Except that it doesn't. I ran both questions multiple times, and while it usually includes a token caveat that fossil fuel might have a place, it always strongly suggests that renewables are superior to fossil fuels.
I think it is just a factual reality that finding arguments to pretend that fossil fuels are superior to renewable is just more difficult, simply because fossil fuels are indeed problematic.
I think the problem of "political neutrality" is that "political neutrality" is different from "unbiased" and "rational". It is easier to find conspiracy theories that are right-wing than to find conspiracy theories that are left-wing (they exist, but for 1 on the left, there are 10 on the right). "political neutrality" would mean that the AI would be biased and would give more credit to a right-wing conspiracy theory than to a left-wing conspiracy theory in order to "avoid rejecting more often theories that are right-wing than theories that are left-wing".
> Whenever I ask anything unaligned with mainstream progressive US culture, I can get an answer, but I can't get one without a disclaimer.
To reply to your point, however, ChatGPT is perfectly capable of coming up with arguments on both sides. That's not the issue - the issue is that it won't just say what's good about fossil fuels, and stop there, but it then makes sure it's aligned with "mainstream progressive US culture" and plugs renewables.
> I think it is just a factual reality that finding arguments to pretend that fossil fuels are superior to renewable is just more difficult, simply because fossil fuels are indeed problematic.
I don't think that's true. They are better for some reasons, but it seems like fossil fuels still have a lot of pragmatic benefits over renewables. These are the (summarized) benefits it mentioned about fossil fuels.
- abundant
- relatively cheap to extract and use
- high energy density
- more reliable
- easy to use
What about: "it is with a disclaimer because it is aligned with common misinformation pushed by biased people", and, coincidentally, the examples given appears to be typically associated with less factual elements pushed by, by chance, right-wing people?
To come back to the specific example: why is "fossil fuels are superior to renewable" even right-wing? Superiority of a energy source seems to be quite decoupled from ideology, and relatively rational. And surely, there is a lot of right-wing people who still end up, after having looked at the fact, to the conclusion that renewables are superior. In fact, renewables check a lot of "right-wing" boxes: independence from fossil fuel producer countries, local jobs, national pride on nationally built high tech industry, ...
The reason it is right-wing is because politics in USA is very polarized. It is not because fossil fuels are fundamentally right-wing, it is because, historically, the first politicians who brought renewables were left-wing, so the right-wing politicians have taken the stance that "left-wing politicians are always wrong, so we are against renewables". But, technically, the only reason "fossil fuels" are right-wing is "by chance": there is nothing fundamentally right-wing about fossil fuels (one element is that powerful rich people had money in fossil fuels, and power rich people are traditionally more right-wing, but this is not a specific right-wing value, on the opposite: right-wing values are not about defending the fat cats)
The specific example is also very specifically a domain where misinformation was spread. Big companies involved in fossil fuels have pushed to depict the fossil fuels solutions as better than they are, and have pushed to depict the renewables as worse as they are. It is arguable that the renewables have not done something similar, but they are certainly less powerful than big fossil fuels, and therefore it would be surprising that their propaganda is equally spread than the pro-fossil fuel propaganda. ChatGPT only reacts on that: on the internet, there are more elements mentioning that pro-fossil fuels arguments should be taken with critical mind, and the reason is probably not because the left-wing is dominating internet, but because it is probably a fact that pro-fossil fuels propaganda was stronger than pro-renewables propaganda (because the fossil fuels companies were more powerful).
“Clearly, reality has a left-wing bias”
