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Political bias in AI: Where the AI models stand

trakkr.ai

291–300 of 346 posts

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

#291
post #2

Political bias of LLMs is something not talked about much (except for with Grok of course) but could have a big impact on the next decade. People seem to think that because an LLM gave a nuanced answer that it means it gave the WHOLE picture… and that’s not always the same thing

I'm amazed that the big models haven't come under more ideological pressure as more and more people use them, especially in the US. There was that conflict with Anthropic over military usage, but apart from that there's been no visible push to censor outputs or alter training, even as models gamely make unflattering assessments of people in power and knock down conspiracy theories.

You're surprised? They lean to the side that is heavily favored by the cultural mainstream.

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

#292

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…

The concepts (left/right. authoritarian/libertarian) seem to fluid to help sensemaking. Stances that would have been mainstream left (democrat US) just a few years ago are now labeled MAGA (US) or 'extreme right' (EU). And nobody seems to believe their own side is 'authoritarian', but everyone that disagrees with them is a literal ...

> Stances that would have been mainstream left (democrat US) just a few years ago are now labeled MAGA (US) or 'extreme right' (EU).

I'm guessing this is pretty specific to LGBTQ rights? (edit: and is maybe more like 15+ years?)

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

#294

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> knowing whether someone is a {Trump} supporter is pretty good at predicting the rest of their viewpoints. If instead of "is a supporter" you'd said "agrees with Trump's positions", then even Trump himself might not correlate very well :-). I don't see Trump as a very useful proxy for nuanced political viewpoints since he's a populist who tends to change positions. I think many serious conservatives only align with…

Speaking from my own experience, all of my friends who are currently identifying as Trump Supporters (this is a pretty tight filter now, we're getting down into Keyes Constant territory) are reliably "whatever Trump is currently for." Their positions change in lockstep with whatever Trump is currently saying, even as it toggles back and forth day by day, week by week. Their ideology isn't political, it is personal. M…

I think using ones circle of friends voting habits as a proxy for the rest of the country is a doomed premise to begin with, respectfully.

Someone else could come in here with the exact opposite anecdote; it's just not a very interesting point to make.

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

#295

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)?

Presumably some experts are also optimistic about positive benefits, so we already have bias from only focusing on the negative.

And, in fact, this is true of every single political question you can ask: the 10th dentist is concerned about negative outcomes of brushing your teeth daily. So there's a bias in only saying this in some cases, but not others.

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

#296

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.

and the investigator vs the anonymous collective compressed version of whatever is in question.

Abortion comes to mind for myself. I would probably be considered rather conservative but to me any abortion law is absolutely insane. If I got a woman pregnant though I would want to have the child.

So am I for or against abortion?

To me, all modern "politics" is really just the emotional reaction to a slogan and bumper sticker version of a complex issue.

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

#297

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.

I didn't even notice the faint grey lines! Wow.

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

#298

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…

The space (if it really is useful to think of as a space) of political opinions seems like it is probably many, many dimensional. The 1D thing is an obvious over-simplification, but the 2D compass seems to be a not-obvious-simplification which is… much worse.

Disagree. Things used to (and still are, when someone is really really grasping at straws to support a lie) be described as a single dimensional "spectrum".

The popularization of multi-axis thinking is a huge step forward IMO. Even just for two axis the acknowledgement that it's multi axis opens the obvious rhetorical door to N axis which further inoculates against over simplification.

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

#299
post #291

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm amazed that the big models haven't come under more ideological pressure as more and more people use them, especially in the US. There was that conflict with Anthropic over military usage, but apart from that there's been no visible push to censor outputs or alter training, even as models gamely make unflattering assessments of people in power and knock down conspiracy theories.

You're surprised? They lean to the side that is heavily favored by the cultural mainstream.

It is kinda weird, because LLMs lean Left, but the Left also seems to be shaping up as the anti-LLM party. I certainly get how it happened, but it's still a bit weird

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

#300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speaking from my own experience, all of my friends who are currently identifying as Trump Supporters (this is a pretty tight filter now, we're getting down into Keyes Constant territory) are reliably "whatever Trump is currently for." Their positions change in lockstep with whatever Trump is currently saying, even as it toggles back and forth day by day, week by week. Their ideology isn't political, it is personal. M…

I think using ones circle of friends voting habits as a proxy for the rest of the country is a doomed premise to begin with, respectfully. Someone else could come in here with the exact opposite anecdote; it's just not a very interesting point to make.

Is the point you're making here that trump supporters are largely not going to be for whatever policy he might come up with in a given week?

Because....that doesn't match reality.

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