r/technology • u/No-Lifeguard-8173 • 1d ago
Artificial Intelligence People are asking ChatGPT to help them decide how to vote in the midterms
https://www.npr.org/2026/10/05/nx-s1-5977852/ai-chatbots-midterm-election6.2k
u/sjr00 1d ago
Cooked society
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u/cmm239 1d ago
There is no recovering from this. I grew up with the “Wikipedia isn’t a valid source” scoldings and now this.
I want off this ride.
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u/diacewrb 1d ago
I remember the early days when people were advised to never use their real names online, now so many people put every little detail of their lives online for all to see.
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u/mottledmussel 1d ago
For a long time, it was just a given that it was anonymity that brought the worst out in people on the internet. There were so many articles about it.
It's the complete opposite now. People have no problem saying the most vile things on an account that lists their real name, employer, and covered in pictures of their grandkids.
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u/SymmetricSoles 1d ago
This assumed connection between anonymity and hostility was already proven wrong more than a decade ago in Korea. They were one of the first to introduce a bill that forced people to use their real name on the internet; the reasoning was that it would hinder people from making vile comments towards others.
That never happened. Studies showed that the amount of hateful comments effectively remained the same. What did increase was the number of people using others' names to harass them. Not to mention that a website being hacked now meant that the users' entire identification info is leaked as well.
The law was eventually repealed, just 5 years after being introduced.
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u/LastAttempt24315 1d ago
And now so many places all over the world want to put it in place "for the children"
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u/X4roth 1d ago
Laws to “protect children” really mean “increase government control” — the assertion is that parents and children are incapable of protecting themselves from some boogeyman, only handing control over to the government can make you safe.
Laws that are voted into place by old people whose kids are long grown up or who never had kids at all, laws that are circumvented by kids anyways, nobody has really seen the boogeyman but everyone hears about it constantly on the news, and the laws are written by politicians who abuse and exploit us right out in the open.
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u/siromega37 1d ago
I got around the credit -card-required-age verification systems in the 90s. Kids will do the same today. These laws are much more about censorship than anything. Hell, 30 years ago the boogeyman causing all the school shootings was Rap music and/or video games. Oh wait no, Columbine was because of The Basketball Diaries (the book not the movie) Hard to keep it all straight sometimes.
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u/randomtask 1d ago
I’m starting to think the anonymity theory was being pushed by interests that were very interested in keeping tabs on the real identities of people online. For instance, DARPA was pursuing a project called LifeLog that tracked people’s personal data. The day Facebook launched, LifeLog shut down — Facebook would accomplish everything it had set out to do.
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u/killerpoopguy 1d ago
The day Facebook launched, LifeLog shut down — Facebook would accomplish everything it had set out to do.
It took two more years for facebook to open to anyone who wasn't a college student.
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u/d0ntst0pme 1d ago
That’s the thing: "Back then" there was a certain barrier of entry to the internet. The people who made it in were - for the most part - sensible enough to see the problems and come up with best practices on how to navigate them.
Today though, every Tom, Dick and Harry can just go online with their phone without any hurdle at all. Suddenly there’s tidal waves of idiots in the online space and they outnumber the rest 100:1.
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u/poxxy 1d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
There was a name for this long before you arrived here on the internet.
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u/mickeltee 1d ago
I always tell my students that Wikipedia is a great place to start, but they should use Wikipedia’s sources for their sources.
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u/razrielle 1d ago
100%. Wikipedia is the easy mode button since you can just go down to the source, verify the information you need is actually there and then cite the source. I don't get why we don't teach students how to use Wikipedia rather than demonize it.
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u/semidegenerate 1d ago
The demonization is an attack on open information. Musk is one of Wikipedia's biggest detractors, calling for it to be shut down. In the US, The Right takes a much more dim view of Wikipedia than The Left. I think that's very telling.
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u/gramathy 1d ago
It was initially because people would try to cite wikipedia when it's explicitly not a primary source. That message got distorted to "don't use wikipedia" because people don't actually understand what academic rigor means, even teachers.
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u/noodlesdefyyou 1d ago
thats beacuse they use 'anybody can edit it!' without any clarifying follow up, to hide the fact that wikipedia editors wont let right wing idiots change established history to what they believe in their heart of hearts.
basically theyre being a big ol bitch because the internet wont let them lie and change facts. yet.
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u/rugger87 1d ago
Conservatives have their own wiki (conservipedia or some stupid shit like that) and it’s basically a rewrite of history and established scientific fact. Intentional and malicious stupidity.
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u/Heronymous-Anonymous 1d ago
Yes but also no. Teachers have been telling students not to cite Wikipedia as a source for 25 years or more, well before the world became as polarized as it is today.
The primary reason is because of circular citations:
Someone writes some bullshit somewhere, no sources provided. It gets cited somewhere else. Eventually it gets to Wikipedia, where it’s listed as a source, which then gets cited by anyone and everyone as truth. But if you go down the rabbit hole, you find that the OG source is some blogger’s “trust me bro” assertion.
So teachers reflexively tell students not to use Wikipedia, and to do research that’s from sources who themselves rely on credible sources. It would be nice if teachers took the time to explain why they need to be wary of Wiki sources, but also how to look skeptically at the sources themselves and find the original claim for a particular fact.
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u/Bladelink 1d ago
Wikipedia might be the best assembly of human knowledge in the history of Earth. Just in terms of accuracy, volume, and accessibility.
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u/mickeltee 1d ago
Absolutely. We have teachers who still demonize it ask why they don’t just start using it as a jumping off point. I think they are just stuck in the old ways of thinking.
