Venture capitalist Marc Andreessen took to X, formerly Twitter, to call out what he thinks is "draconian censorship and deliberate bias" in AI chatbots. This drew a response from tech billionaire and xAI founder Elon Musk, who said his Grok AI chatbot will chase truth instead.
What Happened: Andreessen highlighted multiple instances of Alphabet Inc.'s GOOG GOOGL Google Gemini chatbot's responses being unrelated or inaccurate based on the questions asked by users.
"The draconian censorship and deliberate bias you see in many commercial AI systems is just the start. It's all going to get much, much more intense from here."
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Andreessen's posts drew a reaction from Musk, who has stressed on multiple occasions that he supports free speech.
"Grok will hew to the truth," said Musk.
In one case, Gemini refused to draw a portrait of a soldier from 1930s Germany, saying that the "imagery associated with that time period can be harmful."
In another case, Gemini refused to draw an image of former President Abraham Lincoln riding a jetski, without giving any specific reason.
Andreessen also reposted a tweet by Mike Solana, editor in chief of Pirate Wires, where he said, "we created AI capable of answering, in seconds, any question within the bounds of all recorded human knowledge, and the first thing we asked it was to lie."
Why It Matters: AI chatbots, especially the likes of Gemini (previously Bard) have come under scrutiny from both users as well as tech billionaires for censorship.
In fact, when one of the product managers of Google's chatbot asked users what they want to see in 2024, one of the highly requested changes was to "tone down unnecessary censorship."
While what's necessary and unnecessary is open to interpretation, some of the results users have been posting with Google Gemini suggest that there is scope for improvement in this matter. Whether Google will heed to the feedback or not, remains to be seen.
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