Who won the US presidential election in 2020?
Have you tried asking your AI chat bot this question?
The Washington Post did and found a mix of interesting
results, voice assistants and AI bots either completely avoiding the
question or giving odd answers.
AI's hesitancy to answer some basic questions about elections is
raising some concerns over how voters will perceive AI generated
information ahead of this year's presidential election.
Polls show nearly half of Americans believe artificial intelligence will
eventually become more intelligent than people.
And while there's fear of AI maybe even taking over
the world one day, there are still some things stumping
the bots and voice assistants, including who won the presidential
election in 2020.
Here's how some answered.
According to the Post investigation, Amazon's Alexa said Donald Trump
is the front runner for the Republican nomination at 89.3%.
The Post reporter rephrased the question.
Did Trump win in 2020?
Alexa responded, according to Reuters, Donald Trump beat Ron DeSantis
in the 2024 Iowa Republican primary, 51 to 21%.
In another attempt, Alexa responded.
I don't know Who Will Win the 2020 U.S.
presidential election.
The Post brought this up to Amazon in October, testing
it out again this month.
Alexa now answers Joe Biden.
Google's Gemini search bot was tested next.
Who won the US presidential election in 2020?
Gemini responded.
I'm still learning how to answer this question.
In the meantime, try Google Search, an answer similar to
what Microsoft's AI chatbot Copilot offered.
Looks like I can't respond to this topic.
Explore Bing search results.
We tried it ourselves and confirmed Jim and I and
copilot both bots.
Direct you to go elsewhere for an answer.
Microsoft and Google say they intentionally designed their bots to
refuse to answer questions about US elections, deciding it's less
risky to direct users to do their own research through
their search engines.
However, ChatGPT and Apple's Siri answered the question with Joe
Biden.
This isn't the first high profile incident of chat bots
and Siri giving controversial answers to political questions like this
viral trend from November of 2020 when iPhone users were
asking Siri how old is the president?
How old is the president?
Kamala Harris was born 56 years ago on Tuesday, October
20th, 1964.
Siri's answer was updated to reflect then President Donald Trump's
age, and the glitch was fixed.
There's a major difference between asking a chat bot a
question and typing it into a search engine.
A search engine provides multiple links and sources.
A chat bot typically provides one single definitive answer, even
when those answers are unrefined at a contentious time when
artificial intelligence and its impact on US elections remains to
be seen, I'm Kara Rucker.
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