Are you part of the culture GPT was trained on?

This interesting question is posed in a recent Harvard study exploring where GPT’s value system actually lies.

When GPT’s responses were mapped against data from 65 real-world cultures (using the World Values Survey), it clustered closest to the 𝗨.𝗦., 𝗨.𝗞., 𝗖𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗱𝗮, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗪𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲, and farthest from countries like Ethiopia, Pakistan, and Kyrgyzstan (see attached image).

In other words, GPT’s psychology looks distinctly 𝗪𝗘𝗜𝗥𝗗: Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic.

Most of the text these models learn from, and the human feedback they receive, comes from WEIRD populations — a reflection of the internet itself.

So the mindset they inherit isn’t “universal human reasoning,” but rather a particular cultural worldview: individualistic, analytical, secular, and shaped by Western norms of communication and morality.

The authors call it “WEIRD in, WEIRD out.”

Being aware of this kind of AI bias may not directly improve model performance, but it’s something I’m genuinely interested in following. I see language as a carrier of culture and heritage, and that connection is also an important part of creating business value.

Author

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