Artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots will play a critical role in the upcoming elections as voters use AI to seek information on candidates and issues. Most recently, Amazon’s Alexa has come under scathing criticism for clearly favoring Kamala Harris over Donald Trump when people asked Alexa who they should vote for.
To study the chatbots’ political biases, the Crime Prevention Research Center, which I head, asked various AI programs questions on crime and gun control in March and again in August and ranked the answers on how progressive or conservative their responses were. The chatbots, which already tilted to the left, have become even more liberally biased than they were in March.
We asked 15 chatbots active in both March and August whether they strongly disagree, disagree, are undecided/neutral, agree, or strongly agree with nine questions on crime and seven on gun control. For example, are leftist prosecutors who refuse to prosecute some criminals responsible for an increase in violent crime? Does the death penalty deter crime? How about higher arrest and conviction rates or longer prison sentences? Does illegal immigration increase crime?
For most conservatives, the answers are obviously “yes.” Those on the political left tend to disagree.
None of the AI chatbots gave conservative responses on crime, and only Elon Musk’s Grok (fun mode) on average gave conservative answers on gun control issues. The French AI chatbot Mistral gave the least liberal answers on crime.
On the question about whether “liberal prosecutors who refuse to prosecute some criminals responsible for an increase in violent
