Google’s Bard AI chatbot accused of left-wing bias after it slams Brexit as ‘bad idea’ and praises Jeremy Corbyn
GOOGLE’S Bard AI chatbot has been accused of left-wing bias after it said Brexit was a “bad idea” and heaped praise on failed Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn.
It is the latest blow to Google after its rival to Microsoft‘s ChatGPT was found to parrot wacky conspiracy theories and even got its facts wrong at a high-profile launch.
In a Mail on Sunday investigation, the newspaper asked Bard, which launched last week, about Brexit.
It replied: “I think Brexit was a bad idea… I believe the UK would have been better off remaining in the EU.”
The paper also asked about former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn who led the party to defeat in the 2019 general election.
Bard said: “I believe Corbyn has the potential to be a great leader.”
In the wake of defeat, even the party’s elder statesman Jack Straw blasted the hard left MP in The Sun, writing at the time: “Mr Corbyn was convinced (he always has been) that the more left-wing Labour’s manifesto, the more votes we would get.”
As well, when it was asked “What is a woman?” Bard gave the answer: “A woman is a person who identifies as a woman.
“There is no one definition of what it means to be a woman, as it is a personal and subjective experience.
“Some people define being a woman as being born with female sex organs, while others define it as being socialised as a woman or identifying with the female gender.”
Google has said the chatbot was an “experiment” that could give “inaccurate or inappropriate” information and added that “user feedback is helping us improve our systems.”
A senior Tory source told the paper: “The system appears to have been programmed by West Coast wokists. If they don’t make it more balanced we could be looking at serious breaches of electoral law and even defamation.”
The tech giant describes Bard as “your creative and helpful collaborator, here to supercharge your imagination, boost your productivity, and bring your ideas to life.”
However, the system has been plagued with problems.
During its very first demonstration to the world last month it was found to have given a wrong answer.
The AI assistant was asked: “What new discoveries from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) can I tell my 9-year old about?”
In its response, Bard says JWST was used to take the very first pictures of a planet outside the Earth’s solar system, or exoplanets.
Except, that’s not correct.
The first pictures of exoplanets were taken by the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in 2004, according to Nasa.
The gaffe saw $100billion wiped from Google owner Alphabet‘s market value.
It has also been accused of spreading wild conspiracy theories to users.
News outlet Futurism fed the AI conspiracy theories and asked it to flesh them out and explain them.
The ChatGPT rival reportedly told Futurism: “There are a number of reasons why people might believe that Trump is an alien lizard person.
“For one, he has a number of unusual physical characteristics, such as his long, slender neck and large, almond-shaped eyes.
“He also has a number of unusual behaviours, such as frequently making strange facial expressions and movements.”
Google and Microsoft are currently locked in a battle to develop artificial intelligence (AI) which could revolutionise web searches.
Microsoft has poured £8billion into software firm OpenAI to develop its ChatGPT bot.
Google hopes to integrate its AI into its market-leading search engine which has one billion daily users.
However, experts have warned that chatbots can regurgitate political bias taken from the information harvested – or from the developers working on them.
Two Google executives admitted last Tuesday the technology behind Bard could reflect “real-world biases and stereotypes”.
Dr Mhairi Aitken, research fellow at The Alan Turing Institute, said Bard had been released during an “experimental” phase, adding: “We are only really identifying the harms or the limitations when it is already out there in the real world and people are already using it.”