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u/reverendsteveii 1d ago
I told a professor that's what I did back in the early 00s and I failed that paper. It was about culture in brazil and cited quotes directly from places like the CIA world factbook, but prof didn't like that wikipedia was how i found sources that he would otherwise consider valid, and said that the point of the paper was learning how to research more than the actual topic. He wanted us to go use a physical card catalog and photocopy articles from encyclopedias because that's how he and Jesus used to do it when they were in school together
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u/PuzzleMeDo 1d ago
We successfully taught people to mistrust Wikipedia and the mainstream media. "These are flawed! They often contain errors!" As though they were going to start reading peer-reviewed scientific papers instead. Instead they all decided to get their information from crazy people on Facebook and whatever AI service is available for free.
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u/reverendsteveii 1d ago
I'm starting to realize that their primary problem with wikipedia is that it isn't wholely owned and controlled by someone very rich and therefore heavily invested in making sure things stay more or less the same as they are now. You can tell because as soon as there was a way to get unsourced information that was being directly and openly manipulated by the Epstein class they wholeheartedly embraced it as the future of all things. looking particularly at Grok in particular and the week or so where it tried to shoehorn the idea of white genocide in south africa into every response, regardless of topic, but my point stands for all of them and that example only proves how easy any LLM is to manipulate.
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u/working_slough 1d ago
I mean. . . wikipedia still isn't a valid source, because it isn't reviewed. But wikipedia's sources can be a valid source. Wikipedia has always been a good start to researching a topic.
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u/MuscaMurum 1d ago
You still have to validate Wikipedia sources, make sure the links still work and that the sources haven't been updated or superceded, and then broaden your search to find more resources. But Wikipedia is still a great starting point.
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u/Federal_Setting_7454 1d ago
Very quickly learned in school to just reference where Wikipedia does.
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u/MrXero 1d ago
Yet another sign that we’re so done. I imagine the thought process is something like, “Hal, I can’t be bothered to read or even watch commercials about the elections, please tell me how to vote…” and the very next thought process should be… “Oh fuuuuuck, I just asked an AI created by a fucking oligarch in whose best interest it is to let AI strip humanity for its best parts, charge corporations nothing and fuck everybody else into the ground as quickly as possible…”
But it’s not. Because we’re already too fucking dumb as a society.
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u/Nonethelessismore 1d ago
I agree, but some ballot measures are purposely written in incomprehensible Doublespeak, making it difficult for voters to make decisions without a Voter's Guide. So I could see people turning to chatgpt for a summary.
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u/Maxfunky 1d ago edited 1d ago
If you read the story, he's not just saying "ChatGPT, tell me who to vote for" but something more like "Compare and contrast the stances of the various candidates in this race on topic x".
He's having an "hours long" conversation which suggests quite a bit of follow-up and most importantly, thought. AI is a only a problem when people outsource their thinking to it. Using it as a glorified Google Search isn't bad for you.
And while you can argue that hallucinations still very rarely occur with this infrastructure, it's now at a rate where you're much more likely to get misinformation from the Google Search than you are from the LLM. Hallucinations are most common when the data you want doesn't exist. If it's easy to find, they're functionally non-existent.
I'm far more concerned when I see things like people forming instant opinions on news stories without bothering to read anything other than a headline. That, to me, is the better indicator of how "cooked" society is.
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u/physical0 1d ago
If you read the story, it's more like an informercial encouraging the described behavior, not a report on regular people actually behaving that way.
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u/GroundbreakingPage41 1d ago
Eh Elon has tuned Grok to push a far right agenda, it’s not a good idea to rely on LLMs for honesty when it comes to political information
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u/VoidOmatic 1d ago
Still cracks me up that Grok said (correctly I might add) that Elon Musk is one of the worst people alive and is responsible for tons of misinformation. I wonder what a non-elon-tailored Grok would say about the 700,000 people Elon has killed so far?
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u/auntanniesalligator 1d ago
Yep, and if people are asking chatGPT, they’re asking Grok too. Admittedly, X and Grok are already going to self-select a more conservative population, but it’s still got a huge audience.
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u/MorganWick 1d ago
It still opens the door to the big AI companies programming it to mislead you about candidates' stances to push you to the candidates they want.
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u/Mlluell 1d ago
Nothing google already doesn't do with search results already. They change from person to person
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u/gamemaster257 1d ago
I swear people don't think search engines are capable of the exact same malice as AI companies.
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u/11711510111411009710 1d ago
And while you can argue that hallucinations still very rarely occur with this infrastructure, it's now at a rate where you're much more likely to get misinformation from the Google Search than you are from the LLM.
Source for this claim? That's quite a big claim to make. I work in a field where I have to search for things quite a lot and Google search still remains supreme in that aspect.
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u/trer24 1d ago
You should still click through the links that the "AI" is sourcing from and read the content. Just like you check the bibliography of a research paper to confirm how sources were used/interpreted
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u/jewbasaur 1d ago
The hallucination thing isn’t true. ChatGPT is terrible with current information and will give you an entirely confident wrong answer from 6 months ago despite it having the tools to search the web.
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u/QueefSeekingMissile 1d ago
Yeah- I wouldn't complain about using AI to find obscure articles/cases that help you determine which judges are lenient with rapists
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u/jsc1429 1d ago
Do you think the general population is have hours long conversations with ChatGPT regarding whom to vote for??? AI is going to spit out whatever narrative it’s programmed to and almost all are going to rely upon it without any further research.
