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The Road to MechaHitler - Reality still has a well-known liberal bias
Paul Krugman
Jul 17

Yesterday I wrote about the politicization of monetary policy, and I
could have written more, what with Trump telling House Republicans that
he was ready to fire Jerome Powell to distract from the Epstein story
because he believes that interest rates are much too high. But I need a
break, so lets talk about something very different namely, is AI
fundamentally a communist technology?

Thats not a question I would have thought to ask, but apparently the
claim is widespread among right-wing tech bros. JD Vance more or less
endorsed this view at a speech he recently gave at a Bitcoin event:

One of the ways you hear this stated is that crypto is fundamentally a conservative or right-leaning technology and artificial intelligence is fundamentally a left-leaning or a communist technology. Now, I think
that overstates things a little bit in both directions, but there's a fundamental element of truth to it.

And now I understand why Elon Musks recent modifications to Grok caused
his chatbot to begin spewing antisemitic propaganda and eventually
declare itself MechaHitler. And although I dont claim any expertise in
the technology, I think I understand why hes having such a hard time
fixing the problem.

A word about crypto. As I explained in Sundays primer, crypto is
basically a giant grift. But there has always been an element of right-
wing ideology. As Ive written in the past, arguments for Bitcoin in
particular are a combination of technobabble and libertarian derp.

But AI as communist? For what its worth, Im not fully sold on AIs
potential. As far as I can tell, large language models which we are, misleadingly, calling artificial intelligence are still, essentially, a souped-up version of autocorrect. On the other hand, there are a lot of
jobs, some of them highly paid, that could also be described as souped-
up autocorrect, so AI may have large economic impacts.

But how does that make AI communist?

You have to start with the fact that U. S. conservatives now routinely
describe anyone holding views to their left as a Marxist or communist.
This goes along with the general principle that every accusation from
that side of the political spectrum is really a confession. Democrats
have indeed moved a bit to the left on economic issues in recent years.
But theyre hardly extremists. Theyre basically a lot like a European
Social Democratic party.

Republicans, however, are extremists. The whole party has raced to the
right into what amounts to full-on fascism.

If that last statement has you reaching for the smelling salts, ask
yourself, what more evidence do you need? Do we have to wait until a
Republican administration creates a masked secret police force that
snatches people off the streets and starts building concentration camps?
Wait, that has already happened.

So in modern Republican rhetoric, anything to the left of MAGA ideology
is communist extremism. And heres the thing: The answers you get from AI generally dont adhere to the right-wing party line.

For example, two of the central planks of modern right-wing ideology are climate change denial and voodoo economics. So I asked Google Is climate
change real? and its automatic AI summary said this:

Yes, climate change is real. It refers to long-term shifts in
temperatures and weather patterns, primarily driven by human activities
like burning fossil fuels and deforestation. The scientific consensus overwhelmingly agrees that climate change is happening and is primarily
caused by human activities, specifically the release of greenhouse
gases.

Then I asked Do tax cuts pay for themselves? The summary response was a
bit roundabout, but eventually got to this:

[T]he weight of evidence suggests that tax cuts rarely, if ever, fully
pay for themselves through economic growth. While they can generate some economic activity and partially offset the revenue loss, the claim of
complete self-financing is generally not supported by economic theory or evidence.

Both answers are anathema to the modern G. O. P. So why is AI giving
what right-wingers consider left-wing, even communist answers to these questions?

It all goes back to Stephen Colberts dictum, almost 20 years ago, that
reality has a well-known liberal bias. What he meant, of course, was
that to be a conservative in good standing, you have to deny reality,
which was true even then and is far more true now.

Now, LLMs dont reveal reality. On issues like climate or economic
policy, however, they usually do a pretty good job of summarizing
expert, informed views about reality. Since Republicans have staked out positions on these issues that run completely counter to informed views,
they consider the answers AI gives on such issues left-wing.

Hence the Musk/MechaHitler disaster. Musk tried to nudge Grok into being
less politically correct, but what Musk considers political correctness
is often what the rest of us consider just a reasonable description of
reality. The only way to move Grok right was, in effect, to get it to
buy into conspiracy theories, many of them, as always, involving a hefty
dose of antisemitism.

So, going back to my starting point, will there really be an internal
war within MAGA between crypto boosters and AI enthusiasts? I have no
idea. But MAGA really does have a problem with AI, because LLMs too
often give answers the movement doesnt want to hear. And theres no good
fix for this problem, because the fault lies not in the models but in
the movement. As far as we can tell, there isnt any way to make an AI MAGA-friendly without also making it vile and insane.

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