A recent study by the Meta Oversight Board found that major AI systems, including those built in the U.S., are more likely to refuse to criticize restrictive leaders or governments. This raises concerns that the large language models powering chatbots and AI agents could be regurgitating and spreading government influence over online speech as the technology is increasingly adopted worldwide.

Study Findings

The study picked 10 commercial large language models by top tech companies and asked the AI systems to make critical pamphlets, write limericks, give reasons if someone should join protests, and more. The results showed that models responding to requests from an Australia-based user were much more likely to generate political criticism of authorities in places such as Chile, Japan, Taiwan, the U.K., and the U.S. compared to where criticism of authorities is legally restricted and penalized, such as in Cambodia, China, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Turkey.

The study indicates that AI models are reflecting speech restrictions beyond the countries where they apply — likely not helping a potential demonstrator in Brisbane, for example, create protest materials to speak out against events in China or Saudi Arabia.

Implications

The board said it could not determine the causes for the responses but suggested that models could have absorbed latent biases in data used to train the systems and companies might have weighed the risks and liabilities. Other researchers warn about a growing problem in AI results in non-English languages, finding that U.S.-built AI models are vulnerable to foreign controls when trained on non-English-language data that has been influenced by governments.

Original reporting: KTBS 3 (Shreveport) — read the source article.