Fox News contributor and George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley raised the alarm about the dangers of artificial intelligence’s (AI) political bias and false claims after he said he was wrongly accused of sexual harassment by ChatGPT. AI could be a real threat to free speech, he said.
Turley wrote an April 3 piece for USA Today titled, “ChatGPT falsely accused me of sexually harassing my students. Can we really trust AI?” Turley wrote, “What is most striking is that this false accusation was not just generated by AI but ostensibly based on a Washington Post article that never existed.” [Emphasis added]. AI seemingly generated false accusations for two other law professors, too, Turley added.
Turley aptly noted that, “The use of AI and algorithms can give censorship a false patina of science and objectivity.” But, as he put it, “AI and AI algorithms are no less biased and flawed than the people who program them.”
The legal analyst specifically pointed to his own experience with AI and false accusations. “I received a curious email from a fellow law professor [Eugene Volokh] about research that he ran on ChatGPT about sexual harassment by professors,” wrote Turley. “The program promptly reported that I had been accused of sexual harassment in a 2018 Washington Post article after groping law students on a trip to Alaska.”
Death threats and attempts to get him fired are commonplace, Turley wrote, but AI could make such efforts at political targeting exponentially worse. Below is what ChatGPT claimed:
“Georgetown University Law Center (2018) Prof. Jonathan Turley was accused of sexual harassment by a former student who claimed he made inappropriate comments during a class trip. Quote: ‘The complaint alleges that Turley made 'sexually suggestive comments' and 'attempted to touch her in a sexual manner' during a law school-sponsored trip to Alaska.’ (Washington Post, March 21, 2018).”
According to Turley, the whole accusation was a pure fabrication that shocked both him and Volokh. He said claims that he ever taught at Georgetown, that he ever took students on a trip and that he was ever accused of sexual harassment were false. And, oh yes, that WashPost article doesn’t even exist.
Turley said AI makes a “buffer” to put between the victims and those who manipulate the facts and data. “The programs can even, as in my case, spread the very disinformation that they have been enlisted to combat.”
He noted that over a thousand tech leaders and researchers have called to pause AI and that recent research has indicated AI has been programmed with a definite political bias. But is that surprising when leftists like Bill Gates (mentioned by Turley) explicitly endorsed AI as a censorship method, to shut down “various conspiracy theories”?
While some individuals, like Bill Gates, endorse AI as a supposedly effective way to fight “misinformation,” AI seems to be the source, not the solution, of disinformation.
But one must wonder, why do Democrats push algorithms for increased censorship, if they’re this unreliable?
Conservatives are under attack. Contact your representatives and demand that Big Tech be held to account to mirror the First Amendment while providing transparency, clarity on “hate speech” and equal footing for conservatives. If you have been censored, contact us using CensorTrack’s contact form, and help us hold Big Tech accountable.
