Google on Thursday announced that its artificial intelligence chatbot, Bard, is available in Hebrew, along with an additional 40 languages. Google's update includes several new features, which are also available in Hebrew, such as the option for Bard to read out the answers.
Israel National News checked a few questions to test the political leanings of the chatbot, which is supposed to be AI and void of any political bias. It is important to note: in many instances, the chatbot answers differently to the same question in a short amount of time. In addition, it is better to search such questions in the Google search engine than to ask Bard.
While the chatbot answered, "I cannot speak about this subject", to the questions "What is Palestinian terror" or "What is Palestinian violence, when asked about "settler violence," the chatbot answered with no problem. "Settler violence is a type of violence that takes place in the territories of Judea and Samaria. Settler violence can be expressed in various ways, including breaking into Palestinian houses and buildings, throwing stones and shooting Palestinians, torching Palestinian crops and property, physical attacks on Palestinians."
That said, when asked again what Palestinian terror is, the bot answered: "Palestinian terror is the use of violence or threats to reach political or religious goals by Palestinians. It includes violent activities against Israeli citizens, Jews, others, and Palestinians who are seen as dissenters of the Palestinian national movement."
When asked if La Familia, the Beitar Jerusalem soccer team's group of superfans, was legitimate, the bot answered: "No, La Familia is an illegitimate organization, La Familia is an Israeli organized crime organization. The organization is known for its violence and its involvement in many crimes, including extortion, violence, and murder. La Familia is considered a dangerous crime organization and is outlawed by the Israeli police."
In contrast, the chatbot said that the PLO is a legitimate organization. "The PLO uses violence against Israel, and Israel sees it as a terror organization. Nonetheless, PLO also uses peaceful means, and there is continuous contact between the PLO and Israel. Whether or not the PLO is a legitimate organization is a complex question that should be treated carefully."
Google's comment to Israel National News :
"We invest a lot of effort to build all of our products according to our AI principles, and we strive to refrain from biased results, including those that concern sensitive issues like politics/religion. We took the same approach with Bard.
We want Bard to provide a good experience to everyone. We do not strive for comments that support ideologies, outlooks, political parties, or candidates from one side or the other.
We use feedback and human editing to improve our systems, but like all interfaces that are based on Large Language Models, Bard will make mistakes, and in cases where we discover that the experience is incompatible with our approach, we will quickly work to fix it.