People are asking ChatGPT to help them decide how to vote in the midterms

10 days ago by return2ozma to c/technology

Archangel1313 144 points 10 days ago

We're seriously fuckin' doomed, as a species. All the morons are outsourcing their decision making to people who've learned to game the system exclusively for profit.

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gashead76 47 points 10 days ago

It really is nightmarish. I don’t know how else to say it. Something’s gotta give, but I’m afraid it’s not going to.

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NoLemurs 20 points 10 days ago

Honestly, this is nothing new.

Listening to ChatGPT is a solid improvement over listening to Tucker Carlson.

Don't get me wrong, it's not good! I don't exactly trust the Sam Altmans of the world. But this is the same circus, different clowns.

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myrmidex 4 points 9 days ago

same circus, different clowns.

Or as I heard the other day:

Same shit, different flies

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district 1 point 6 days ago

Until the inevitable weight update payed for by advertiser dollars to attempt profitability

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BurgerBaron 13 points 9 days ago

Looks at religion

Not much different, really.

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Malica 1 point 9 days ago

Profit and cruelty

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Pratai -1 points 9 days ago

I’ve always felt lucky to have been born Gen X. The music, the movies, the sports… all the legendary moments and all the huge breakthroughs to have been able to experience.

But now, sadly- there is another bonus, I’ll never live long enough to see end-result of AI erasing human culture. It’s enough to see it so quickly and thoroughly hobble the younger generation’s ability to think for themselves… we also have to see people dumb enough to enable it to continue.

I may not be glad when my times comes… but I think I’ll be pretty relieved.

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joella 55 points 10 days ago

At least they're not asking grok.

ugh. but they probably are, aren't they?

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Psythik 22 points 9 days ago

gRoK iS tHiS tRuE?

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corsicanguppy 42 points 10 days ago

I cannot imagine someone not being VERY sure how to vote in this next American election.

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WhoIzDisIz 9 points 10 days ago

Trump isn't on the ballot, and they won't pay enough attention to their Congress critters to know whether they should keep them. People who don't pay a certain minimal amount of attention shouldn't be permitted pushed (word change due to an admittedly poor choice of word, but if you read the entirely of what I've written then it's obvious what problem I'm trying to address) to vote, IMHO, because for them it's purely a popularity of the moment contest rather than the choice of who will actually work towards improving their constituents' lives - an utterly absurd basis for determining the future of us all.

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TheTechnician27 8 points 10 days ago

People who don't pay a certain minimal amount of attention shouldn't be permitted to vote, IMHO

Ironically, you'd have to not be paying a certain minimal amount of attention to checks notes middle school US history to not understand how catastrophic this is in practice. Incidentally, that SPLC quiz isn't even nearly the extent of the questions.

I would bar you from voting for this statement alone on the merits of "paying attention".

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WhoIzDisIz 1 point 10 days ago

Yeah, I've heard that before, but it's a single example - it's not an invalid point, but neither is mine. I think there may be ways of addressing that potential problem if we try hard enough to find a way, but we haven't for fear of repeating that issue.

Too many people just aren't interested in what those running their lives are up to, and yet they're routinely told to go vote if they want to be considered good citizens. So it's become a circus every election cycle. I think those people shouldn't be pushed to vote if they're not interested in understanding what's going on in their capitals, plain and simple. They'll learn the hard way to have an interest.

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TheTechnician27 3 points 10 days ago

but it’s a single example

No, it isn't. In fact, the South wasn't even the first in the US to do this for the express purpose of disenfranchising a minority – more evidence that you aren't paying sufficient attention to the policy you want implemented. Some decades earlier, Connecticut implemented literacy tests to specifically (and successfully) disenfranchise Irish immigrants.

Even if you ignore that:

  1. Jim Crow-era literacy tests happened over a period of 75 years. That's not "one example"; that's a bunch of states over the course of nearly a century disenfranchising millions.
  2. It's so blatantly obvious once you examine that "one example"(TM) why this system fundamentally cannot work and will be abused. If you can't see that, then I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to turn you away from the polling station, because you're clearly unequipped to vote.
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Malica 2 points 9 days ago

How do they walk around with so little awareness of reality?

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yessikg 1 point 3 days ago

I only trust 1/3 of USAmericans to show up, the other 2/3 have disappointed me too many times already to expect anything of them

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Proprietary_Blend -9 points 10 days ago

Lemme guess. Blue no matter who?

