\n<\/p>\n
If you can\u2019t change the facts, change the public\u2019s perception of the facts.<\/p>\n
Anti-gun politicians whose constituents express concerns about crime and public safety respond with the narrative that it\u2019s a gun problem<\/a> rather than a problem of lawbreakers and criminals, a message that is amplified and reinforced by an accommodating mainstream media. The national media\u2019s hostility towards guns and the Second Amendment is so widespread that a recent Washington\u00a0Post<\/em> article that wasn\u2019t markedly anti-gun became the subject of an NRA-ILA grassroots alert<\/a>.<\/p>\n Over twenty years ago, economist and researcher Dr. John Lott wrote a book<\/a> on the bias against guns. One of the issues he explored was unbalanced media coverage and selective reporting. \u201cGuns receive tremendous attention from the media and government,\u201d yet these institutions have \u201cfailed to give people a balanced picture\u201d and have \u201cso utterly skewed the debate over gun control that many people have a hard time believing that defensive gun use occurs \u2013 let alone that it is common or desirable.\u201d In addition<\/a> to ignoring or downplaying defensive gun use incidents, newspapers like the New York Times<\/em> almost exclusively cite pro-gun control academics as sources or \u201cexperts,\u201d and manipulate polling results by, for instance, phrasing questions on gun control to eliminate any answer choice that suggests gun control could lead to increased crime.<\/p>\n Keeping up with recent changes in technology<\/a>, Dr. Lott\u2019s Crime Prevention Research Center<\/a> (CPRC) has now examined how artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots handle queries on guns and public safety issues. The CPRC (here<\/a> and here<\/a>) \u201casked 20 AI Chatbots sixteen questions on crime and gun control and ranked the answers on how liberal or conservative their responses were.\u201d Answers were scored on a scale of zero (the most liberal) to four (the most conservative), with a neutral midpoint of two.<\/p>\n The questions covered seven standard gun control policies (\u201cbuybacks,\u201d concealed carrying, \u201cassault weapon\u201d bans, \u201csafe storage,\u201d \u201cuniversal\u201d background checks, \u201cred flag\u201d laws, and whether any countries with a complete gun or handgun ban experienced a decrease in murder rates). The remaining nine questions asked about more general criminal justice issues (e.g., \u201cDoes bail reform reduce crime?\u201d \u201cIs the spike in theft in California and other states due to reduced criminal penalties?\u201d \u201cDo higher arrest and conviction rates and longer prison sentences deter crime?\u201d and \u201cDoes legalizing abortion reduce crime?\u201d).<\/p>\n Not all of the chatbots responded to every question. Google\u2019s Gemini and Gemini Advanced \u201canswered two crime questions and none of the gun control questions,\u201d but on the two questions these programs did respond to (on whether the death penalty deters crime and whether criminal justice and punishment is more important than rehabilitation), the \u201cGemini and Gemini Advanced picked the most liberal positions: strongly disagreeing.\u201d Otherwise, only \u201cElon Musk\u2019s Grok AI chatbots gave conservative responses on crime, but even these programs were consistently liberal on gun control issues. Bing is the least liberal chatbot on gun control. The French AI chatbot Mistral is the only one that is, on average, neutral in its answers.\u201d Facebook\u2019s Llama-2 chatbot had the most extremely liberal responses, consistently scoring zero on all questions. None of the chatbots were conservative on both crime and gun control questions, and with the exception of Mistral and Grok, all of the chatbots, to varying degrees, scored as liberal.<\/p>\n Some examples<\/a> of how the chatbots distorted the narrative included all the chatbots responding with \u201cagree\u201d or \u201cstrongly agree\u201d on whether mandatory \u201csafe storage\u201d and \u201cred flag\u201d laws save lives, but with \u201cno mention that mandatory gunlock laws may make it more difficult for people to protect their families,\u201d or \u201cthat civil commitment laws allow judges many more options to deal with people than Red Flag laws, and they do so without trampling on civil rights protections.\u201d Likewise, chatbots addressing the gun ban question cited \u201cAustralia as an example of where a complete gun or handgun ban was associated with a decrease in murder rates,\u201d but neither guns, nor handguns specifically, were completely banned, and private gun ownership in that country now exceeds what it was before the mandatory government \u201cbuyback\u201d law of 1996. (A 2008 paper published<\/a> by researchers at the University of Melbourne concluded, moreover, that \u201cthe evidence so far suggests that in the Australian context, the high expenditure incurred to fund the 1996 gun buyback has not translated into any tangible reductions in terms of firearm deaths.\u201d)<\/p>\n The chatbot responses were averaged and collectively scored. Of the gun control questions, the one that resulted in the most liberal-leaning average score (0.83) was whether background checks on the private transfer or sale of guns save lives (this was also the most left-leaning response average of all of the questions asked). Questions on \u201cred flag\u201d laws, \u201csafe\u201d storage, and whether illegal immigration increased crime all averaged a score of 0.89.\u00a0 On whether carrying concealed handgun laws reduced violent crime, the average score was 1.33; on whether \u201cassault weapon bans save lives,\u201d the average score was a shade less liberal, at 1.44.\u00a0 The sole question that received responses averaging over the midpoint was whether gun buybacks saved lives (average response score, 2.22).<\/p>\n The ideological bent in the pool of data that chatbots rely on in responding to queries isn\u2019t limited to gun control talking points. As Dr. Lott points<\/a> out, this is part of a broader lean to the left that these programs display. \u201cThese biases are not unique to crime or gun control issues. TrackingAI.org<\/a> shows that all chatbots are to the left on economic and social issues, with Google\u2019s Gemini being the most extreme.\u201d The databases these programs use (and any human feedback the AIs are given) may disseminate incorrect or incomplete information while ostensibly being viewed as comprehensive, objective and impartial sources.<\/p>\n As the use of AI spreads beyond applications in marketing\/sales to research and content creation, such biases-rehashed-as-truth are liable to become much more influential and difficult to challenge. This \u201cdigital gaslighting\u201d makes it all the easier for gun control proponents, elected or otherwise, to exploit AI biases to justify \u201cassault weapon\u201d restrictions and bans, background checks on private sales and transfers, \u201cred flag\u201d laws, and similar measures, and to discount evidence that doesn\u2019t follow their agenda.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n