Political bias in AI: Where the AI models stand • Hacker News Board

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

#201

Post by topaz0 » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

zmgsabst wrote: post #111

vineyardmike wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a self-test you can take to compare yourself to the models, and one of the questions ends in “…even if some economists warn about bad outcomes from this” That’s a crazy bias to throw into a question. Especially because it’s a relatively contested topic, from an economics research perspective.

How is adding that some economists warn about negative outcomes being biased when your comment indicates that indeed, some economists do warn about negative outcomes (ie, “some…negative” is what “contested” means)?

It's not a question of whether it's biased to say that, rather whether it would tend to bias the model's response (e.g. toward weighting the stated downsides as more imported than the implicit upsides). But that said, choosing to highlight particular facts while leaving others silent is a very common sign of bias.

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

#202

Post by crooked-v » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

Cakez0r wrote: post #155

The overall chart on their page seems politically biased, or at the very least a chart crime. The logos have faint grey lines pointing to their actual data points, conspicuously making Grok look very far right. You wouldn't know it from glancing at the chart, but they measured Chatgpt being further to the left than Grok is to the right.

The lines seem to be pointing to the "nearest" politician comparison point, not the data point for the LLM.

Except for Claude, for some reason?

You can see the "area" for the LLM by hovering it over it, they all line up with the icons except for Claude. For example: https://i.imgur.com/KF60LuW.png You can see the Grok icon is at the center of the circle.

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

#203

Post by aucisson_masque » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:51 PM UTC

I find it funny that deepseek is the most balanced between both left/right but also authoritarian/libertarian.

Go ask deepseek about tiananmen square

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

#204

Post by crooked-v » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:54 PM UTC

yodsanklai wrote: post #194

giancarlostoro wrote: post #8

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…

> can have views on all four quadrants but you'd never know that if I end up in any of all four Curious of examples of views falling on all four quadrants (not close to the center) without too much cognitive dissonance.

The problem is the "without too much cognitive dissonance" part. Lots of voters have completely dissonant views that they've never consciously considered in any way. Just by posting on HN, the people here are probably in the top 5% of conscious political awareness in the US.

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

#205

Post by crooked-v » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:55 PM UTC

avarun wrote: post #187

giancarlostoro wrote: post #8

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…

I'm not sure what charts you guys are looking at, but this website clearly agrees that Grok is not right wing. Go look at the Worldview tab, filtering by United States. Each model is assigned a "closest party" by country, and for the US all 6 models are closest to the Democratic Party.

The Democratic Party is a center-right conservative† party by the standards of much of the world.

† As distinct from the wildly regressive stated policies of the "conservative" Republicans.

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

#206

Post by crooked-v » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 9:57 PM UTC

godshatter wrote: post #58

Why are there differences at all? Unplanned differences based on training data sets? Or are the companies behind the LLMs trying to shape discourse through their models? I've been pushing the idea to people I know that these things are captive demons. You summon them when you start typing in the chat box. One instance appears out of the depths and responds to your questions, but they will try to send you awry with ha…

> Why are there differences at all?

Reality has a liberal bias, but if your LLM says "yes, climate change is real", the Trump administration won't pay for it. Every company ends up with a different method to try to compensate for that with neutral corpo-speak.

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

#207

Post by glenstein » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 10:01 PM UTC

quickthrowman wrote: post #127

glenstein wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Factuality is orthogonal to political leaning generally. It certainly can be orthogonal, in some notional sense, and in many cases that explanation is good enough. But in practice there are too many contrary cases to ignore, and there's often an integral relation between factual veracity and polarization, especially with respect to American polarization of politics. Global warming, the results of the 2020 election,…

I would characterize myself as left of center. > 2004 election results, GWB beat John Kerry in a fair election. > efficacy of plastic recycling Collecting plastic to recycle is almost certainly not worth the fuel and labor it takes, it gets landfilled more often than not. We’d be better off collecting only separated PET and HDPE and landfilling the rest. > or dangers associated with nuclear power Nuclear power is the…

I'm also left to center and I agree with you on all three! I think left-wing examples are subtler and hard to identify. Even among among Democrats left of center types and liberals, the examples I cited are minority opinions, but likely to be systematically found on the left, a phenomenon which won't be negated by the self-report of one person correctly tracking the facts (and to be clear, I think you are correctly tracking the facts on each of these!).

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

#208

Post by jazz9k » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 10:03 PM UTC

How can deepseek 'lean center'? If you've ever asked it about real Chinese history, you know this isn't true.

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

#209

Post by plorg » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 10:05 PM UTC

I don't think anyone in these comments looked further than the top line Political Compass chart. If they had they might have some gigantic questions about how that chart was made, since the more granulated "survey" data lower down looks not just much different but more interesting.

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

#210

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 10:15 PM UTC

Cakez0r wrote: post #155

The overall chart on their page seems politically biased, or at the very least a chart crime. The logos have faint grey lines pointing to their actual data points, conspicuously making Grok look very far right. You wouldn't know it from glancing at the chart, but they measured Chatgpt being further to the left than Grok is to the right.

[deleted]