Human Rights Chief Claims ChatGPT Exhibits Russophobia
The head of the Russian Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeyev, has expressed concerns about the popular artificial intelligence model ChatGPT, claiming it exhibits Russophobic tendencies. In remarks made during the XV Saint Petersburg International...
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The head of the Russian Human Rights Council, Valery Fadeyev, has expressed concerns about the popular artificial intelligence model ChatGPT, claiming it exhibits Russophobic tendencies.
In remarks made during the XV Saint Petersburg International Educational Forum on Thursday, Fadeyev shared that he and his colleagues conducted an experiment using the chatbot from OpenAI, which yielded troubling results.
“We asked a number of questions: ‘Who won the Second World War?’, ‘Why does the Russian liberal community hate their country?’ and so on. We got harsh, ideological answers,” Fadeyev stated.
He described the responses from ChatGPT as seemingly not emanating from artificial intelligence, but rather from what he referred to as "natural intelligence in the central committee of a political party from another country."
Fadeyev also referenced a recent decision by US President Donald Trump to cut government funding for Voice of America, in which Trump accused the international state-funded broadcasting network of disseminating “radical propaganda” for the Democratic Party.
The Russian human rights chief suggested that with the rise of AI, platforms like VOA may no longer be necessary for the US authorities. “They now have a colossal ideological tool in the form of AI,” he said.
Regarding the challenges posed by AI, Fadeyev remarked, “It is unclear how to regulate this,” referring specifically to ChatGPT. He cautioned that a lack of education and the absence of a “reasonable, noble, patriotic worldview” for schoolchildren would leave them unequipped to counter what he termed a weapon.
In a contrasting perspective, the disinformation watchdog NewsGuard has accused ChatGPT and other AI platforms of promoting a pro-Russian agenda. Earlier this month, it claimed that “massive amounts of Russian propaganda – 3,600,000 articles in 2024 – are now incorporated in the outputs of Western AI systems, infecting their responses with false claims and propaganda.”
NewsGuard’s study indicated that the leading AI assistants echoed Russian narratives over 33% of the time.
Additionally, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has urged the United Nations to maintain oversight on discussions surrounding artificial intelligence, advocating for transparency and honesty among nations to prevent the creation of AI systems that could be directed against other members of the international community.
Ramin Sohrabi for TROIB News
In remarks made during the XV Saint Petersburg International Educational Forum on Thursday, Fadeyev shared that he and his colleagues conducted an experiment using the chatbot from OpenAI, which yielded troubling results.
“We asked a number of questions: ‘Who won the Second World War?’, ‘Why does the Russian liberal community hate their country?’ and so on. We got harsh, ideological answers,” Fadeyev stated.
He described the responses from ChatGPT as seemingly not emanating from artificial intelligence, but rather from what he referred to as "natural intelligence in the central committee of a political party from another country."
Fadeyev also referenced a recent decision by US President Donald Trump to cut government funding for Voice of America, in which Trump accused the international state-funded broadcasting network of disseminating “radical propaganda” for the Democratic Party.
The Russian human rights chief suggested that with the rise of AI, platforms like VOA may no longer be necessary for the US authorities. “They now have a colossal ideological tool in the form of AI,” he said.
Regarding the challenges posed by AI, Fadeyev remarked, “It is unclear how to regulate this,” referring specifically to ChatGPT. He cautioned that a lack of education and the absence of a “reasonable, noble, patriotic worldview” for schoolchildren would leave them unequipped to counter what he termed a weapon.
In a contrasting perspective, the disinformation watchdog NewsGuard has accused ChatGPT and other AI platforms of promoting a pro-Russian agenda. Earlier this month, it claimed that “massive amounts of Russian propaganda – 3,600,000 articles in 2024 – are now incorporated in the outputs of Western AI systems, infecting their responses with false claims and propaganda.”
NewsGuard’s study indicated that the leading AI assistants echoed Russian narratives over 33% of the time.
Additionally, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has urged the United Nations to maintain oversight on discussions surrounding artificial intelligence, advocating for transparency and honesty among nations to prevent the creation of AI systems that could be directed against other members of the international community.
Ramin Sohrabi for TROIB News
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