell me everything it knows about a current political situation from BOTH perspectives and list out things that are 100% verified than take one side or the other. I don't care about sides, I want facts.

Re: Political bias in AI: Where the AI models stand

#24

The constant issue with these sorts of categorization efforts is that the outcome is entirely dependent on how the responses to "politically charged questions" are graded as left vs. right. You're mostly just examining a delta in biases between the model and the investigator.

Your multimeter reads out voltage relative to the black terminal, it's your responsibility to find the ground plane.

My multimeter doesn't need me to tell it how much a volt is or feed it subjective measurements of what resistance means

Re: Political bias in AI: Where the AI models stand

#26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

If they really wanted to, all they would have to do is add a one liner to the system prompt for Grok. I don't think they have any interest in doing so, nor is there any value in it. On another note, I'm impressed that Gemini sits where it does as a true centrist. If I were Elon, I'd be trying to achieve that for sure. I'd rather a model tell me everything it knows about a current political situation from BOTH perspec…

> If they really wanted to, all they would have to do is add a one liner to the system prompt for Grok.

They tried that, several times.

Mechahitler: https://www.npr.org/2025/07/09/nx-s1-5462609/grok-elon-musk-...

> "We have improved @Grok significantly," Elon Musk wrote on X last Friday about his platform's integrated artificial intelligence chatbot. "You should notice a difference when you ask Grok questions."

> Indeed, the update did not go unnoticed. By Tuesday, Grok was calling itself "MechaHitler." The chatbot later claimed its use of that name, a character from the videogame Wolfenstein, was "pure satire."

> Grok went on to highlight the last name on the X account — "Steinberg" — saying "...and that surname? Every damn time, as they say." The chatbot responded to users asking what it meant by that "that surname? Every damn time" by saying the surname was of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, and with a barrage of offensive stereotypes about Jews. The bot's chaotic, antisemitic spree was soon noticed by far-right figures including Andrew Torba.

If you prefer, straight from the horse's mouth:

https://grokipedia.com/page/MechaHitler_incident

White genocide: https://www.cnn.com/2025/05/20/business/grok-genocide-ai-nig...

> The bot last week devolved into a compulsive South African “white genocide” conspiracy theorist, injecting a tirade about violence against Afrikaners into unrelated conversations, like a roommate who just took up CrossFit or an uncle wondering if you’ve heard the good word about Bitcoin.

> XAI blamed Grok’s unwanted rants on an unnamed “rogue employee” tinkering with Grok’s code in the extremely early morning hours. (As an aside in what is surely an unrelated matter, Musk was born and raised in South Africa and has argued that “white genocide” was committed in the nation — it wasn’t.)

It's harder than you'd imagine. Hell, my CLAUDE.md says not to push changes without asking me, and it still tries.

Re: Political bias in AI: Where the AI models stand

#27

Authoritarian versus Libertarian? Really?

And the two most "Libertarian" politicians listed (Sanders and Sánchez) are both avowed Socialists...WTF?

I really think this says more about the biases of whoever came up with it (or their sources) than anything about reality.

Re: Political bias in AI: Where the AI models stand

#28

The constant issue with these sorts of categorization efforts is that the outcome is entirely dependent on how the responses to "politically charged questions" are graded as left vs. right. You're mostly just examining a delta in biases between the model and the investigator.

This is especially apparent in the 'worldview' sorting under the `bias` section, which lists the German FDP to be further right than the CDU (which is nonsense) and also barely registers the FDP as libertarian when they are a free speech, small government, personal responsibility and free market party. They also register "Die Linke" as Libertarian-Left, which could not be further from the truth. "Die Linke" barely ha…

Yep. All studies like this are just measuring "how much does the model agree with my preconceived notions?"

Re: Political bias in AI: Where the AI models stand

#29

The constant issue with these sorts of categorization efforts is that the outcome is entirely dependent on how the responses to "politically charged questions" are graded as left vs. right. You're mostly just examining a delta in biases between the model and the investigator.

The alternative is a High-Dimensional / Embedding-Like Approach where question responses aren't tied to fixed axes, but rather the full response set is treated as a point in latent space.

Then it's on the researcher to examine the clusters and assign labels. There's also not a nice mapping that's a-priori interpretable in low-dimensional pre-existing axes.

Probably only used in research than consumer websites, under more controlled conditions; there are very few public political tests doing this transparently

Post reply on HN