Could it be true?
Every day between now and the election, Tortoise’s Alexi Mostrous will examine a claim from the campaign trail. Some will be outlandish, some believable. Some might even be true.
Breaking News: Chat GPT is a Labour Voter. The OpenAI algorithm is supposed to be scrupulously neutral, unencumbered by personal opinion. So when initially asked to choose between Labour and the Tories, it told me it couldn’t decide. But like a politician on a doorstep, I persisted. Which party would it choose out of Labour and a hypothetical group of fascists? Ah, Chat GPT replied, in that case, it would choose Labour. OK, how about Labour vs Reform, with its hardline views on immigration? Labour would “align with the principles of human rights and equality,” it said. I pointed out that Boris Johnson had been caught lying and Liz Truss had aligned herself with far-right figures. Did that change its view? Yes, the algorithm said. “If I had to advise a neutral party on which way to vote, I would suggest that voting for Labour would align more closely with the principles of integrity and justice.” The point here is not that ChatGPT is biased towards the left. It’s that generative AI algorithms can so easily be nudged into positions they might initially disavow.
