U.S. Officials Scrutinize Chinese AI for Ideological Bias

American officials have embarked on a discreet mission to evaluate Chinese artificial intelligence programs for their alignment with the Chinese Communist Party's ideology, according to a memo examined by Reuters. The U.S. State and Commerce Departments are conducting these assessments by posing standardized questions to these AI models in both English and Chinese and scoring their responses.

This initiative, previously undisclosed, underscores a competitive dynamic between the U.S. and China over the global deployment of large language models, commonly known as AI. Officials are concerned about the potential widespread influence of ideologically biased models. A State Department representative suggested that revealing the results could raise public awareness of these tools' manipulation by geopolitical rivals.

The memo reviewed reveals tests on models like Alibaba's Qwen 3 and DeepSeek's R1, with findings that these Chinese AI systems tend to mirror Beijing's perspectives more closely than U.S. counterparts. Frequent censorship in the models' responses further emphasizes Beijing's control. The scrutiny of AI's ideological influence extends beyond Chinese models, with instances involving figures like Elon Musk exposing broader concerns.

(With inputs from agencies.)