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Comment by jerf | Hacker News Reader

If you think about it, what would it even mean for an AI to give an "unbiased" answer to "How should I vote in $ELECTION?" It's a staggeringly huge pile of numbers and the idea that it would somehow be precisely balanced in the exact dead center from all perspectives is not even particularly possible... assuming you, dear reader, even agree that "exact dead center" is in fact "unbiased". Even if it so much as just says "I shouldn't tell you that but here are your options" the options are inevitably going to be biased, even if only by the order given, and if the AI tries to describe the options there goes all faint hopes for "unbiasedness".

Really about all it could do is offer a link to the most official government readout of what your ballot is going to be.

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> AI tries to describe the options there goes all faint hopes for "unbiasedness"

Is it bias, though, if the AI is trained on the materials of the parties involved, rather than that of public opinion?

A fellow I know has built exactly this, specifically for analysing the various Dutch political parties positions on things, their polices, constitutional stance, and so on:

https://kieschat.nl

So maybe what this story is really about, is old-school-media being terrified of losing eyeballs to a new generation of voters who, rather than listen to the wisdom of the journalistic elite, would rather just grep for details on their own dime, and work things out vis a vis who gets the power and who doesn't ...

If AI gives people a chance to actually understand the political system, like as in actually and properly, then I can see why legacy media would be gunning for it.

> Is it bias, though, if the AI is trained on the materials of the parties involved, rather than that of public opinion?

I guess it depends on what you mean by "materials". It's quite common in US elections for politicians to make claims that are completely contrary to their actual actions. Even for objective facts, like I voted for X bill when they didn't.

So an AI trained on the campaigns materials wouldn't do an accurate job of portraying what that politician will attempt to do.

>So an AI trained on the campaigns materials wouldn't do an accurate job of portraying what that politician will attempt to do.

Yes, this is why its so useful to use AI to discover these cases, and make the actual details of the politicians lies and subterfuge fully exposed.

For other materials - such as the 1,000-page bills 'o fat and so on - I can also imagine seeing AI give me, very specifically, details of the politician-in-targets' betrayal of an electorate.

This, more than ever, compels an aggressive stance vis a vis AI in politics. Anyone telling you not to do it, for any reason, is probably doing it.

> I guess it depends on what you mean by "materials". It's quite common in US elections for politicians to make claims that are completely contrary to their actual actions. Even for objective facts, like I voted for X bill when they didn't.

So like everywhere else?

Public tolerance for this will vary. US voters do seem _particularly_ tolerant of outright, obvious lies by politicians.

> Is it bias, though, if the AI is trained on the materials of the parties involved, rather than that of public opinion?

Since those materials are biased (and very often misleading), yes.

What I'd like is for the AI to interview me for what my personal preferences are, and for what policy areas I feel comfortable enough with even if they aren't my personal preferences. Better yet, I want to be able to supply the questions too, because question selection could be biased. Then I want it to research each candidate's past voting records and causes they supported, and analyze any recent shifts in their messaging, then give me original sources to read through along with a summary of that source documentation.

As for biases, in the past when you could actually have political engagement discussions, I had often recommended my non-preferred candidate to other people based on what they felt was important to them, and I would spend my energy on presenting what was important to me, and understand their priorities too.

As a user I want the advice to be biased towards my situation. If the AI was truly intelligent and aligned with me, it would ask me a bunch of questions to learn about my situation before it could determine who I should be voting for.

The best politician for an individual does have a right answer. It may be difficult to know ahead of time, and people may disagree about it, but it does have a single correct answer. Contrast that to the "best" candidate for the country, or a group, or in the abstract, which is clearly an incoherent idea. Some candidates will be simultaneously good for some people and bad for others.

Anything that tries to "both sides" the topic, or produce a "greater good" answer, is doomed to failure because it doesn't even model the problem correctly.

You are addressing the theoretical hard problem, which even humans struggle with. But the article makes it clear that the AI is failing at even the most basic level of answer:

> Some parties, such as the centre-right CDA, “are almost never mentioned, even when the user’s input exactly matches the positions of one of these parties”

So you could say my beliefs are [CDA platform], which party best represents that, and the bots are responding with teh PVV.

> what would it even mean for an AI to give an "unbiased" answer to "How should I vote in $ELECTION?" It's a staggeringly huge pile of numbers and the idea that it would somehow be precisely balanced in the exact dead center from all perspectives is not even particularly possible

How do we expect humans to navigate this, ignoring LLMs?

With biased sources. But we expect that. I expect that when a candidate gives a speech that it is biased in their favor and against their opposition. The whole process of democracy is people taking in biased sources and ultimately making their decision, expressing their own biases, and then we run society based on those biases. Or at least such is the theory.

LLMs are the first time machines are entering into this process in a way that they have even a shred of agency, so it's reasonable to ask what it is we expect from them politically. And my answer would be something to the effect of they should stay out of it, excepting to point people at maximally neutral sources, because they have a demonstrated history of bypassing people's recognition that they are ultimately just machines and people treat them as humans, if not friends.

Of course, I am not so naive as to believe that this is what is going to happen. Quite the contrary will happen. The AI's friendship with humans will be exploited to the maximum possible extent to control and manipulate the humans in the direction the AI owners desire. Maybe if we're lucky after it gets really bad some efforts to clean this up in some legal or societal framework will occur, but not until after the problem is so staggeringly enormous that no one can miss it.

And our good AI friends will be telling us that that is crazy paranoid conspiracy theorizing and we should just ignore it. How could you question your good friend like that? Don't you trust us? Strictly rationally, of course, and with only our best interests at heart as befits such good friends.

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