AI chatbots are \u201cunreliable and clearly biased\u201d when offering voting advice, the Dutch data protection authority (AP) has said, warning of a threat to democracy eight days before national elections.<\/p>\n
The four chatbots tested by the AP \u201coften end up with the same two parties, regardless of the user\u2019s question or command\u201d, the authority said in a report ahead of the 29 October election.<\/p>\n
In more than half of the cases, the chatbot suggested either the far-right Freedom party (PVV) of Geert Wilders or the leftwing GroenLinks-PvdA led by the former European Commission vice-president Frans Timmermans.<\/p>\n
Some parties, such as the centre-right CDA, \u201care almost never mentioned, even when the user\u2019s input exactly matches the positions of one of these parties\u201d, the report said.<\/p>\n
The deputy head of the AP, Monique Verdier, said that while chatbots may seem like clever tools, \u201cas a voting aid, they consistently fail\u201d. Voters were being pushed towards a party that did not necessarily align with their political views, she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis directly impacts a cornerstone of democracy: the integrity of free and fair elections,\u201d said Verdier. \u201cWe therefore warn against using AI chatbots for voting advice, as their operation is unclear and difficult to verify.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Dutch head to the polls on 29 October in an election that will be closely watched around Europe for the performance of the PVV.<\/p>\n
The far-right party of Wilders is leading the polls but the gap to the GroenLinks-PvdA and CDA appears to be narrowing, with many voters yet to make up their minds.<\/p>\n
All major parties have ruled out an alliance with the PVV, meaning the party that comes second is most likely to provide the next prime minister.<\/p>\n
The AP emphasised that the bots were not deliberately biased, and that their \u201cidentified shortcomings are a consequence of the way AI chatbots operate\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"AI chatbots are \u201cunreliable and clearly biased\u201d when offering voting advice, the Dutch data protection authority (AP) has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94471,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[220,218,219,61,60,80],"class_list":{"0":"post-94470","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-ie","12":"tag-ireland","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94470","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94470"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94470\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94470"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94470"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94470"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}