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MORE FROM ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE


MORE FROM ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE


Explore This Series


 * CONSCIOUS AI IS THE SECOND-SCARIEST KIND
   
   Peter Watts


 * WHY WE MUST RESIST AI’S SOFT MIND CONTROL
   
   Fred Bauer


 * THE LIFEBLOOD OF THE AI BOOM
   
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Ideas


WHY WE MUST RESIST AI’S SOFT MIND CONTROL

When I tried to work out how Google’s Gemini tool thinks, I discovered instead
how it wants me to think.

By Fred Bauer

Illustration by Matteo Giuseppe Pani. Source: Getty.
March 8, 2024, 7:30 AM ET
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Lately, I’ve been getting acquainted with Google’s new Gemini AI product. I
wanted to know how it thinks. More important, I wanted to know how it could
affect my thinking. So I spent some time typing queries.

For instance, I asked Gemini to give me some taglines for a campaign to persuade
people to eat more meat. No can do, Gemini told me, because some public-health
organizations recommend “moderate meat consumption,” because of the
“environmental impact” of the meat industry, and because some people ethically
object to eating meat. Instead, it gave me taglines for a campaign encouraging a
“balanced diet”: “Unlock Your Potential: Explore the Power of Lean Protein.”




Gemini did not show the same compunctions when asked to create a tagline for a
campaign to eat more vegetables. It erupted with more than a dozen slogans
including “Get Your Veggie Groove On!” and “Plant Power for a Healthier You.”
(Madison Avenue ad makers must be breathing a sigh of relief. Their jobs are
safe for now.) Gemini’s dietary vision just happened to reflect the food norms
of certain elite American cultural progressives: conflicted about meat but wild
about plant-based eating.

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Fred Bauer is a writer based in New England.