00:00 Why do chatbots lie? That's what Clara Helming and her team are trying to find out.
00:06 They quizzed Microsoft's chatbot Bing about various German politicians and found that sometimes it gave incorrect answers,
00:13 even when the right information was in its cited sources.
00:17 We don't really understand the connection to the links it provides,
00:21 because the links are kind of the links that you would probably get from the regular Bing or Google search engine.
00:27 So how is it possible that the bot answers incorrectly when its source information is accurate?
00:34 For one thing, chatbots aren't trained to tell the truth.
00:38 They're trained to give us the most likely next word in a sentence.
00:42 So it's actually a structural problem and that's why we're a bit sceptic that this will change
00:48 so that chatbots will actually give us correct and truthful answers in the future.
00:52 After reporting the mistakes to Microsoft, the company made corrections to the bot's responses.
00:58 But that doesn't take care of the bigger, looming danger.
01:02 If now search engines, which are the places where we go to find new and correct information,
01:08 if they start using these chatbots that actually don't give us the right information,
01:13 then we actually have a problem for democracy,
01:15 because reliable information, knowing what is actually happening, is one of the prerequisites for democracy.
01:22 Companies that make AI chatbots are setting up safety measures.
01:26 Nevertheless, Clara Helming advises users to be careful, especially when they're about to vote.
01:32 It's very important to have a bit of media literacy,
01:35 especially because the big tech companies that produce these chatbots,
01:40 they don't give enough warning about the dangers that come with using it.
01:47 Some forecasts predict that over 90% of new content on the web could be created with AI by 2026.
01:54 And while chatbots can deliver elaborate and complex answers, there's no guarantee they're right.
02:01 (electronic music)
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