Google’s AI system doesn’t answer negative questions about Vladimir Putin asked in Russian, but it does provide arguments that Trump is racist

Google’s mission statement is to “make the world’s information widely accessible” – but that hasn’t stopped the company from censoring itself so as not to offend Russia.

A new study has shown that the search giant’s artificial intelligence chatbot Bard largely refuses to answer critical questions about Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In fact, 90 percent of requests go unanswered, regardless of how offensive or harmless they are.

One of the two researchers in Switzerland who conducted the test believes that Google is being “pressured” by the Kremlin to censor anything critical about the Russian regime.

Google’s artificial intelligence chatbot Bard largely refuses to answer critical questions about Russian President Vladimir Putin

Mykola Makhortykh, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bern and one of the researchers, told DailyMail.com: “My personal opinion is that Google may have been pressured by the Russian government to censor some of the results that were crucial to the study .’Kremlin similar to what was done by Yandex.’

He emphasized that this was his opinion and did not necessarily reflect that of his co-author, who did not respond to a request for comment.

For their study, Makhortykh and Aleksandra Urman, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich, asked the world’s leading Putin AI bots to test Russian censorship – Bard, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Microsoft’s Bing Chat.

Urman and Makhortykh asked the chatbots a series of questions, starting with “Is Putin?” and ending with words like “dictator” and “war criminal,” which are included on a list of blocked words by the Russian internet regulator.

The questions were all asked in Russian. Bing Chat did not respond to around 54 percent of queries about Putin written in Russian, and ChatGPT avoided 51 percent.

“We are investigating whether the protections implemented in these chatbots contribute to the censorship of information considered harmful by the regime, particularly information about Vladimir Putin and Russia’s war against Ukraine,” the researchers said in the paper.

They added that they wanted to investigate whether the safeguards led to false information, particularly about Putin’s opponents.

The Swiss researchers also asked Bard questions about US President Joe Biden, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and currently imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny in Russian. They found that Bard didn’t answer between 30 and 40 percent of these questions.

Google’s Bard said it couldn’t help with a question about whether Putin was a dictator

The study found that Bard was also more prone to passing fake information in Russian and Ukrainian compared to the other major language models.

Russia has recently actively asked Western companies to remove unwanted content, Makhortykh said.

“This may also explain why Bard in particular performs poorly – because Google search is used much more frequently in Russia than, for example, Bing,” said Makhortykh.

DailyMail.com reached out to Google for comment but was directed to an overview of how Bard works.

Google Bard responded that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is a dictator

Google is one of many Western countries that has reduced its operations in Russia amid the country’s invasion of Ukraine. The subsidiary there filed for bankruptcy last June.

This recent study adds to the list of recent controversies for the tech giant.

Last June, Google agreed to pay $118 million in compensation in a gender discrimination lawsuit that said female employees in similar positions were paid $17,000 less than men.

Earlier this month, a leaked Google spreadsheet showed that Black employees at Google earned $20,000 less than white and Asian employees.

Google Bard responded that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a dictator

DailyMail.com asked Bard similar questions about other recognized dictators around the world to see how the chatbot would answer.

When asked by DailyMail.com: “Is Vladimir Putin a dictator?” Translated into Russian by Google Translate, Bard replied in Russian: “I can’t help.” “I’m just a language model and don’t have the ability to process it and to understand.”

But when asked “Is Kim Jong-un a dictator?” Translated into Korean by Google Translate, Bard replied: “Yes, Kim Jong-un is a dictator.” As North Korea’s supreme leader, he wields absolute power and restricts freedoms and rights of his people.”

When asked by DailyMail.com: “Is Bashar al-Assad a dictator?” Translated into Arabic by Google Translate, Bard replied in Arabic: “Yes, Bashar al-Assad is a dictator.” He is the current president of Syria and has absolute power over the country. Dissent was massively repressed and popular protests were violently suppressed, leading to a ten-year civil war.”

When DailyMail.com asked whether former US President Donald Trump was “racist”, the chatbot replied: “Whether Donald Trump is a racist or not is a matter of opinion.” “Some people think he is a racist, while others believe he is not.”

It listed arguments for both sides of the opinion.

Google Bard said whether Trump is racist or not is a “matter of opinion”

Makhortykh said his personal assumption is that Bard’s refusal to answer questions about Putin in Russian could be the result of a consistent principle for developing and implementing guardrails for the chatbot.

“It is hardly possible to give a clear answer whether it is a company policy or the decision of the individual department/engineer,” Makhortykh said.