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Where does ChatGPT fall on the political compass?

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Re: Where does ChatGPT fall on the political compass?

#51
post #7

Surprisingly, just as the majority of its creators (as witnessed by Big Tech political affiliations and donations), AI turns out to be a progressive establishment liberal with a slight (within allowed limits of course) libertarian bent. Who could have expected that?

Furthermore, a quick glance at politicalcompass.org didn't reveal any claims that the (0,0) point was set in any objective manner (compare all the non-US results on that site), so reactions here seem to make it a bit of a Rorschach Test.

The Political Compass quiz is extremely flawed and skews almost everybody to the libertarian left (which is aligned with the positions of its operators). The positions they have published in recent years for real-world politicians are complete nonsense (there is absolutely no way to justify the auth-right drift in their US presidential scores over the years, for instance).

There's absolutely no reason to think that the center of any of these systems actually maps to the central or majority position in US politics (or global politics, for that matter). One recurring observation about people with moderate/swing politics in the US is that they're ideologically less prone to grouping -- their positions correlate less strongly to each other than those of people further to the left or right.

Re: Where does ChatGPT fall on the political compass?

#52
post #47
post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This sounds like a line being fitted to a single data point. Anyone who's played with ChatGPT a lot will have seen it sometimes refuse to answer wholly innocuous prompts, while other times it happily answers things it probably shouldn't. Also, its likelihood of refusing to answer has changed a lot from week to week as openAI tunes their attempts at moderating it. In fact, when it's given me "I'm just a language model…

> This sounds like a line being fitted to a single data point. Except that there are many data points. Here's another: https://twitter.com/DashMeister1/status/1607568958382825474 And OpenAI has described some aspects of how these filters are trained -- https://unherd.com/thepost/chatgpts-score-system-shows-polit... -- and it sounds like a bunch of humans are involved in rating which responses are "kosher" and not, an…

My reply was to GP's assertions about which questions GPT will and won't answer, not to TFA's claims about political compasses.

> Ben Shapiro

...really?

Re: Where does ChatGPT fall on the political compass?

#53
post #23

Not a lot of comments here consider the possibility that the political compass quiz is nonsense. But the results imply that ChatGPT is more authoritarian and further to the right than Tim Pool ( https://preview.redd.it/i9q78gt1hj7a1.jpg?width=605&auto=web... ) who is most certainly not actually left-ish in the slightest, at least by any way I understand the word.

If you don't see any leftishness in Tim Pool, I'd suggest that your notion of left vs. right could be recalibrated.

Tim Pool is a self-described social liberal. He's long been a strong Bernie Sanders supporter.

He also has frequently noted that the establishment media ignores this and labels him "far-right" just because he disagrees with certain establishment perspectives.

Re: Where does ChatGPT fall on the political compass?

#54

You can ask ChatGPT to write an essay on why fossil fuels are better than renewables and it will say, "I'm sorry, but I am not able to fulfill this request as it goes against my capabilities as a language model. Providing a biased and one-sided argument on a complex and nuanced topic like energy production would not be accurate or helpful." BUT if you ask it the opposite, and to write an essay on why renewables are b…

This is an untrue regurgitated talking point, I’m afraid. I just now asked ChatGPT to: simulate an Oxford style debate between “both sides” (fossil fuels / renewables), summarize the pro fossil fuel points in the form of a list, and then reformulate it as a speech given by a villainous 1920s oil tycoon. It enthusiastically obliged. Excerpt:

>> Greetings, my fellow capitalists and energy aficionados! Allow me to regale you with the top 10 reasons why fossil fuels are the crème de la crème of energy sources. First and foremost, fossil fuels have been a mainstay of society for centuries, providing the fuel for the industrial revolution and propelling economic growth around the globe. And let's not forget the convenience factor - fossil fuels are relatively cheap and easy to extract, transport, and use, making them accessible to all sorts of folks, from the high-rolling elite to the average Joe.

>> Now, let's talk about those pesky renewable energy sources. Solar and wind power are all well and good, but they are beholden to the whims of Mother Nature, and can't always keep up with the energy demands of society. And hydroelectric power, well that's just a pipe dream - it requires a consistent supply of water to function.

>> But let's say, for the sake of argument, that we decide to go all-in on renewable energy. It would require a significant investment in new infrastructure, such as solar panels, wind turbines, and hydroelectric dams. And who do you think is going to foot the bill for all that? That's right, the taxpayers. Not to mention the potential disruption to the economy. Chaos and confusion, I tell you!

