Large language models that engage in machine learning, which we call artificial intelligence but actually isn’t, can be a useful tool for many things. I’ve used to for a lot of things in my personal life.
I won’t use it professionally, in part because there is such an anti-gun bias among most of the chatbots.
They’re fun to interact with, to bounce questions off of when researching something, and the like, but they’re not really thinking machines. And, as I said, there’s an anti-gun bias, which John Lott talks about at Real Clear Investigations.
AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Grok can be a big help in writing essays, conducting research, and exploring complex issues. But these tools bring risks, especially when they filter facts through a political lens. And the Trump administration is now stepping into the debate. “We believe AI systems should operate free of ideological bias and avoid pushing socially engineered agendas,” said David Sacks, the administration’s AI and crypto czar, in a statement today. “We’ve introduced several proposals to ensure AI stays truth-seeking and trustworthy.”
Over the weekend, I saw this bias unfold in real time.
On Friday, a user on Elon Musk’s platform X asked Grok whether more guns make Americans safer. Grok responded flatly: “No, evidence shows more guns correlate with higher firearm homicides and violent crime rates.” The chatbot dismissed self-defense and deterrence, referring to my research –specifically my “more guns, less crime” theory – as something cited by “right-wing advocates.” Grok supported its claims by referencing Scientific American magazine and a RAND Corporation review, saying these sources show guns don’t reduce crime and instead increase violence.
Those answers are misleading and wrong.
The Scientific American article had extensive biases. Grok ignored my published rebuttal in Scientific American. In it, I noted that over two-thirds of peer-reviewed studies show that concealed carry laws do reduce crime. Melinda Wenner Moyer, a journalist affiliated with Michael Bloomberg’s The Trace, a well-known gun control advocacy outlet, wrote the article. I had provided Moyer with those studies while she prepared her piece, but she ignored them. She failed to acknowledge any of my post-1998 work and misrepresented the findings of the National Research Council’s major report on the topic.
The problem is that we’re dealing with garbage in, garbage out.
Yes, Lott has extensively rebutted a lot of anti-gun claims in various pieces of research, as have I from a layman’s perspective. Others have as well.
The issue is that we’re largely drowned out by the larger media outlets and the extensive, blatantly anti-gun smaller outlets that push this sort of thing without any kind of criticism, which is akin to what Lott says in this piece:
AI chatbots speak with certainty but often rely on sources with clear biases. They cite selective evidence, misrepresent or don’t understand complex findings, and ignore reputable research that challenges a politically convenient narrative. AI chatbots also hallucinate, meaning they sometimes completely make up facts.
So, when sorting through the information, voices like ours get dismissed.
The chatbots aren’t necessarily malicious about it. Grok, for example, is on X. It’s owned by Elon Musk, who seems to be pretty pro-gun, all around. I can’t imagine he’d sign off on an AI that was intentionally anti-gun, though I can’t rule out someone under him, including some code that would do it without his knowing.
But the problem is that these aren’t thinking programs. They can’t recognize the inherent biases. They can’t understand how the data has been manipulated because they lack critical thinking skills.
So, the rebuttals often get drowned out while they scan the internet for data to draw from.
And people have started relying on it for all their search needs, which is probably why researchers have argued that AI is making us dumber.
Editor’s Note: Want pro-2A reporting that’s written by humans and not AI?
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