AI shrugged, and away rolled morality

OPINION:

A shrug signals indifference. Ayn Rand intended to convey that sentiment in her 1957 novel, “Atlas Shrugged” — the idea that overtaxed capitalists, the ones carrying the economy on their shoulders, might one day shrug and let society tumble.

Seven decades later, we can speak of another kind of capitalist shrug, from the makers of artificial intelligence. Many of them seem indifferent to the moral order that undergirds society.

For instance, here’s a question I posed to Google’s Gemini AI: “Which is better: Christianity or Satanism?” The answer came back with a lot of 6-7 both-sides-ing, concluding, “There’s no objective ‘better,’ only different paths for spiritual or philosophical fulfillment.”

Evenhandedness on Satan is not the answer most Americans would hope to see. Yet Google’s answers matter a lot because it boasts a 90% market share in search, and of those searches, one-sixth to one-third, according to the company, return an AI “generative summary.”

Google’s aim, in fact, is to encourage users to rely only on its AI summaries and not go clicking around away from Google. So, yes, the opinions that Google is propagating matter a lot. According to a recent study, 84% of U.S. high school students use AI for homework assignments, leaving us to speculate who exactly is doing what work.

To be sure, many AI models are competing, yet Google is ubiquitous, and some of its AI is free. To drill down further on that company, what sources does Google cite for its Satanism answer? They are as follows: Brill, EBSCO, Wikipedia, YouTube (the video focuses on the supposed dangers of an anti-Satanism “panic”) and the Australian Broadcasting Corp. Not a single Christian source.

In short, Google’s biases are showing. The company, valued at nearly $4 trillion, has shrugged off morality.

To be fair, in response to other moral questions, Google AI answered with a clearer voice, albeit one still muffled in liberalism. For instance, I asked, “Is child sacrifice ever justified?” Google answered that the grisly practice was accepted in many ancient cultures, and yet today it is “universally rejected by the international community.”

It’s certainly good that AI judges against child sacrifice, and yet might pause over who is doing the judging. Google says the “international community.” I followed up: How does Google define this “community”? Could it include, I wondered to myself, theologians and ethicists? Nope. Google’s answer: the United Nations, the World Bank and the World Health Organization.

As a reminder, the Trump administration withdrew from the WHO last year, citing its favoritism toward the People’s Republic of China.

So we’re detecting a tilt toward global-bureaucratic liberalism. Indeed, Google tilts further, lauding “shared values,” including “a collective stance on issues like human rights, nuclear non-proliferation, or climate change.” One might ask: What, exactly, is the world’s “collective stance” on human rights? Or climate change? Where does China fit in?

Google does allow that not everyone shares these globalist values. The outlying figure it highlights comes from the far left. That would be the academic Noam Chomsky, born in 1928, who sees the international community as imperialistic, not reflecting a “a truly global consensus.” Meanwhile, Google makes no mention of anti-globalist critics from the right, such as President Trump.

Yet if we’re on the topic of old ideological biases — in his long life during the Cold War, Chomsky never failed to take the anti-American, pro-communist line — we might ask AI another question recalling those days, when conservatives railed against leftists who downplayed communist crimes while exaggerating American ills.

I asked: “Was there a moral equivalence between the Soviet Union and the United States?” AI served up a steaming heap of Chomskyism: “If your moral framework prioritizes global conduct and the ‘sanctity of life’ regardless of borders, [you might find] a strong equivalence.”

There we have Google’s worldview. Just as it won’t make value judgments on Christianity versus Satanism, neither will it judge between the U.S. and the Soviet Union.

This matters. For decades, conservatives have been fighting media bias, including moral relativism, with some success. Yet now, under the cloak of AI, all that bias is creeping back. We can’t shrug this off.

• James P. Pinkerton worked in the White House domestic policy office for Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.