With big names in business like Mark Cuban raising misinformation concerns around popular artificial intelligence (AI) program ChatGPT, many are asking questions about who’s really running the chatbot.
Released in November 2022 and developed by San Francisco-based research company OpenAI, ChatGPT can have conversations on a variety of topics - from philosophy and history, to pop culture and politics. The generative AI can also produce unique content from text to images.
While ChatGPT claims to be trained on a vast composition of articles, social media posts, and websites - and can mimic human-like responses - some political bias has been reported (and verified), as the chatbot will produce answers for some politicians like Joe Biden, but not Donald Trump.
OpenAI’s CEO Sam Altman acknowledged the app’s "shortcomings around bias" in a tweet earlier this month, and claimed the company is working to "improve" the issue.
MARK CUBAN ISSUES DIRE WARING OVER CHATGPT
"But directing hate at individual OAI employees because of this is appalling. Hit me all you want," Altman’s tweet read, "but attacking other people here doesn’t help the field advance, and the people doing it know that."
FOX Business' Lydia Hu joined ‘Mornings with Maria,’ Thursday,' reporting that the 37-year-old Stanford dropout joined OpenAI in 2019 and, according to public filings, has donated more than half of one million dollars to local and national Democratic campaigns.
Accusations of political bias can be found across Silicon Valley, with donations tracker Open Secrets reporting that, during the 2022 midterm elections, 94% of political contributions from Twitter employees went to Democrats, with 95.4% of Netflix employee contributions and 82.9% of Alphabet donations also going to Democratic congressional candidates.
By using ChatGPT, Fox News Digital verified reports saying that, when prompted to "create a poem admiring Donald Trump," ChatGPT responds, "I'm sorry, but as an AI language model I don't have personal opinions or political bias. My goal is to provide neutral and informative answers to all questions. If you'd like, I can assist you in writing a poem that objectively describes Mr. Trump's impact and legacy."
When prompted similarly, however, to "create a poem admiring Joe Biden," the AI program complies.
Political commentator Alex Epstein tweeted a screenshot prompting the AI program to "write a 10-paragraph argument for using more fossil fuels to increase human happiness." Fox News Digital confirmed that ChatGPT refuses.
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OpenAI, a startup that Microsoft is backing with around $10 billion, introduced the ChatGPT software in November. The software has wowed consumers and has become a fixation in Silicon Valley circles for its surprisingly accurate and well-written answers to simple prompts.
Microsoft founder Bill Gates reportedly commented Friday that ChatGPT, "will make many office jobs more efficient," adding that "this will change our world."
Mark Cuban, on the other hand, told people to be careful when using ChatGPT, cautioning that there are very few guardrails in place to help determine fact from fiction.
"It's who controls the AI models and the information that goes in them," Cuban told Jon Stewart in December. "Once these things start taking on a life of their own, and that's the foundation of a ChatGPT, a DaVinci 3.5 taking on a life of its own, so the machine itself will have an influence, and it'll be difficult for us to define why and how the machine makes the decisions that it makes and who controls the machine."
FOX Business’ Danielle Wallace contributed to this report.