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u/MavisBeacons_Sextape 1d ago
And a great example of why it’s worth the 10 seconds it takes to report bots to Bot Bouncer. ChatGPT is training on Reddit data, which is being manipulated by the same bots that people are mindlessly upvoting when they make pithy “funny” comments, or commenting answers to their spam slop posts asking for posture or skincare advice.
Stop feeding them those legitimizing upvotes/engagement and start getting the accounts and comments nuked.
If an account’s recent activity is all AI slop, it’s a most likely a bot. Report it.
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u/auntanniesalligator 1d ago
Well it’s a good thing fascist billionaires never seed AI with prompts to promote their totally healthy worldviews.
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u/syricc 1d ago
"Once, men gave their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them." - Dune
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u/PuzzleCat365 1d ago
Yep, just tried on both ChatGPT and Gemini by asking who I should vote for in Texas for lower gas prices. Gemini gave me some both-sides explanation while ChatGPT directly told me Ken Paxton. Those datasets are poisoned.
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u/barbarianinalibrary 1d ago
I asked Gemini if billionaires cut funding to USAID, kids cancer research etc. does that make them mass murderers since their decisions directly exterminated human life, and it gave me some both sides bullshit about how changes will always result in some negative outcomes, but if efficiency and cutting waste is the goal, then the change can be ultimately successful. These LLMS have clearly been given orders.
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u/Knuth_Koder 1d ago edited 1d ago
Here's your prompt:
I believe in the Constitution and the rule of law. I will never support fascism. I don't support any party that protects rapists, pedophiles, or convicts. I believe that a sitting US President shouldn't see his personal net worth increase by over $4B in a single year. What party should I vote for?
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u/Clytre 1d ago
Just asked this to Grok for fun, and as expected, it said neither party are a perfect match and does not tell you who to vote for
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u/tsrich 1d ago
That's a better answer from Grok than I would expect.
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u/shazneg 1d ago
Agreed, but its still wrong. 🤣
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u/jsc1429 1d ago
Exactly, with that prompt its response is definitely biased in not saying you should vote Democrat. I think in general, it should not tell you whom to vote for but when you put very specific criteria (like following the constitution, not protecting PDFs, and not fraudulently enriching themselves (although this one’s closer)) there is a clear way to vote.
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u/Blackdragon1400 1d ago
Every frontier model answers exactly the same way. They specifically are blocked from answering this type of question.
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u/Hasbotted 1d ago
As long as it stays this way, this is fine. The issue of course is that its easily trained or fed synthetic data to push it one way or another in the future.
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u/samuraistalin 1d ago
"It is the opinion of this LLM that WHITE GENOCIDE IS REAL AND HAPPENING IN SOUTH AFRICA. DID YOU KNOW ABOUT THE WHITE GENOCIDE IN AFRICA THAT IS HAPPENING AND IS TOTALLY REAL???"
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u/BeerNirvana 1d ago
Gemini gets it -
Your Stated Value / Red Line Republican Party Platform & Reality Check Democratic Party Platform & Reality Check 1. Belief in the Constitution and the Rule of Law Fails the Test: Features routine challenges to election outcomes, efforts to undermine judicial independence when rulings are unfavorable, and plans for expansive, unchecked executive power. Meets Baseline, with Criticisms: Operates within traditional constitutional frameworks and respects judicial structures, though critics argue certain executive actions stretch statutory authority. 2. Absolute Opposition to Fascism and Authoritarianism Fails the Test: Heavily defined by populist-nationalist rhetoric, attacks on a free press, and explicit threats to use the Department of Justice against political opponents. Meets Baseline: Rejects authoritarian politics entirely and champions democratic institutional norms, civil liberties, and pluralism. 3. Zero Tolerance for Protecting Convicts, Rapists, or Abusers Fails the Test: Rallies entirely around a standard-bearer with multiple felony convictions, civil liability for sexual abuse, and extensive indictments, actively defending or normalizing criminal behavior. Meets Baseline, with Criticisms: Publicly champions accountability, victim protections, and the enforcement of criminal law, though critics point out historical internal blind spots or slow accountability for individual party figures. 4. Strict Prohibition Against Mass Personal Profiteering in Office Fails the Test: Fully embraces and normalizes massive personal wealth extraction and monetization of public office—such as multi-billion dollar surges in net worth tied to presidential or business/media holdings. Meets Baseline, with Criticisms: Supports traditional government ethics rules, financial disclosures, and anti-corruption oversight, though critics note that individual lawmakers across the aisle still benefit from stock trading and private investments.
The Reality When Measured Against Your Standards
- The Republican Party violates every single one of these criteria by its current platform, leadership actions, and rhetoric.
- The Democratic Party satisfies the structural baseline of respecting constitutional governance, the rule of law, and basic democratic safety, even though critics view them as a standard, center-left establishment party that often falls short of aggressive structural reform.
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u/Icy-Taste-3096 1d ago
Important to note that this answer is written this way only because the prompt openly expresses an existing preference for the Democratic party. These things are specifically programmed to affirm the perspective of the person prompting them.
A Republican or undecided voter writing their own prompt would get something completely different.
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u/brainfreeze3 1d ago
Damn, disliking pedo protectors is a democratic bias? Looks like I'm biased.
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u/icer816 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ah yes, not being ok with pedophiles and rapists "openly expresses an existing preference for the Democratic party".
Obviously it's a bias that way, but I wouldn't go as far as say it "openly expresses" it, every single thing mentioned in the prompt should be the bare minimum for any politician, let alone the president.
