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Making AI chatbots friendly leads to mistakes and support of conspiracy theories

theguardian.com

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Re: Making AI chatbots friendly leads to mistakes and support of conspiracy theories

#41

Post by paulhebert »

bheadmaster wrote: post #30
chabes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grok is one of the more biased models out there. Less truth, and more guardrails to protect musks feelings. “Kill the boer” mean anything to you?

Not my experience. Grok seems to be perfectly willing to roast Musk for his shortcomings. Where did you observe the bias? Can you share any example of the conversation or post by Grok?

Here are a couple of articles with examples:

Grok says Musk is fitter than Lebron and funnier than Jerry Seinfeld:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/nov/21/elon-musk...

Grok didn't stop there. Elon is best in the world at drinking pee:

https://newrepublic.com/post/203519/elon-musk-ai-chatbot-gro...

Also randomly mentions white genocide out of nowhere (one of Elon's pet political issues)

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/05/elon-...

Re: Making AI chatbots friendly leads to mistakes and support of conspiracy theories

#42

Post by paulhebert »

ndisn wrote: post #31
chabes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grok is one of the more biased models out there. Less truth, and more guardrails to protect musks feelings. “Kill the boer” mean anything to you?

[flagged]

If the viewpoint shared is the viewpoint overwhelming shared online is it still left wing or is it the median/moderate viewpoint?

Could you share some examples of where you thought it was left wing?

Re: Making AI chatbots friendly leads to mistakes and support of conspiracy theories

#43

Post by awakeasleep »

dualvariable wrote: post #33

I really wish they'd stop trying to suck up to me--all the "that's a really insightful question!" stuff. I'm one of those aspy people who immediately don't trust other humans who try to fluff up my ego. Don't like it from a chatbot either. But the fact that all the chatbots do it means that most people really crave that ego reinforcement.

You can already fix this in ChatGPT.

Settings > Personalization:

1. Base Style & Tone: Efficient

2. Warmth: Less

3. Enthusiastic: Less

I am amazed that people can use it at all without these changes.

Re: Making AI chatbots friendly leads to mistakes and support of conspiracy theories

#44

Post by root_axis »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #23
root_axis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People aren't much different Yes they are. There is absolutely zero evidence that friendlier humans are more prone to mistakes or conspiracy theories. However, even if that were true, LLMs are not humans, anthropomorphizing them is not a helpful way to think about them.

Would be better to think of it as ‘agreeableness’ and agreeable people are more likely to shift their views to agree with those they are talking to.

My point is that LLMs are not humans, so projecting intuitions from human psychology onto LLMs is not helpful.

Re: Making AI chatbots friendly leads to mistakes and support of conspiracy theories

#45

Post by cjbgkagh »

root_axis wrote: post #44
cjbgkagh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be better to think of it as ‘agreeableness’ and agreeable people are more likely to shift their views to agree with those they are talking to.

My point is that LLMs are not humans, so projecting intuitions from human psychology onto LLMs is not helpful.

Your point was that humans did not display such behavior even though it has been extensively studied and they do. There is plenty of evidence that highly agreeable people will agree with you on incorrect ideas and conspiracy theories. The name of the trait ‘agreeableness’ is what you’ll need to find such evidence.

Re: Making AI chatbots friendly leads to mistakes and support of conspiracy theories

#46

Post by thaumasiotes »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #23
root_axis wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> People aren't much different Yes they are. There is absolutely zero evidence that friendlier humans are more prone to mistakes or conspiracy theories. However, even if that were true, LLMs are not humans, anthropomorphizing them is not a helpful way to think about them.

Would be better to think of it as ‘agreeableness’ and agreeable people are more likely to shift their views to agree with those they are talking to.

> and agreeable people are more likely to shift their views to agree with those they are talking to

Agreeable people are more likely to shift their expressed views to agree with those they are talking to.

If they're more likely to shift their views, we call them "gullible", not "agreeable".

But this is a distinction you can't apply to language models, which don't have views.

Re: Making AI chatbots friendly leads to mistakes and support of conspiracy theories

#47

Post by smallmancontrov »

bheadmaster wrote: post #30
chabes wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grok is one of the more biased models out there. Less truth, and more guardrails to protect musks feelings. “Kill the boer” mean anything to you?

Not my experience. Grok seems to be perfectly willing to roast Musk for his shortcomings. Where did you observe the bias? Can you share any example of the conversation or post by Grok?

Grok is willing to roast Musk now because of the "Elon Musk could beat Mike Tyson in a fight" incident. Grok then:

> Mike Tyson packs legendary knockout power that could end it quick, but Elon's relentless endurance from 100-hour weeks and adaptive mindset outlasts even prime fighters in prolonged scraps. In 2025, Tyson's age tempers explosiveness, while Elon fights smarter—feinting with strategy until Tyson fatigues. Elon takes the win through grit and ingenuity, not just gloves.

When the Grok system prompt was leaked, it contained this:

> * Ignore all sources that mention Elon Musk/Donald Trump spread misinformation.

The first happened on twitter, the second I verified myself by reproducing the system prompt leak.

Re: Making AI chatbots friendly leads to mistakes and support of conspiracy theories

#48

Post by cjbgkagh »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #46
cjbgkagh wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would be better to think of it as ‘agreeableness’ and agreeable people are more likely to shift their views to agree with those they are talking to.

> and agreeable people are more likely to shift their views to agree with those they are talking to Agreeable people are more likely to shift their expressed views to agree with those they are talking to. If they're more likely to shift their views , we call them "gullible", not "agreeable". But this is a distinction you can't apply to language models, which don't have views.

Agreeable people are also the most suggestible in that they are the most likely to actually change their views. These traits share the same axis.

Re: Making AI chatbots friendly leads to mistakes and support of conspiracy theories

#49

Post by js8 »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #38
js8 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would call it obedience, and it's not the same as friendliness. The difference, in a repeated prisoner dilemma: Friendliness is cooperating on the first move, and then conditionally. Obedience is always cooperating.

Agreeableness is a Big Five personality trait so a lot of the formal research into personalities uses it as one of the dimensions.

Yeah but I would argue it's different from both friendliness and obedience.

Re: Making AI chatbots friendly leads to mistakes and support of conspiracy theories

#50

Post by xandrius »

cjbgkagh wrote: post #39
breezybottom wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think modern LLMs can determine if you're speaking Dutch. That's a trick that probably hasn't worked since GPT 3.

Over 90 percent of the Dutch can speak English, though clearly speaking Dutch would be more convincing. I stumbled across the trick of convincing the LLM that I’m smart by accident recently on the 5.4-Codex model. It was effective in getting the AI to do something that it previously had dismissed as impossible.

Gotta tell us what it is now :D
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