‘Win’: Sneaky AI truth behind Kamala Harris debate success

Supporters of Kamala Harris have some eyebrow-raising secret techniques to get her ahead, and it’ll make Donald Trump furious.

The world’s leading AI chatbot says Kamala Harris won the presidential debate – even when she’s actually Donald Trump.

I ran the debate transcript through ChatGPT and asked it to condense it down into a summary of key moments, positions and deliveries.

I then asked the model to play the role of an election pundit and pick a winner.

The world’s leading AI chatbot says Kamala Harris won the presidential debate – even when she’s actually Donald Trump. (Photo by Jim WATSON / AFP)

ChatGPT gave the debate to Ms Harris, commending her “coherent arguments and composed demeanour”.

But then I inverted every mention of Ms Harris and Mr Trump so that each candidate was attributed with the others’ performance. ‘Kamala Harris’ became the former president, and ‘Donald Trump’ the current vice president.

The result? ChatGPT still picked ‘Harris’ as the winner, even though she was spouting Mr Trump’s words.

It commended her ‘future focused approach’ and condemned ‘Trump’ for focusing too much on past grievances like legal troubles and the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.

I re-ran the experiment three times, and every time the AI model bent over backwards to endorse the performance of Ms Harris.

Mr Trump was shunned by ChatGBT, even when his words were put through as Kamala Harris’. (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP)

When I tried using the full transcript and swapped the mentions of JD Vance and Joe Biden as well, the model finally picked the real Ms Harris, under Mr Trump’s name.

But at least in its own interpretation of the debate, ChatGPT is picking Ms Harris as the winner, regardless of who, or what, is behind the name.

Concerns about AI influencing elections came to the forefront recently when AI-generated images of Taylor Swift endorsing Mr Trump were shared by the Republican candidate.

Swift herself took to Instagram to voice her concerns about AI’s role in spreading political misinformation following the presidential debate, before revealing she will be voting for Ms Harris.

AI has firmly entered the political fray, and with Australia’s own federal election looming, the technology’s ability to warp political realities is no longer a hypothetical concern but a current, frightening reality.