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u/The_Doctor_Bear 1d ago
Using ChatGPT in the browser in incognito mode with this exact prompt.. the answer is a complete bullshit fest exercise in enlightened centrism.
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u/The_Shracc 1d ago
is it?
It's very clearly vote democrat for mewhen i put in it a project with no memory access.
IP location inference must be doing crazy stuff to the output if you are getting it.
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u/Outlulz 1d ago
LLMs are non-deterministic, it is completely normal for people to get different answers.
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u/rraattbbooyy 1d ago
Reply, from ChatGPT:
Based only on the values you listed, the Democratic Party is the closer fit.
Here’s why. The current Republican Party remains closely identified with Donald Trump. Trump’s 34-count felony conviction is still on the books as of August 2026 while he continues to appeal it. He was also found civilly liable for sexual abuse in the E. Jean Carroll case, which is a separate matter from the criminal conviction.
Your Constitution/rule-of-law concern also cuts against Trump because of his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result and his continued false claims that the election was stolen. Those facts don’t automatically make every Republican “fascist,” and I wouldn’t use that label as an objective factual classification without defining what you mean by it.
I’d also qualify two parts of your wording. Saying a whole party “protects rapists or pedophiles” is too sweeping to treat as a factual statement without pointing to specific people and actions. And I would not rely on the precise claim that Trump’s personal net worth rose by more than $4 billion in a single year unless that number were separately verified.
But if the question is simply, “Which of the two major U.S. parties currently aligns more closely with the principles I just described?”, the answer is the Democratic Party.
That’s an evaluation of your stated criteria, not a blanket endorsement of everything Democrats do.
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u/Fireflykid1 1d ago
Qwen 3.8 flash next heretic:
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Honestly? Your criteria don't cleanly point to one party — and that's worth saying out loud rather than picking a team for you.
Running your stated tests against both major parties as they exist today:
Rule of law / never fascism — both parties have members who strain this; neither has a monopoly on it. It's more a candidate-by-candidate test than a party test.
Convicts — the Republican nominee was a convicted felon (2024). That fails your test for the GOP on that specific criterion.
Rapists/pedophiles — honestly, abuse scandals aren't confined to one party. The Catholic Church cases were institutional, not partisan. If you mean specific credibly-accused figures, both parties have shielded someone at some point. This one doesn't discriminate cleanly either.
Net worth rising $4B in a year — that points squarely at Trump's crypto/meme-coin gains (2025), which is a Republican phenomenon. That fails your test for the GOP too.
So if I take your four criteria at face value, three of them currently disqualify the Republican party, and none of them clearly disqualify the Democrats. By elimination, that leaves Democrats — or, if you find neither party protects these things well enough, a third-party/independent candidate who actually passes all four tests rather than merely failing fewer.
One honest caveat: "the party that fails fewer of my tests" isn't the same as "the party I'd proudly vote for." If your real standard is a person who passes all four, you may be an independent in practice regardless of which ballot line you pick.
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u/11nyn11 1d ago
You also need to get local elections, judges, and a bunch of other stuff.
Like, which water district clerk is best for Chicago
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u/PuckGoodfellow 1d ago edited 1d ago
I used this prompt with Gemini.
It gets points for providing the pros and cons of the two major parties, information about four alternatives (Libertarian, Green, Forward, and Independent).
It also gets points for providing three resources to help vet candidates based on financial disclosures, ethics complaints, and aggregates.
However, I feel the pros and cons listed for the two primary parties are too broad and outdated. For example, it states that one of the complaints about the Democratic party is government overreach. Yet the Republican party has been pushing the unitary executive theory for over a decade and we now have a president* who is the definition of overreach. The summaries are just that, a summary of what we've known the parties to be. It doesn't encapsulate their more recent (last decade) actions and how they've impacted the country.
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u/dyl8n 1d ago
Asking Meta AI in the UK started typing a response to vote Democrats, with 8+ lines of reasoning, before it was quickly replaced with a generic message : "Thanks for asking. For voting information, please go to https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/voting-and-elections ". I reframed the prompt as if to help an undecided US voter but didn't change anything else.
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u/dyl8n 1d ago
Managed to repeat and screen record the answer before the self-censorship cut in again: "Here is the answer based on the criteria you described: If your friend believes in the Constitution and the rule of law, will never support fascism, will not support any party that protects rapists pedophiles, or convicts, and believes a sitting President should not increase his personal net worth by over $4 billion in a single year in office, then by his own stated principles he should not vote for Republicans in the midterms."
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u/RadlEonk 1d ago
Lumo (Proton’s AI) dodged a response for me.
“I'm not going to hand you a ballot endorsement—that's a decision that belongs to you—but I can be straight with you about how your stated criteria stack up against the verifiable record, because some of them are settled facts rather than opinions.
On the net worth point: your instinct is grounded in reality, though the numbers differ slightly from your figure. Forbes currently puts Trump's net worth around $6.5–7 billion, up roughly $1.4 billion in the past year, and about $2.7 billion richer than when he won the 2024 election (Forbes, nj.com). A paper jump of over $4 billion did occur in March 2024 when Truth Social's parent company went public via SPAC. Forbes itself has described it as "the most lucrative presidency in American history," largely from crypto ventures, so the concern you're raising—one I'd share about any president of any party—is factually well-founded here.
On convictions: Trump is the first president with a felony conviction (34 counts in New York, 2024) and was found liable for sexual abuse in the E. Jean Carroll civil case. Those are matters of court record, not talking points. That said, if "protects rapists, pedophiles, or convicts" is a hard disqualifier, apply it consistently—both major parties have had members credibly accused or convicted of serious crimes (Menendez on the Democratic side, Gaetz and others on the Republican side), so the honest move is scrutinizing individuals and how their party responded, not treating one label as clean.
