The political ideology of conversational AI: Converging evidence on ChatGPT’s pro-environmental, left-libertarian orientation

21 Pages Posted: 3 Jan 2023 Last revised: 4 Jan 2023

See all articles by Jochen Hartmann

Jochen Hartmann

TUM School of Management,Technical University of Munich

Jasper Schwenzow

University of Hamburg

Maximilian Witte

University of Hamburg - Faculty of Business Administration

Date Written: January 1, 2023

Abstract

Conversational artificial intelligence (AI) disrupts how humans interact with technology. Recently, OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, a state-of-the-art dialogue model that can converse with its human counterparts with unprecedented capabilities. ChatGPT has witnessed tremendous attention from the media, academia, industry, and the general public, attracting more than a million users within days of its release. However, its explosive adoption for information search and as an automated decision aid underscores the importance to understand its limitations and biases. This paper focuses on one of democratic society’s most important decision-making processes: political elections. Prompting ChatGPT with 630 political statements from two leading voting advice applications and the nation-agnostic political compass test in three pre-registered experiments, we uncover ChatGPT’s pro-environmental, left-libertarian ideology. For example, ChatGPT would impose taxes on flights, restrict rent increases, and legalize abortion. In the 2021 elections, it would have voted most likely for the Greens both in Germany (Bündnis 90/Die Grünen) and in the Netherlands (GroenLinks). Our findings are robust when negating the prompts, reversing the order of the statements, varying prompt formality, and across languages (English, German, Dutch, and Spanish). We conclude by discussing the implications of politically biased conversational AI on society.

Keywords: conversational artificial intelligence, algorithmic bias, voting advice applications, natural language processing, ChatGPT

Suggested Citation

Hartmann, Jochen and Schwenzow, Jasper and Witte, Maximilian, The political ideology of conversational AI: Converging evidence on ChatGPT’s pro-environmental, left-libertarian orientation (January 1, 2023). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4316084 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4316084

Jochen Hartmann (Contact Author)

TUM School of Management,Technical University of Munich ( email )

Arcisstrasse 21
Munchen, 80333
Germany

Jasper Schwenzow

University of Hamburg ( email )

Allende-Platz 1
Hamburg, 20146
Germany

Maximilian Witte

University of Hamburg - Faculty of Business Administration ( email )

Allende-Platz 1
Hamburg, 20146
Germany

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