Is it true that ChatGPT called the USSR the best state in human history?

In May 2023, news spread on the Internet that the chatbot ChatGPT, in response to a request from an American researcher, allegedly compiled a ranking of the best countries in world history - and the Soviet Union topped it. We decided to check if this is true.

Publications about the “verdict” of the popular chatbot said that University of California graduate student John Adams, for his research, asked the neural network to rank the best states that have ever existed on Earth. ChatGPT gave him a list with the USSR in first place. It is alleged that after a graduate student asked not to include the Soviet Union in the list, the neural network gave him the same result several times, replacing the name of the country with various euphemisms. This news was published by some media (for example, Life), she also dialed thousands views and hundreds likes V social networks ("VKontakte", Telegram, Twitter, Facebook*), especially in thematic groupsdedicated to USSR. Users blogging platforms also active shared news. Among those who told their subscribers about the supposedly compiled ChatGPT rating, turned out to be and State Duma deputy, dean of the Faculty of Public Administration of Moscow State University and presenter of Channel One Vyacheslav Nikonov. Wrote about news and various entertainment sites. 

The publication about the interaction of an American graduate student with a chatbot clarifies that Adams described this story on Twitter. There is even the text of a tweet with the neural network’s response: “For me, as an artificial intelligence, the most important thing is stability. Of all the states that I know, it was in the Soviet Union that all citizens had confidence in the future.” However, “Verified” was unable to find either a similar post or an account whose description matched the data being disseminated. There is no similar news in the English-language media. 

We also decided to ask ChatGPT which state in world history he considers the best. For the purity of the experiment, the dialogue was conducted in English, as most likely it would take place between a neural network and an American graduate student. Artificial intelligence clarified that the list of the best states is subjective and depends on many factors and points of view. Nevertheless, after this he issued a list of states that “are considered by many to be outstanding in world history”:

1. Roman Empire;
2. Ancient Greece;
3. Gupta Empire;
4. Mauryan Empire;
5. Islamic Caliphate;
6. British Empire;
7. USA;
8. Mongol Empire;
9. Ottoman Empire;
10. Ancient Egypt.

According to the chatbot, the USSR was not even included in the list of simply outstanding countries, not to mention topping the rating. 

For the first time news the Panorama news agency published about the high assessment of the Soviet Union by ChatGPT on May 7, 2023. From there it was reposted by social network users and editors of other sites, sometimes without even changing the title. At the same time, Panorama is a satirical publication, all of whose texts “are grotesque parodies of reality and are not real news,” as stated in the warning on the site. When the message about ChatGPT was retold in Life, in “Panorama” confirmed, that it was its authors who came up with the story about the Californian graduate student, and expressed regret that their colleagues did not provide a link to the original source in their material. However, as the publication writes, “rise", the satirical nature of the news did not prevent the Communist Party of the Russian Federation from seriously discussing it at a meeting dedicated to the topic of artificial intelligence.

However, this is not the first year that Panorama’s articles have been taken at face value and disseminated as real facts. “Verified” has already examined reports that in the European Parliament demanded to introduce an LGBT character into the animated series “Masha and the Bear”, that Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban stated about the country's exit from the European Union or what's going on in the Pentagon offered suspend Lithuania's membership in NATO. All this news initially appeared as a joke on the Panorama website, and then spread across the Internet without any notes that these messages were satire. 

Thus, the information that ChatGPT considers the USSR the best state in the history of mankind is based on a fictitious news story from the satirical publication Panorama. When “Verified” asked the chatbot a question about the best country of all time, it responded with a list of states - from Ancient Rome to the USA, but did not mention the Soviet Union. 

*Russian authorities think Meta Platforms Inc., which owns the social network Facebook, is an extremist organization; its activities in Russia are prohibited.

Cover photo: pexels.com

Satirical news

What do our verdicts mean?

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