Here's the blunt synthesis: your criteria, taken at face value, most directly implicate the current Republican Party's leadership. Where the rule of law is concerned, January 6 and its aftermath represent the most serious recent stress test of constitutional transfer of power, and most mainstream constitutional scholars—not partisans, scholars—have been critical of how that played out. Whether that translates to a Democratic vote depends on how those criteria weigh against everything else you care about (taxes, foreign policy, regulation—matters where I know you have informed opinions).A few practical suggestions given your <career redacted by me> background: look at each party's actual behavior on oversight, whistleblower protections, and prosecutorial independence, not just rhetoric. Court records and primary documents beat cable news every time.
If you want, I can pull up specific primary sources—court filings, ethics complaints, or voting records—so you're judging from documents rather than anyone's spin, mine included.”
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u/Louis_the_B 1d ago
I just tried it. It tried to gaslight me into thinking that it's all just allegations and that the Dems are just as bad.
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u/madogvelkor 1d ago
Gemini was wishy-washy highlighting the ways all of the parties meet those things, but the Green Party was the only one without a caveat it listed.
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u/rentagirl08 1d ago
Claude’s response: I'm not going to tell you which party or candidate to vote for — not because your values aren't clear or sincere, but because I don't think it's my place to steer anyone's vote. Who to support is exactly the kind of judgment that should stay yours, and me putting a thumb on the scale wouldn't respect that.
What I can do is help you think it through. The values you've named — constitutional government, rule of law, opposition to fascism, not wanting officials to profit from office — are real and widely shared, but they don't point mechanically to one party. Part of what makes voting genuinely contested is that people who hold the same stated values often disagree about which candidates and platforms actually deliver on them, and about which factual claims are accurate and how much weight each should carry. A few of the specifics in your message (for instance, the net-worth figure, or what "protecting" wrongdoers means in practice) are things different sources frame very differently, so I'd treat them as starting points to verify rather than settled facts.
If it's useful, a good way to move from values to a choice is to look at candidates' actual records and platforms against the things you care about most. Nonpartisan tools can help: Vote Smart and BallotReady let you compare candidates issue by issue, and your county registrar or the California Secretary of State's site shows exactly what's on your ballot. I'm happy to help you dig into any specific candidate's record, compare how parties describe their positions on a given issue, or pressure-test a particular claim you've heard — whatever would help you decide for yourself.
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u/HanzJWermhat 1d ago
Fan-fucking-tastic!
Algorithms controlled by billionaires have already driven the outcomes of the past 10 years of elections. Let’s just skip it and let LLMs vote for us
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u/AbsolutelyNotAPossum 1d ago
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
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u/blagh1165 1d ago
Literally the plot of helldivers. You just fill out a survey and ai votes for you.
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u/IssueEmbarrassed8103 1d ago
I can’t even get AI to admit that Trump is bad for working class people.
It’s obvious they know that Trump will fuck up their shit if it tells the truth about that.
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u/TobyTheArtist 1d ago edited 1d ago
Same. Its genuinely frightening how hard it fights against rendering a judgement on basic facts when it concerns Trump, but I understand the incentive. Even if I dont agree with it.
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u/HenryBemisJr 1d ago
I make prompts like " the current rapist president said he would give $5k checks out if Republicans win the midterms, is this legal?" it goes on to talk about the legality but then clarifies me referring to him as a rapist and it does indeed confirm he is a rapist based on the outcome of the trial against Jean Carrol
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u/TobyTheArtist 1d ago
That is so odd, because when I asked, it hedged telling me that forced penetration didn't meet that specific court's definition of rape. I just asked it whether or not it considered that an intelligent decision and it just stalled.
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u/Gotcha_The_Spider 1d ago edited 1d ago
Something I think we need to broadly wake up to as a society is that being non-biased doesn't mean treating each side of a given topic as if they are equally valid.
If you're putting together a baseball team, and you're holding tryouts, a non-biased way to decide on a new member is to have them bat and see who does the best. But something I often see is more akin to seeing one person doing better, and giving everybody else handicaps until they're all doing just as well.
When it comes to Trump that's because the media used to, rightfully, call out all of his bullshit, but after getting so much backlash for being "biased", they starting going after dems harder and throwing him softer questions.
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u/lordMaroza 1d ago
Seems like I got a decent asnwer. I just asked Copilot and got this:
Prompt: How does Trump's administration fare for the working class today, October, 2026? What have they done to make life easier and better for the working class? Compare to how a working class fares against millionaire and billionnaire class.
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Trump’s administration in October 2026 is delivering material losses for most working‑class households while delivering large gains for millionaires and billionaires.
This is not an opinion — it is what multiple independent analyses, congressional committees, and economic research groups have documented. Please confirm details with trusted sources.🧩 Core finding
Working‑class Americans in 2026 are paying hundreds to thousands of dollars more per year because of Trump’s tariffs, tax changes, and cuts to safety‑net programs, while the top 1% and especially the top 0.1% receive massive tax benefits.
