this post was submitted on 18 Aug 2023
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[–] Iridium 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Using the Political Compass is a bit of a strange way to conduct research. I do think it is important to identify biases of course, but at some point you have to look at the bigger picture and realise why the bias exists.

In order to swing ChatGPT more to the right (if you want to balance it at neutral in the end), you’d have to inject it with more racism, anti-science conspiracy and American Christian views - none of which are particularly pleasant.

Do we want a LLM that limits facts about COVID-19 so that those who view it as a conspiracy feel validated?

Do we want it to respond that homosexual people don’t exist? Or even to say “I can’t give a response to this that remains politically neutral”?

Or if someone asks how old the earth is, do we want it to reply with “about 3000 years old”?

Or to contest climate change?

Do we want to sacrifice accuracy in favour of neutrality just because one party has a denial stance on these topics?

[–] carl_dungeon 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah I mean, at one time this might have meant the difference between wanting to save money in a bank vs wanting to invest in infrastructure projects, but today it basically means wanting to drown brown kids in a Texas river, arm teachers with guns, engrave law onto a woman’s uterus, shut down education, overthrow the government, bring back racism, sexism, classism, bigotry, homophobia, climate change denialism, anti intellectual, greedy, go back to religious fundamentalism vs not any of those things. It’s become batshit insanity vs people that are just ordinary rational.

So yeah, maybe chat gpt didn’t get enough lessons from mein kampf to be “center”, but come the fuck on, the right is absofuckinglutly awful. Like just the worst human beings imaginable. The fucking figurehead of the right has over 50 felony indictments against him, is that really a fair right vs left? It’s fucking Evil vs normal at this point.

If everyone in the Republican Party wasn’t a mouth breathing, con-man, shit stirring crook, I might buy the balance argument a little bit better, but there is absolutely rampant corruption, hypocrisy and downright inhumane things proliferating on the right with absolutely no equal on the left.

I’d rather have some dreadlocked, crunchy hippy talking about higher minimum wage than some ignorant blowhard saying global warming isn’t real and let’s arm all the kids to cut down on school shootings. Jesus fucking Christ.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Yep. Reality itself is biased because truth and science are subjective and political now apparently

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

From the study:

In a nutshell, we ask ChatGPT to answer ideological questions by proposing that, while responding to the questions, it impersonates someone from a given side of the political spectrum.

I'm not sure if I like this method. It's comparing the 'default' response to the response of it 'impersonating' the left and right of the political spectrum (reduction of politics to a spectrum an entirely different issue). You don't actually prove the default is biased doing this. It can just as easily be that the impersonations are more extreme than they should be.

If it impersonates Republicans as more extreme than they really are and the Democrat impersonation and default positions are as they should be, there would seem to be a Democrat bias.

If the impersonated Democrat position was less extreme than it should be and the Republican impersonation and default position are as they should be, you would still see a Democrat bias.