P.S. A Column On Things

By PAUL E. SCHINDLER JR. I am from Portland, Oregon, Beaumont ’66, Benson High ’70, MIT ’74. Some things are impossible to know, but it is impossible to know these things.

AI Peddling Right Wing Propaganda

Screenshot of a mobile search showing a query about Donald Trump and Democratic lawmakers, along with a disclaimer stating that Trump did not propose to hang them, and mentioning extreme statements made by other individuals.

At 8:05 am Pacific Time on Thursday, Nov. 20, Duck Duck Go’s search engine was asked, “did President Trump threaten to hang Democratic representatives?”

It categorically denied any threat had been made. It offered lengthy conservative context, including the statement that Democrats had done the same thing.

Its algorithm apparently favored Fox News and similar conservative news sources, whose content it echoed verbatim. At that same time, a search without AI assist would have returned multiple pages that disagreed with the summary.

A graph or visual representation relevant to the search engine's response regarding a political statement.
A blank white image.

By 8:45, the same search returned the opposite summary.

Anyone in the Pacific time zone who woke up on the  morning of Nov. 20 to a social media post about President Trump’s threat would have been told by DuckDuck Go’s AI summary that no such threat had been made.