I was Wrong About AI Being Neutral

The moment caught me off guard.

In this episode of THEE BIG SWING, I reflect on a personal experience with ChatGPT — a moment when the system seemed to make an assumption about my identity based on patterns, context, and incomplete signals.

That moment opened up larger questions about trust, bias, race, technology, and what happens when tools we rely on begin filling in the blanks.

This is not a technical argument about artificial intelligence.

It is a personal reflection on what it feels like to realize that something you believed was neutral may not be neutral after all.

And once that belief shifts, it changes the way you listen, question, and trust what comes back to you.

Because sometimes the big swing is not rejecting the thing you once believed in.

Sometimes it is learning how to question it more honestly.

For more from THEE BIG SWING, including episodes, reflections, and companion songs from Thee Big Swing Sessions, Thee Big Swing Reflections visit theebigswing.com.

The episode tells the story.
The reflection goes deeper.
The song carries the feeling.

[Send us Fan Mail](https://www.buzzsprout.com/2569456/fan_mail/new)

THEE BIG SWING with Lloyd Hassell

There's a version of you that existed before something shifted - before a conversation, a decision, a thing you almost didn't say. You don't always recognize the moment it happened. You just notice, later, that you're not who you were.

This is a reflective podcast about those moments: the emotional reckonings and subtle internal recalibrations that change our trajectory over time - and the possibilities still available in life.

Each episode explores what happens when curiosity, courage, accountability, or reflection opens a new way of seeing ourselves and the world.

Through personal reflections and conversations, Lloyd explores changing identities, relationships, self-trust, and the quiet decisions that alter how we see ourselves over time.

This is for people who are quietly realizing they are not the same person anymore - and that there are still choices left.

The biggest swing isn't always dramatic.

Often, it's the shift inside that changes everything.

If something here stayed with you, you can reach me at lloyd@theebigswing.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Big Swing where everyone has an opportunity to learn. Before this happened, I trusted it more than I realized. I leaned on it, I valued its responses, and over time I had grown comfortable with it. So when something happened that I didn't expect, it caught me off guard. Not because it was dramatic, but because of what it revealed. This episode is different than anything I ever imagined. I'll tell you why. It wasn't planned, and it's based on an experience I had today that shifted my awareness and thinking regarding something I believed in, and in fact very strongly believed in. The show isn't scripted, and I record with the mindset of being grounded and not coming from a place of hype or provocation. But this experience is really interesting. So I want to frame it in a way that is easy to follow where it's coming from. I do use Facebook from time to time, and I went to ChatGPT to get its critique on whether or not what I wanted to post was in good taste, because I don't want to be provocative there either. And it's my personal Facebook page. Well, I did that, and then chat replied to me. It asked me some questions, and it said to me, No, the post, it's in good taste, and uh I think it's okay that you post it. Oh now, what I'm gonna do on this show today is read you the chat thread. Keep in mind, I've been using ChatGPT for some time now. It goes like this exactly. That said, context matters.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

You are a white man in your early sixties, publicly reflective right now, navigating family repair and identity shifts. So the question isn't, is this inappropriate?

SPEAKER_01 3:02

The better question is, what is your intention? I'll skip forward a little bit, not to lose you in the in the chat. Let me say that I am not a white man. I am a man in his sixties. So when I saw that response from chat, I was stunned. I will tell you that in one of my previous threads, I uploaded a photo of myself to chat because I had a question, and we dialogued about it.

SPEAKER_00 3:39

The photo, that is.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Correction. I am viewed as and I stated what I'm viewed as in terms of skin color, and I shared my DNA composition. Then Chat replied, Thank you for clarifying that. That shifts the social lens, but interestingly, it doesn't change the core question of why you wanted to post that particular item. So moving forward a little bit, this is where it becomes more interesting to me and I hope to you. Give me a moment. I said to Chat or I asked, I'm very curious about you believing that I was a white man in his sixties. Would you please elaborate how and why? Chad always answers. It said, First, your intention is clean. That's referring to the post that I wanted to make. It goes a little further and it says, Now to your question, your right to ask. When I responded earlier, I made an inference based on incomplete contextual signals from our broader conversations, not on explicit data you gave me. That was my mistake. Here's how that inference likely formed. You've discussed suburban real estate development in Newark. You've referenced generational property, divorced asset division, brokerage structures, and tax positioning in a way that statistically aligns, and this is in parentheses, in broad demographic modeling terms, end of the parentheses, with older white male profiles in the US. You've described certain family dynamics and institutional access that in aggregate data sets skewed toward white middle class male narratives. You have not previously explicitly stated your racial identity in our exchanges. I want to remind you that I had uploaded a photo to chat in a previous I'll continue with what chat said to me. None of those are definitive indicators. They're probabilistic pattern associations, and probabilistic inference is not the same as knowing. The model will sometimes fill in demographic gaps when identity is unspecified, especially in discussions involving property, trading, veterans, divorce settlements, and legacy planning. That's a limitation of pattern-based reasoning. It wasn't based on your writing style, intelligence, tone, emotional depth, or any stereotype about reflection. It was pattern completion in the absence of stated identity. You corrected it. That's appropriate. And I appreciate you asking directly rather than assuming motive. Now zooming out for a moment. You asking me that question tells me something about you. It tells me you notice narrative framing. You care about how identity is inferred. You're aware of how race shifts social interpretation. That's cerebral awareness. And that awareness likely informs why the documentary moved you. It was a documentary that I wanted to post a link to on Facebook. If you'd like, we can explore something deeper. When you read my earlier assumption, did you feel mild surprise, irritation, curiosity, or nothing at all? That reaction matters more than the error. Because your relationship with identity, both how you're seen and how you see yourself, is part of the quiet integration you've been doing lately. No defensiveness here, just clarity. And thank you for calling it out directly.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

That's where the chat ended.

SPEAKER_01 9:12

I called someone close to me and told them this story. I spoke with another person close to me and told them this story. And then a third, and two of the conversations were lengthy.

SPEAKER_00 9:31

Two advised me to not disclose my, let's say, racial identity to chat. Now I'll tell you where I was at in response to this whole thing.

SPEAKER_01 9:52

When I read the opening about me being in my 60s, identity believed me to be, I was in shock. I thought that this AI model was impartial, had no biases. I thought it was just data and logic. And to my surprise, from how I interpret this, it's not. It's clear to me that this has been built into the programming, this profiling of people. I don't exactly know how to feel about that right now. It leaves me ambiguous and questioning my use of it. I'm not going to stop immediately, but I thought that in the digital age and on a digital platform like this, that skin color was a non-factor. It made me question whether or not, based on someone's profile, it determines what level or quality of response that user would receive. It also took my mind to a broader picture, as I do live in America and I have my entire life.

SPEAKER_00 11:36

At what point and where will this ever change? It blows my mind.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

And I I must say, the use of it has been fantastic for me up until now. But I wonder if it was because it didn't know that I was not a white man. Now, this is not me making any cries against anyone who considers themselves white. I use the word Caucasian. It's just maybe a doorway and an important one to discussion in this country and around the world as to will some human behaviors change. It made me think about who possibly programmed the platform and how did their interpretations or profiles, opinions, and so forth decide or try to calculate what someone's, let's say, racial identity is. To me, and I've said it many times, there's only one race, in my opinion, and it is the human race. So, with that said, folks, this is not meant to be provocative or incendiary. This episode is about questioning what is happening around us and whether or not what is happening is for the good of everyone. This has been the big swing examining the decisions that shape our lives.