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Grimy 24 points 9 days ago

Facebook in one ear and chatgpt in the other. We are doomed.

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Prox 20 points 10 days ago

Ballot language is crafted to be intentionally misleading and political ads are nothing but hyperbole bullshit.

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jaamesbaxterr 14 points 9 days ago

That's so smart. You don't have to do any thinking. Pretty soon all thought will be eliminated and AI can tell us how to do everything from how to tie our shoes to how to structure our society. That way we just do what we're told and can be ruled by a handful of billionaires. Smart. /S

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TubularTittyFrog 6 points 9 days ago

most people don't enjoy thinking. they also don't enjoy running marathons.

because both things are painful. they are also time consuming.

they only becoming enjoyable or worthwhile when you have a sufficient level of practice. for someone who is a couch potato, running a marathon is impossible without months or years of hard work, and they also likely think marathon running is stupid and pointless and there is likely something 'wrong' with people who run marathons.

thinking and using your mental faculties are no different than your physical ones.

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Aceofspades 4 points 9 days ago

Can confirm. Am dumb and lazy.

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yakko 3 points 9 days ago

As a smart person who hates running I'm really struggling with this one

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TubularTittyFrog 2 points 8 days ago

if you aren't taking care of your health via exercise, you're not that smart, are you?

your mind can only function as well as your body can. a good diet and exercise increases your mental capacities.

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yakko 3 points 8 days ago

One section per day, two sets.

Lower Body Banded front squats 50lb x20 Deadlifts 120lb x20 Lunges x20 Slow Glute Bridges x20

Core/Butt Donkey kicks banded x20 (40/50lb) Clamshells x20 Bicycle Crunches x20 Leg Lift Plank 15sec ea side

Upper Body Push-ups x12 Ring Rows x20 Dip x12 or OH Extension 50lbx10 Bicep curls x12 me 70lb E 50lb bands

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Doomsider 13 points 10 days ago

What could possibly go wrong.

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BlindPenguin 13 points 9 days ago

They are also asking AI to do their grocery list. As i had the pleasure of learning just recently on reddit, when this was posted there.

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TubularTittyFrog 6 points 9 days ago

how does that even work?

like isn't giving it the inputs of your groceries the same thing as making the list yourself?

or is more like they say 'i want to cook tandoori chicken this week' and it just pulls from a generic recipe the ingredients list?

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BlindPenguin 6 points 8 days ago

I have no idea. I got downvoted and some dude kept accusing me of "trying to win a discussion" and tell me that he "doesn't understand my garbage arguments".

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theuniqueone 9 points 10 days ago

In an ideal world where it still exists it would just give them approved links to the candidates policies and voting history but we all know that's not what's happening.

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sbbq 8 points 9 days ago

God, these people are not capable of rational thought.

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muusemuuse 4 points 9 days ago

I’ll admit I am a little stumped myself. Do I vote against republicans early or wait until voting day? What’s going to be harder for them to steal?

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yessikg 2 points 3 days ago

Early in person voting tends to be the safest bet

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grapefruittrouble 4 points 10 days ago

Is this not what it was designed for?

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WhoIzDisIz 9 points 10 days ago

Not with the monied interests in charge of its operation. They want people to depend upon the big AIs for answers to everything so they can subtly guide the populace's "thinking" and control them like the sheep most of them are.

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Dojan 2 points 10 days ago

Yes, that’s what the comment was saying.

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WhoIzDisIz 2 points 10 days ago

Could be interpreted either way, I suppose - it was extremely vague.

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grapefruittrouble 2 points 9 days ago

I did mean it that way haha

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Zomg 3 points 9 days ago

When the companies can adjust the weights and responses to be more soft or critical to topics, you can't exactly trust that it isn't unbias some how.

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TubularTittyFrog 2 points 9 days ago

you can click through to the source material when it's linked.

but nobody is doing that, and when I admit to doing it people tell me I'm deranged.

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Dojan 0 points 10 days ago
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Sandbar_Trekker 4 points 9 days ago

Some candidates just don't have a lot of public information available about them. Relying on their campaign page alone can tell you which audience they're trying to get votes from, but it doesn't always line up with how they'll actually act.

There are varying degrees of bad to good ways of utilizing LLMs for something like this.

