As Artificial Intelligence controls more of our lives every day, it is disturbing to realize it is being developed to reflect certain prejudices and biases.
You cannot trust it, and I am not sure ultimately there is anything we can do about it. Figuring out what is true will get even harder in the future. It is tough enough already. But in days to come, we will have to be even more dedicated to discerning fact from opinion.
Recently I have been using, and experimenting with, Grok. Not Gronk. He was the tight end. Grok.
I was curious to see if it is biased, politically, and of course found that it is.
I asked it to give me a list of the payments members of the Biden family have received from foreign governments, individuals, and companies. Just a list. Just the facts, ma’am. 😊
Grok responded with a document under the banner of “… alleged payments…” they have received. Then when on to list them. For those watching at home, it was in the ten of millions.
Yet, the question, and the bias it reveals: why did it call them “alleged” when the payments are clearly and carefully documented, by the banks themselves, who reported them to the Treasury?
Following me? A list of proven payments (in exchange for no work, by the way) to Joe’s family. Even grandkids and in-laws. Fully documented. But Grok called them “alleged,” suggesting it isn’t true and creating doubt.
When queried further, Grok told me they use the word “alleged” not to question the payments themselves but to address the accusations of criminality that usually accompany it. But they called the payments themselves alleged.
And I hadn’t shown any interest in criminal charges or theories. Grok just assumed if I was asking about payments to the Bidens what I was really after is fodder for criminal accusations. Just looking for numbers and sources resulted in politically biased outputs.
They called the payments “alleged” even though they admitted in a later exchange there is no doubt the payments occurred.
It also recommended, unsolicited, that I ask for a list of Trump family business connections to other nations. I also didn’t ask about this.
Got it? They are doing everything they can to make it look like the Biden activities are basically the same as those of the Trump family.
Except, one, no one asked. (I also didn’t ask about the life cycle of the common shrew.)
And, two, the Trump family has a BUSINESS that involves real work, real property, employees, and sales worldwide. Grok suggests an equivalency between the Trump businesses and the Biden payoffs. But the Bidens have no actual businesses, investments, employees, products, services, or sales. They just have a series of LLCs, shell companies that take payments but have to real business.
There is a reason the name Trump appears on buildings, and the name Biden does not.
Artificial Intelligence reflects the biases of the people who develop it and the information from which they learn. It should not surprise us that AI output is flawed.
You may recall that Biden’s proposed regulations on AI mandated that it promote equity, which is the opposite of equality of opportunity. Equity benefits certain races and disadvantages others. Biden’s team built their own ideological and political prejudices into their AI regulations.
Many tech companies, their leaders, and their funders do the same. Finding the truth is getting harder as a result.