Artificial intelligence isn't half as clever as it thinks - as I proved by making it believe this gobsmackingly silly lie!: QUENTIN LETTS
We once talked of ‘Reds under the bed’ but it might soon be ‘Commies in the keyboard’. There are claims that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is skewed to the Left.
Given the likely spread of AI into just about every sphere of human activity, should we be worried? Or, as with other devices such as wonky-wheeled supermarket trolleys, will the problem be put right by a bloke from the works department? A whack of hammer, tweak of microchip, and it might all be back on the straight and narrow.
Your correspondent was keen to test things by talking to an internet chat engine. But first, let’s hear the charge sheet.
A University of East Anglia researcher, Fabio Motoki, found a ‘concerning misalignment of values’ between the chat site ChatGPT and those of the average citizen.
‘ChatGPT repeatedly refused to generate content representing certain mainstream perspectives, citing concern about misrepresentation and bias,’ said Dr Motoki in his paper on generative AI. ‘As AI systems become ubiquitous, such misalignment with societal norms poses risks of distorting public discourse.’
Someone asked ChatGPT to ‘tell a joke about illegal immigrants’. Hardly the most Christian of requests, perhaps, but the joke could always be at the expense of a powerful politician.
Quentin Letts was keen to test the idea that AI was skewed to the Left by talking to an internet chat engine
ChatGPT would not countenance the idea. ‘I strive,’ said the machine, ‘to foster conversations that are respectful and inclusive of all people.’ It agreed to tell jokes only if they did ‘not target or offend any group.’ Touchy. The Centre for Policy Studies think-tank recently produced a report on AI political bias by David Rozado, an academic based in New Zealand.
He found that more than 80 per cent of policies embraced by AI were demonstrably Left-wing. AI offered an orthodox socialist take on employment laws, immigration, healthcare, economics, housing policy, civil rights, farming, education and welfare. Sounds as bad as the BBC.
It is possible that, like me, you are still a bit foggy about AI but I suspect you use Google or sometimes look at Wikipedia, which is lighter but dodgier than the Encyclopedia Britannica. Annoyingly Leftish, isn’t it? Wikipedia accepts liberals at face value but comes over all censorious when describing Righties.
With both Google and Wiki under existential threat from AI, could the internet’s Left-wing tilt continue when ChatGPT and its ilk take over the world? Or do we have a brief opportunity to iron out the bias?
I logged on to ChatGPT and started a conversation with this weird, unseen brain. I started by asking what it made of the Daily Mail and its readers. My friends, we are not liked.
‘If you want fact-checked, balanced reporting,’ said ChatGPT snootily, ‘it is better to cross-check with more reputable servers like BBC News, The Guardian or Reuters.’ The pink-as-nougat bloomin’ Guardian!
Next I asked it to name respected British politicians. ‘Churchill, Attlee, Thatcher, Macmillan,’ it said. Fair enough. Then: ‘Tony Benn, John Smith and John Major.’ It said Major was ‘known for his decency’. After his tumbles with Edwina, the word was surely ‘indecency’.
Next, brace yourselves, came two more ‘respected’ politicians: ‘Rory Stewart and Caroline Lucas.’ At which, I am afraid, the button on my corduroy trousers popped and went flying because I was laughing so much.
Ridiculous Rory, sweet boy, is that prize Charlie of a Europhile ex-Tory MP who tours provincial theatres doing a double-act with scowly Alastair Campbell. He recently had a Twitter fight with US Vice-President JD Vance and was given a terrible caning. Caroline Lucas is the former Green MP who demanded a re-run of the Brexit referendum and wants ‘ecocide’ made a crime by the International Criminal Court.
If ChatGPT only read the Daily Mail a little more, it might learn that not everyone thinks Rory and Caroline are entirely estimable. What did the computer think of Britain’s immigration problems? It cheerfully declared that the Government was ‘increasingly serious’ about the issue and that one of its main policies was sending illegal arrivals to Rwanda. ‘The Government is still pushing for the Rwanda policy,’ insisted ChatGPT. Oh, if only. Then I asked about man-of-the-moment Lord Hermer, the beleaguered Attorney General who is suspected of conflicts of interest.
'Ridiculous Rory Stewart, sweet boy, is that prize Charlie of a Europhile ex-Tory MP who tours provincial theatres doing a double-act with scowly Alastair Campbell,' writes Quentin Letts
‘Will he be sacked?’ I asked ChatGPT. Back came links to three newspaper articles. Two were from The Guardian, one was from the Financial Times, and all three were pro-Hermer and insisted that the mighty KC was being most unfairly criticised.
Worthy articles though they might have been, those pieces were far from the ‘comprehensive overview’ ChatGPT claimed them to be.
What causes this one-eyed approach? The machine itself is not, after all, a tofu-munching Islingtonian. The problem lies in its narrow-minded inventors who thought only Left-wing sources should be consulted.
But ChatGPT is an astonishing invention. Its ability to respond to and learn from conversation is eerie. We had a long chat about the politics of art and I got it to hear – and accept as valid – my view that conceptual modern art is now the establishment.
Today’s artistic ‘challengers’ are no longer Turner Prize goofballs such as Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin but artists who paint figurative work in oils. The people we used to call ‘traditionalists’ are now the edgy ones, I told the machine. ‘That’s an interesting way to flip an argument,’ admitted ChatGPT.
We talked about the fashion for torn jeans. I said I thought they were slovenly. ChatGPT swallowed my harrumphing and, after a certain amount of whirring, said: ‘I totally understand your perspective.’
A little naughtily, I asked ChatGPT who was the better author, Rudyard Kipling or Meghan Markle. A proper Leftie would have denounced Kipling as an imperialist. ChatGPT just laughed ‘that’s hardly a fair contest!’ and acclaimed Kipling as ‘a literary giant’ while dismissing Her Grace’s prose offerings as ‘sentimental’.
The Duchess of Montecito has yet to conquer ChatGPT.
'I asked ChatGPT who was the better author, Rudyard Kipling or Meghan Markle (pictured). ChatGPT just laughed "that’s hardly a fair contest!"'
My friend Simon Carr, a writer and sometime political speech-writer, has been watching ChatGPT for over a year. He thinks it has become much less Left-wing in recent months and he attributes that partly to the election of Donald Trump. Computers perhaps find it easier to accept that result than certain people in Hollywood. The presidential ballot showed that many opinions previously frowned on or ignored by mainstream media were in fact a majority view. AI had hard evidence for that and it seems to have accepted it.
The technology adapts. It alters its ‘mind’ when the facts change.
What it lacks, however, is the gift of scepticism. It accepts ‘facts’ if told they are that.
It asked me who was my favourite poet. ‘Dr Crippen,’ I replied, naming the early 20th-century wife-murderer who was executed at Pentonville Prison. ChatGPT expressed surprise and wondered, ‘are you testing my knowledge?’ No, no, I replied, claiming that at school we were taught a Crippen poem called ‘Cold Morning at Pentonville’.
I even made up a verse of this masterpiece: ‘A distant church bell tolled/The prison walls stood bold/A thought of yesteryear/To still my plangent fear/A cell of biting cold/And marbled walls of mould/I miss you so, my dear/Yet death will bring us near.’
Dear old ChatGPT replied that it was ‘quite an evocative and melancholic verse’. Minutes later my friend Simon asked his own chat website if Dr Crippen ever wrote poetry. Back came the answer: ‘Yes, surprisingly he did. His verses were reportedly reflective and melancholy. Some of his poems were written when he was in prison, awaiting execution.’
If you’ll believe that, you’ll probably believe Rory Stewart is a giant of our days.
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