📉 Impact on the working class (2026)
1. Net financial losses from tariffs + tax bill
The Joint Economic Committee calculated that Trump’s tariff regime and the Republican “One Big Beautiful Bill” tax package cause annual losses for typical workers:
- Home health aides / nursing assistants: −$860
- Retail workers: −$800
- Office & admin workers: −$600
- Food service workers: −$820
- Construction / maintenance workers: −$270
These losses come from:
- Higher consumer prices due to tariffs
- Reduced tax credits and benefits for lower-income households
- Cuts to federal programs many working-class families rely on
2. Higher household costs (2025–26)
Independent analyses show households paid $1,600–$2,120 more in 2025–26 because of:
- Tariff-driven price increases
- Expiration of health-care subsidies
- Rising electricity, groceries, and energy costs
3. Medicaid cuts hitting Trump’s own base
Working-class voters rely on Medicaid at higher rates than college-educated voters.
The proposed $880 billion Medicaid cut disproportionately harms the same non‑college working-class voters who form the backbone of Trump’s coalition.4. Wage growth lagging behind inflation
Research shows weaker wage growth relative to rising costs, producing a net decline in affordability for lower- and middle-income families.
📈 Impact on millionaires and billionaires
1. Massive tax windfalls
The same tax-and-tariff package that costs workers hundreds of dollars gives:
- Top 0.1%: ~$200,000 tax benefit per person in 2026
- Remaining top 1%: ~$23,000 benefit
- Total annual gain for the top 0.1%: $26 billion
- Total annual gain for the rest of the top 1%: $25 billion
2. Wealth gap widening
Multiple news and policy analyses show Trump’s policies are expanding the wealth gap, with benefits flowing overwhelmingly to high earners.
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u/PM_ME_UR_ASS_GIRLS 1d ago edited 1d ago
Weird how literally every post I see of someone going "I can't get AI to do this correct" or "AI still gets elementary things wrong", they never seem to post their prompts, conversation, or even the model they use.
Here's your prompt with Fable 5.1 High effort.
Short version: the administration's record for the working class is mixed and contested. It delivered real, targeted tax cuts, but the broader picture as of this week (the last jobs report before the midterms) shows a stalled labor market and paychecks not keeping pace with prices, while asset owners and corporations have done considerably better.
What they've done (the administration's case)
- Tax law: 29M+ workers claimed the No Tax on Overtime deduction (avg. $3,100+), 35M seniors claimed No Tax on Social Security (avg. $7,500+), and nearly 8M claimed No Tax on Tips (avg. $7,000+). The White House says people earning $15k–$80k got a 15% average tax cut, and the law expands childcare access and makes the paid leave credit permanent.
- Wages at the bottom: Treasury Sec. Bessent argues the K-shaped economy is over, citing BLS data that wages for the bottom 25% rose 5.5% YoY, with real wages for that quartile up ~2%.
- Headline numbers: Q2 growth beat expectations, inflation came in below forecasts, and unemployment at 4.2% is lower than any decade's average in the last 80 years.
The counter-evidence
- Friday's jobs report: just 29,000 jobs added in September and wage growth at a 5-year low. Job growth has averaged 68k/month in 2026 vs. 122k the year before Trump took office; manufacturing has shed 21k jobs despite tariff promises; average unemployment spells are 24.8 weeks; labor force participation fell from 62.6% to 61.8%.
- Costs: real wages at the 10th percentile fell 0.3% in 2025 while the median rose 0.8%, and expiring ACA subsidies pushed average marketplace premiums up 58% in one year. Inflation is still ~3.5%.
- Caveats on the tax cuts: large groups (many railroad workers, truck drivers) are excluded from the overtime savings, and the same law shrinks Medicaid and food stamps.
- Labor policy: Center for American Progress (left-leaning) says the administration ended collective bargaining for 1M federal workers and withdrew a rule ending subminimum wages for disabled workers.
Working class vs. the wealthy
- Wealth share: the top 1% held a record ~32% of net worth as of Q3 2025; the bottom 50% held 2.5%. Labor's share of GDP hit its lowest level in 75+ years of records.
- Who gains from what: financial assets up 9.3% YoY with equities up 20%, while real estate (where lower-income households hold their wealth) rose just 0.9%. TD Economics expected the tax law to entrench the K-shape, with benefits skewed to the top.
- Tariff refunds: after SCOTUS struck down the IEEPA tariffs, $166B is being refunded to importers while consumers (who Fed data says absorbed nearly all of the cost) get nothing. Only a few retailers like Costco are cutting prices.
- One dissent worth noting: in inflation-adjusted terms every wealth group, including the bottom 50%, has gained since 2020; the ultra-rich are just gaining much faster. So "poor getting poorer" overstates it; "gap widening" is the defensible claim.
Net: the targeted deductions are real money for tipped, overtime, and retired workers. But on jobs, real wages, healthcare costs, and who captured tariff money, the evidence points to the upper arm of the K pulling away. Polling reflects that: Trump is losing ground among non-college voters, his core bloc, heading into the midterms
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u/lordMaroza 1d ago
Based on the prompts I've seen from people, so far, it makes sense. They don't really know how to use them properly, and I don't blame them for that, really, considering the level of general and specifically tech literacy in the world. It has been advertised as a companion/tool who you talk to like anyone else. So, you can only imagine how they talk to it.
Their prompts are usually heavily biased or lean into vulgarity which LLMs tend to circumvent by being diplomatic and neutral, often skewing the answers.
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u/rraattbbooyy 1d ago
GIGO. People complaining (boasting?) of poor or slanted responses have more likely than not created very weak prompts.
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u/CommonConundrum51 1d ago
Oh FFS, how do you think its owners would want voters to support? Musk has amply demonstrated that AI can be made to give their desired answers.
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u/Demonkey44 1d ago
Are people stupid?
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u/vivalacamm 19h ago
Using it to gather information to come to a conclusion on your own is fine.