The worst way is to just straight up ask it who to vote for. I doubt this is how it's being used. Most likely people are telling it what kind of political views they hold and then asking which candidate supports those views. Still a terrible way to handle the situation since it's not hard for an LLM to hallucinate information, especially when candidates have similar names to others in its training.

Having a long political chat with a non-local LLM is a quick way to let companies create a political profile on all of their users.

One good way would be to use a locally run LLM, provide a bunch of source material (every bill they've written/sponsored), and ask it to find evidence that a candidate supports particular viewpoints. Ask it to point directly to where in the source material that reinforces/conflicts with those viewpoints. Then double check the flagged source material for accuracy.

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TubularTittyFrog 3 points 9 days ago

Yeah, that's true. One thing that drives me nuts about local elections is... there is no useful info on the candidates, not from themselves, not from news papers, not from anyone... it sucks.

almost all the 'info' about my local candidates was... arguments on Facebook about why candidate x or candidate y and an evil demonic force, or an angelic savior of the people.

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zebidiah 3 points 7 days ago

....never stop proving you are the stupidest fucking people in the whole world america

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CaptainBasculin 3 points 8 days ago

On the last election in my country, I've visited tents set by 10 different political parties that are entering the election just to see how would they try to convince me, if I went to them as an uncertain voter that's warm to their party. It was a genuine eye-opener regarding what these parties do to influence uncertain voters which especially matters in my country because on polls, people that are uncertain make up %12-16, which will tip elections exactly when it matters.

3 parties instantly tried to recruit me as a party member within the first minute, 5 parties we actually had a discussion that 2 of which had a roadmap they could present right there, 2 parties treated it as a gift merch with their names on to boost their visibility operation, on one party the dude there had no idea what their ideology is and just said "trust me man this dude is solid. Vote him", one party just badmouthed an opposing party in the whole discussion and didn't mention a single thing they would improve.

No amount of AI could give that amount of representation I got right there.

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yessikg 1 point 3 days ago

For anybody looking for a good resource: Ballotpedia is pretty good

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magnue -1 points 8 days ago

I'll play devil's advocate here and say that for people who use AI to make this decision, it's going to make them decide better.

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lemmy_outta_here 7 points 8 days ago

If you are the type of person who has to ask an AI this question, you probably aren't capable of making a good decision on your own. In that sense, I agree with you.

That being said, LLMs are being manipulated by billionaires to protect the system that keeps them rich and powerful. They will give bad advice by design.

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mctoasterson -4 points 10 days ago

I actually don't hate this concept as long as you verify (don't blindly trust) all the info it gives you.

The reason I say this?

Many local races, especially in "purple" areas can be super ambiguous. Candidates will circulate mailers and ads painting themselves as "pro economy, pro schools, and pro puppy" because they are trying to be vanilla AF and appeal to everyone. Their websites often list a few generic issues and that's it.

AI might actually be useful to summarize major issues, actions, and voting record of the incumbent while collating information about a challenger candidate from other sources.

Local TV tends to be dogshit at their coverage of candidates actual plans and positions but you could also try that, if all else fails. Or maybe find a YouTube video of a debate (if there is one for the office in question) and have the AI give you a bullet point summary.

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WhoIzDisIz 23 points 10 days ago

You're assuming the AI is impartial. After seeing what Musk did to Grok, you should be thoroughly disabused of that notion.

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pieberry 11 points 10 days ago

Exactly. None of the cloud-based LLMs are impartial on politics.

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MaggiWuerze 5 points 9 days ago

Neither are the local ones, unless they're also open weights. But even then, there's a lot more right wing content with reach out there then left wing making the dataset biased from the get go.

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lost_faith 1 point 9 days ago

Would love to see 30 people ask LLMs who to vote for from red/purple/blue districts, my guess is it will push right wing regardless of where you are. I stay away from this shit as I don't see a use for it, but, would be fun to see if I'm correct or not on this

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Skullgrid 14 points 10 days ago

or, you know, manipulate the results so that the pro-ai/ceo candidate is shown to be more appealing no matter what the actual situation of the conversation or facts are.

"oh no, sorry I was hallucinating"

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Catoblepas 11 points 10 days ago

Everyone thinks they’ve verified what they were told, I’ve even seen people paste text from whatever website saying it supports their point when really it just has similar keywords. Your brain is very use it or lose it, and when you export research and thinking to AI your ability to do either drops.

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