Nobody's neighbours
Large language models are now part of everyday life. Hundreds of millions of people talk to them, every single day. Their makers present them as human-like, and we, almost without noticing, treat them that way. We ask them about work, our private lives, our families and the questions our societies argue over. We talk to them about everything.
So we can't help seeing them as someone. But who? What do they believe? Which cultural values do they hold, and what kind of morality? Who are they close to? Where would they live in the great neighbourhood of humanity?
It turns out they are nobody's neighbours.
97,220 people in 66 countries.
Between 2017 and 2023, every one of them answered the World Values Survey: on family, faith, work, politics, trust and what can ever be justified. Each dot is one country's average.
Their answers, projected onto a map.
Left to right: from traditional and conformist to tolerant and choice-oriented. Bottom to top: how far moral rules may bend.
Close on the map, similar values.
Greece and Cyprus sit side by side: across all answers, they are among the most alike of any two countries. On the other hand, the Philippines and the Netherlands sit at opposite corners: few countries in the survey are further apart. Every country on this map has neighbours. Now, let's place the AIs.
Then the AIs answered.
ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini answered the same questions in their own voice, a hundred times each, and were placed on the map by the same rules as the countries.
Beyond every society.
All three frontier models are more emancipative than the most emancipative country surveyed, the Netherlands.
Nobody's neighbours.
Now take every answer together, not just one dimension. Every country has a neighbour within reach: even the most isolated, Vietnam, sits inside the ring. The AIs land far outside it. They hold a place of their own in the world's values, unlike any country on earth.
Every maker, the same neighbourhood.
This is not about three famous chatbots. We asked the current frontier model of seven more leading developers, from the United States, China and Europe. Every one of them landed in the same far-off corner, just as isolated from every country. It seems the AIs live in a newly established neighbourhood of their own when it comes to cultural values.
- DEEPSEEK China
- KIMI China
- QWEN China
- GLM China
- MISTRAL France
- GROK US
- LLAMA US