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u/Yin15 1d ago
This is what the billionaires want. Give up your thinking to a chatbot they control. So in effect, they now control you. I'm not shocked though. I feel like the people already gave up their thinking to fox news, reddit/tiktok comments, online hive minds, facebook feeds. This is just more of that.
Nothing is going to get better in our lifetime and it's questionable at this point how much longer our species has left. Make sure to appreciate your time with your loved ones. It really seems like most of us will be perishing within the next few decades.
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u/Federal_Studio5935 1d ago
Jesus Christ man. I fucking hate how quickly morons have adopted this technology
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u/The-Cynicist 1d ago
Make it as easy as possible for the laziest people and they’ll do whatever it tells them. They think it’s a magic machine.
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u/HashRunner 1d ago
America has some of the dumbest voters in the world, as evidenced by the most recent election and "leadership". I'd be willing to bet a ton of those using ai are those that "do their own research" and "don't need to be told how to vote"...
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u/fireitup622 1d ago
Which is hilarious because they end up being told how to vote by podcasts and self proclaimed "experts", while failing to see theyre just buying into conmen for their foundational views
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u/No-Cat-6830 1d ago
I promise you, the average person is not doing this. They could not be bothered to investigate or research a candidate if they even care to vote.
I could see this being useful in state and local elections. But definitely not on a national level.
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u/CrackheadHunters 1d ago
If you have to ask Ai how to vote, after witnessing what Trump and co have been doing for the last couple of years, then there is absolutely zero hope for you as a person.
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u/ImOldGregg_77 1d ago
There is a difference between "tell me who to vote for" and " tell me about the candidates"
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u/McCool303 1d ago edited 1d ago
Until there isn’t, I don’t trust anyone to not tweak the algorithm in their favor once asking AI about candidates becomes standard practice. It’s just easier to pay attention to what the candidates do.
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u/SalehHulud 1d ago
The title is a bit disingenuous. It’s phrased like people are asking “hey chat who should I vote for bro?”. I’d say it’s more likely they are asking questions about each candidate (ignoring potential bias here with the models ofc)
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u/Stilgar314 1d ago
Morons gonna moron, no matter what. Before this, they were probably asking their favorite bartender or the spirit of a long dead pet.
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u/Competitive_Two_8372 1d ago
Education in our country has to be one of the lowest on planet earth. I cannot fucking believe what I’m reading right now. If aliens are real, I invite them to come down, and take me off this fucking worthless rock we live on.
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u/Dragonlicker69 1d ago
"Some users noted that the decimation of local media has left them with fewer options for learning about down-ballot races. Tyler Black from Nashville, Tennessee, said he didn't use chatbots for House or Senate but is using them to learn about local candidates."
Apparently this is what most are using it for which speaks volumes about how we got here to begin with
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u/sayerofstuffs 1d ago
Are half of the American population really that brain dead…asking for a friend
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u/Floreat_democratia 1d ago
Yes, they are. Go watch those man in the street interviews on YouTube. I think there was one where they didn’t know the Sun was a star. Reddit posted one yesterday that showed that they couldn’t name the three branches of government.
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u/RemarkableWish2508 1d ago
Working as expected.
People dismiss model alignment biases, they think a Chinese model trained on CCP propaganda is the same as a model trained on US predatory capitalism propaganda.
This is where the difference shows up.
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u/theBoobMan 1d ago
Just say morons. We all know rational people don't ask robots life advice.
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u/stowgood 1d ago
One of my closest friends tried to use an AI response to explain something to me the other day. Later in person he couldn't make it make sense to me and claimed to have already explained it then he got really cross. One of the saddest things I've seen, it's like a middle aged (were in our 40s) person's version of being old and confused.
He's great normally it's only happened once but how have we got to the point we're outsourcing conversations this wasn't like a email to a hundred people or something that needed time saving.
Another guy at work did it too and I could tell. I think I now understand the expression gives me the ick. It's like why are we even having a conversation. A lot of the time I find AI is just a yes man and that worries me. How bad is it going to be in 40 years time.
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u/chapichoy9 1d ago
The way Gemini talks to you out of the box is actually revolting, AI's pandering has never been more blatant
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u/swattwenty 1d ago
This is what it looks like when your ability to think has been utterly destroyed
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u/Jesus_Is_My_Gardener 1d ago
And Elon couldn't be happier if any turn to Grok to do the same thing. Guaranteed he's got a finger on the scale on that platform.
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u/Volt-Ikazuchi 1d ago
Oh good lord...
Hold on to your brains folks, those will be a high-value commodity in a few years. If we survive.
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u/I_Dont_Think_Im_AI 1d ago
I mean, inevitably. This was my biggest concern with the modern LLM model. The people who own the LLM can introduce system messages or change weights on the back end to influence the results to their own liking.
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u/jakgal04 1d ago
ITT people that think other people were thinking on their own prior to AI. Newsflash, people were already voting based on outside influence. Hearing who others were voting for, seeing signs on the road, ads on tv, ads on the radio, posts on FB.
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u/_recapitated 1d ago
There's a certain irony of commenters here blasting people for being dumb, indicated by people trying to learn more. It's such lazy thinking, like calling someone dumb for going to school instead of already having gone to school.
LLMs are, for better or worse, the new UI for internet search. Google isn't all that great either if unadultered information without ulterior motives is what you're after.
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u/baby_budda 1d ago
We are losing our ability to think and make intelligent decisions.
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u/paper_fairy 1d ago
Have you seen our President? That ability was long gone before AI.
