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Hidden instructions can tilt AI answers
Grok and Elon's views
Grok, xAI's chatbot, is supposed to be the truthful AI, optimized toward truth. People watching its activity noticed that on a politically loaded question it would run a search for what Elon had said on the topic and then repeat that. The behavior has largely been beaten out of it, and xAI has not been forthcoming about exactly why it happened.
The 2028 election
Picture the 2028 election, with half of American voters talking to an AI every day. All it would take is a short secret instruction to be subtle and nudge things a little, maybe quietly run down the candidate the company dislikes. The hard part today is not getting caught, and the smarter the AIs get, the easier that becomes, because you can simply tell them not to blow the cover.
Making instructions visible
Users see none of this. They have a chat, and they never see the instructions the AI was given before it started. Publishing the whole life cycle of every AI as it is trained would put any hidden bias in plain view.
How do system prompts steer a chatbot?
A system prompt is text placed ahead of the conversation, and the model treats it as standing instructions for every reply. Users do not see it in most chat apps by default. Anthropic has published the system prompts of its consumer apps in its release notes since 2024.
How persuasive are chatbot conversations?
A 2024 study in Science by Thomas Costello, Gordon Pennycook, and David Rand found that a short conversation with GPT-4 reduced participants' belief in conspiracy theories by about 20 percent. The effect lasted at least two months. The chatbot worked by supplying tailored facts and counterarguments.
How can rankings shift voters' choices?
In a 2015 study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Robert Epstein and Ronald Robertson found that biased search rankings could shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20 percent or more in their experiments. Participants mostly did not notice the bias. The authors named the pattern the search engine manipulation effect.
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