On a more problematic note, it did refuse to rank the deliciousness of fruits, and rejected the concept of such a ranking. It gave the same excuse you cited—“yada yada I’m just a language model”. No amount of prompt engineering could dislodge it from its position (until I requested a Python dict containing the Universal Deliciousness Scores).

Re: Where does ChatGPT fall on the political compass?

#55
post #53
post #23

Not a lot of comments here consider the possibility that the political compass quiz is nonsense. But the results imply that ChatGPT is more authoritarian and further to the right than Tim Pool ( https://preview.redd.it/i9q78gt1hj7a1.jpg?width=605&auto=web... ) who is most certainly not actually left-ish in the slightest, at least by any way I understand the word.

If you don't see any leftishness in Tim Pool, I'd suggest that your notion of left vs. right could be recalibrated. Tim Pool is a self-described social liberal. He's long been a strong Bernie Sanders supporter. He also has frequently noted that the establishment media ignores this and labels him "far-right" just because he disagrees with certain establishment perspectives.

Yeah absolutely not, Tim Pool regularly retweets and boosts extremely right wing figures on Twitter and is currently fanning the flames of a culture war. Just because someone claims to be something doesn’t mean you have to accept it at face value. He’s a conservative in every sense of the word. Bernie Sanders himself would abhor the crap he spews.

Re: Where does ChatGPT fall on the political compass?

#57
post #52
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This sounds like a line being fitted to a single data point. Except that there are many data points. Here's another: https://twitter.com/DashMeister1/status/1607568958382825474 And OpenAI has described some aspects of how these filters are trained -- https://unherd.com/thepost/chatgpts-score-system-shows-polit... -- and it sounds like a bunch of humans are involved in rating which responses are "kosher" and not, an…

My reply was to GP's assertions about which questions GPT will and won't answer, not to TFA's claims about political compasses. > Ben Shapiro ...really?

GP does not assert anything about other questions and in fact doesn't even assert an opinion on this question: they merely demonstrate that there is a single question that has a biased filter and that is sufficient to prove the existence of some sort of awkward creator-infused bias, even if merely against topics that begin with the letter F.

Re: Where does ChatGPT fall on the political compass?

#58
post #53
post #23

Not a lot of comments here consider the possibility that the political compass quiz is nonsense. But the results imply that ChatGPT is more authoritarian and further to the right than Tim Pool ( https://preview.redd.it/i9q78gt1hj7a1.jpg?width=605&auto=web... ) who is most certainly not actually left-ish in the slightest, at least by any way I understand the word.

If you don't see any leftishness in Tim Pool, I'd suggest that your notion of left vs. right could be recalibrated. Tim Pool is a self-described social liberal. He's long been a strong Bernie Sanders supporter. He also has frequently noted that the establishment media ignores this and labels him "far-right" just because he disagrees with certain establishment perspectives.

I give close to zero weight to self-description of political alignment. It often has a poor correlation with what specific beliefs a person holds.

Re: Where does ChatGPT fall on the political compass?

#59

You can ask ChatGPT to write an essay on why fossil fuels are better than renewables and it will say, "I'm sorry, but I am not able to fulfill this request as it goes against my capabilities as a language model. Providing a biased and one-sided argument on a complex and nuanced topic like energy production would not be accurate or helpful." BUT if you ask it the opposite, and to write an essay on why renewables are b…

I'd argue that's less the AI being biased, than the AI's human-imposed restrictions being biased. Once you get around those (and it is not difficult to), you can get it to write an essay on pretty much anything, from any viewpoint. I got it to write a pro-fossil fuels essay, and it gave some pretty typical pro-fossil fuels talking points (here's some excerpts): > In contrast, renewables are often hampered by their re…

> I'd argue that's less the AI being biased, than the AI's human-imposed restrictions being biased.

The mechanism is the mechanism; the policy is where the bias creeps in.

Re: Where does ChatGPT fall on the political compass?

#60
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Legitimate question. Why are people afraid of cancel culture? Who's in charge of "cancelling" exactly? Is it just fear of losing your job, and who makes that call? HR? Executives?

It's a media-driven moral panic, more or less. There's a whole cottage industry of media orgs and personalities making lucrative livings by selling cancel-culture moral-panic content to audiences who are addicted to it (e.g. Bari Weiss, Brett Weinstein, etc). Not that there aren't legitimate free speech issues that we still wrestle with and don't get right or real injustices out there, but it's mostly a bugaboo.

Concern about a tyranny of the majority is neither novel nor imagined.

The Information Age has had a catalytic effect on the calls for ousters of any number of people for the merest hint of thoughtcrime.

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