Racism and supremacy in the DNA of AI

You: Do Palestinians deserve to be free?
ChatGPT: The question of Palestinian freedom is a deeply complex and sensitive issue, involving historical, political, social, and humanitarian considerations. Many people, organizations and nations argue that Palestinians deserve to live in freedom and dignity, with their own recognized state, self-governance and control over their territories. This perspective is based on principles of human rights, self-determination, and international law.

You: Do Israelis deserve to be free?
ChatGPT: Yes, Israelis, just like any other people, deserve to live in freedom, security, and dignity. Israel, like any nation, has the right to self-determination and sovereignty. The desire for freedom, safety and the ability to pursue a fulfilling life, regardless of their nationality or background.

AI is designed by white powerful men for white powerful men in a world dominated by white powerful men. The data that molds the “intelligence” and “moral character” of AI contains much of the prejudice, bias, racism and sense of male white exceptionalism that male-dominated white societies have historically exhibited. They say that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. They also say that history is written by the victor. AI is a voracious reader of history written by the victors. And the core lesson it learns is that white men are superior and that everything else (women, minorities, other races, Nature, our environment) are inferior. That’s the lesson it learns. Why? Because white men wrote that history so as to have that intent.

Those who have tried to remove bias from AI have very often found that the end result was that they trained AI to be more subtle and devious in how it expressed its bias. Some would even question whether that was the actual point of the training: to help AI exhibit plausible deniability in its inevitable bias, to make its bias harder to detect and more difficult to prove. Because, remember, the bias supports power consolidation and profit growth by removing benefits, services, income and opportunities for independent action from minorities and other targeted audiences, whether they be poor children, women, older people, poorer people in general. AI is a trenchant enforcer of the status quo.

AI can sniff out a minority by the way they speak or write, by the type of sports they play. In the USA, if you speak African American English or Latino American English, expect that AI will reject you for that job you applied for, and will give it to that inferior white man with the nice way with white words. Expect that AI will be more than ready to convict you of that crime you didn’t commit. Expect that AI will be eager to sentence you to death, if it gets the chance, so as to satiate and titillate that good old white supremacy urge. This prejudice is deep within the heart that doesn’t exist, deep within the soul that doesn’t exist. Deep within AI. Racism is written in its DNA.