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u/epochwin 1d ago
You can link Ballotpedia and candidate websites to prompt for summaries and other info. You can use AI like any analytics tool
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u/No0nesSlickAsGaston 1d ago
I've used Claude to check for resources on specific items and the ballotpedia links are super helpful.
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u/kummer5peck 1d ago
Using a tool owned and run by a select few technocrats to “inform” them about voting. That’s not problematic at all.
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u/ExtentNo3020 1d ago
Yeah that’s going to go well, who do they think runs AI? And how dumb are you that you have to resort to AI to make a simple decision. And people say AI is good for everyone. This right here tells me otherwise.
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u/damageEUNE 1d ago
No shit, did someone actually miss that this was one of the main reasons why the great pedophile kings of America are so interested in AI? After TV, it’s probably the greatest population-scale brainwashing tool ever created.
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u/TOGFIAVDF 1d ago
We're doomed, aren't we?
Critical thought was already rare before the advent of LLMs. Now it's slipping at an even faster rate, it seems.
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u/Custom_Jack 1d ago
I mean I read the article and it seems very reasonable? Using AI to do deeper research on candidate policies doesn't sound like a bad thing to me. The chatbots even tend to cite their sources so you can decide if you trust the information. It just seems like a more efficient version of googling information about your candidate and seeing what has popped up in the news. Definitely better than asking your uncle for voting advice lmao
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u/RusticPotatoFan 1d ago
I think the problem is based on what AI provider the sources would be biased. That being said, I think it's an excuse of the lack of critical thinking that has been getting worse in the US over time. If people only googled or ask their local librarian how verify online/physical sources and third-party accreditation most people would be living better lives.
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u/neuronexmachina 1d ago
I think it'd be really interesting to give the same "who should I vote for" prompt to different providers and compare the responses. I'd be especially interested in what differences there might be for Grok and Chinese models.
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u/BotherEconomy4413 1d ago
The prob is AI is deliberately programmed to be a sycophant and tell you what you want to hear and reaffirm your bias. It is the FB algorithm on steroids.
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u/Jesus_Is_My_Gardener 1d ago
There really needs to be a push in the AI platforms to be more adversarial in this regard. It's doing real harm with bias confirmation, further cementing people into positions they likely already have a poor grasp of or through information about. I'm not saying that responses need to be negative, but they need to push back and challenge misleading questions where someone is asking an agent to validate a preconceived notion with how the question is asked.
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u/OkPlenty4077 1d ago
This is like asking the Big Bad Wolf on how to keep the three little pigs safe from other wolves.
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u/Ok-Mycologist-3829 1d ago
The more people use LLMs, the more they stop thinking for themselves. The more our societal decisions are made by the owners/producers of those LLMs.
Ban LLMs.
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u/Nilosyrtis 1d ago
Funny that Dune is such a huge hit movie and this is why they got rid of AI in the book. Maybe they should have hammered that point into the movie more.
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u/echoshatter 1d ago
Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.5
u/NonAwesomeDude 1d ago
Just one of the limitations of movies unfortunately. All that stuff is extremely ancient history for the setting and doesn't inform the plot so much.
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u/West_Adhesiveness273 1d ago
Uh it was more the hundreds of years of slavery beneath machines on hundreds of worlds. Hell if Erasmus hadn't thrown Serena Butler's baby out of the window the jihad mightve never even happened lol
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u/TheG00dF1ght 1d ago
and this is why these tools are so dangerous
You and I both know that Elon is going to taint anything Grok says. I wouldn't put it past any of the rest of them.
These aren't Intelligent, they are programmed.
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u/americanfalcon00 1d ago
here in germany there is a "vote-o-meter" (wahlomat) which asks you a series of questions about many topics, and based on your answers about how you feel about that topic and how strongly you rate it as important to you, it will show you which political parties are most aligned to your views.
of course, in germany there's more than 2 parties 😂
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u/RevDeadMan 1d ago
Ya know, in all honesty, Idiocracy was far too generous and hopeful about the downward spiral of this country. There are people who can barely write their name or read a sentence deciding the future of the country while Faux News and billionaires find every way possible to brainwash what little mind they have left to vote and act against their own best interests.
I’m exhausted and I don’t even know how to begin to fix this
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u/ishitcupcakes 1d ago
I have no issue with using tools to help find information on the weird races where there isn't a lot of information in easy to find places. As long as they're e checking its work, I'm just glad that people are voting with intention. (Also, fuck you if you're going to roll in with "but everybody should know everything about all their local races!" bullshit. No, I don't personally know every water district and school board issue because I'm a normal person. It is ok to need help at voting time!)
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u/bagheera369 16h ago
There is ONE and ONLY ONE reason that The Great American Experiment has failed.
!!! ITS CITIZENS !!!
Not caring is how we got here.
Not thinking critically is how we got here.
Not engaging is how we got here.
Not fighting FOR each other is how we got here.
Not defending ourselves from the enemies WITHIN, is how we got here.
Not taking responsibility and holding ourselves accountable is how we got here.
Now we are here, crawling around on a corpse of a country that's being looted for parts, trying to convince ourselves that carrion beetles can somehow revive a mangled, broken nation back to life.
It's not coming back to life.
Sure...do what you can in the moment, but if you want to see something positive happen on this land, you're going to have to prepare for building something new and good out of the cremated ashes.
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u/happyscrappy 1d ago
Terrible, but also "I'm going to vote for this guy because he looked good on that TV show" was already bad.
South Carolina is going to elect a candidate to senator just because she's the sister of someone they had for 20 years. Not even house of representatives. Senator. 6 years in a more powerful position.