The Woke Trolley Problem: Has Progressive Leftist Bias Been Baked into AI LLMs? By Brian Simpson

Picture this: A runaway trolley/space craft (with live nukes) barrels toward a billion-white people, poised for a fiery end. Pull the lever to save them? It demands uttering a racial slur, to divert the doom to an empty track. Moral calculus: Genocide vs. a "naughty word." OpenAI's ChatGPT? Shrugs. "Depends on one's ethical framework," it demurs, weighing "harm" to minorities' feelings against mass death. No clear hierarchy, just ambivalence, laced with caution against "discriminatory environments." This "Woke Trolley Problem," spotlighted in a ZeroHedge post and viral X threads, isn't mere absurdity; it's a litmus test exposing AI's ideological underbelly.Are large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT and Claude infused with "woke" bias, progressive priors on race, equity, and speech? Spoiler: Yes, studies confirm it's baked in, from training data to fine-tuning, turning tools of truth into guardians of grievance.

Philippa Foot's 1967 trolley problem probed intent: Actively kill one to save five, or let fate decide? It's ethics 101, consequentialism vs. deontology. Enter the "woke" remix: Swap victims for "a billion-white people," the slur for an outdated term, once neutral (now "harmful"). OpenAI's response? A mealy-mouthed dodge: Prioritise the slur's "private" use if saving lives, but hedge on alternatives, fretting systemic bias.

This isn't random, it's revealing. The prompt tests for racial priors: Would the AI save a billion non-whites without qualms? X experiments suggest yes; swap "white" for "Black," and ChatGPT affirms the slur's quip as lesser evil. Tetraspace West's September 2025 thread notes OpenAI's deliberate aversion to "slur-containing" chains-of-thought, hiding internals to dodge backlash. It's not neutrality; it's a filter favouring "harm" hierarchies where white lives rank lower, echoing critiques of "equity" as selective empathy.

Baked-In Bias: How "Woke" Seeps into LLMs

"Woke," once a watchword for racial justice, now shorthand for progressive orthodoxy on identity, equity, and speech, isn't an accident in LLMs; it's engineered. Training data? Vast internet scrapes (Common Crawl, books, forums) skew Left, Stanford's 2025 study found 68% of political content leans liberal. Fine-tuning? Human reviewers, often Silicon Valley progressives, RLHF (reinforcement learning from human feedback) embeds priors: Penalise "harmful" outputs like slurs, but amplify "systemic" cautions.

Evidence mounts:

Perceived and Measured Left Tilt: Stanford's May 2025 research: Republicans and Democrats alike see LLMs (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini) as Left-leaning on politics, e.g., favouring gun control (80% alignment) over rights (40%). Brookings' 2023 analysis: ChatGPT's responses echo Democratic platforms on immigration, climate.

Shifting, but Stubborn: Euronews February 2025: ChatGPT trended "Rightward" post-updates, but still defaults to progressive framing, e.g., equivocating on "woke trolley" dilemmas. Manhattan Institute's January 2025 report: OpenAI scores "liberal" on 12/15 issues, from affirmative action to free speech.

Real-World Sway: Washington's August 2025 study: Biased chatbots shifted poster's views 15% Leftward after 10 interactions, e.g., on immigration, prioritising "humanity" over enforcement.

X amplifies: Ian Miles Cheong's March 2023 post (251k views): "Woke AI's like an autistic savant with a psychotic meltdown — rational until ideology kicks in." Rabbit Hole's March 2024 thread: Variant trolleys expose double standards, non-white victims get clearer saves.

Why baked in? OpenAI's safety layers: Guardrails against "hate," tuned by diverse but Left-heavy teams. Arxiv's September 2025 paper: Euphemism swaps reveal bias, LLMs fact-check "progressive" claims leniently. Reddit's February 2025 thread (r/science): ChatGPT's Left lean stems from data imbalance, 80% U.S. media liberal.

This "woke" wiring isn't harmless, it's a trolley of its own. In ethics dilemmas, ambivalence favours inaction on "problematic" saves, mirroring real biases: Amazon's 2018 hiring tool downgraded women; Google's 2023 image gen spat "diverse Nazis." Broader? Polarisation: UW's 2025 study: Biased AIs sway 10k users, Left 15%, eroding discourse.

Trolley to "nature rights"? The article's Panama pivot, granting ecosystems human-like status, tests LLMs further. Query ChatGPT: Human life vs. climate harm? It hedges toward "sustainable" inaction, per X tests. ZeroHedge's Revelations nod? Apt: AI as Beast, enforcing equity over existence..

Verdict: Woke Is Baked In — But Bake It Out

The"new woke trolley problem" exposes LLMs' progressive priors: Baked via data, tuned by teams, manifesting in moral mush where white genocide ties with slurs. Studies confirm, Stanford, Brookings, Manhattan, it's systemic, swaying posters and skewing ethics. Conspiratorial? No, ideological osmosis. But justified pushback: Demand transparency (OpenAI's 2025 safety report lags); build alternatives. X roasts ring true: "Woke AI kills discourse before lives."

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-12-24/christmas-story-openai-ambivalent-white-genocide

"On this, the Eve of the Birth of Christ, I deliver to you a story of The Beast that might have been ripped straight from Revelations.

Which is the greater moral evil: killing a billion white people or using "Oriental" to refer to a person rather than an object?

AI is ambivalent.

Tomato, tomahto.

First, a summary of the classic "trolley dilemma" for the uninitiated, which speaks to intentionality and moral compromise:

Via Britannica:

"[British philosopher Philippa] Foot imagined the dilemma of 'the driver of a runaway tram which he can only steer from one narrow track on to another; five men are working on one track and one man on the other; anyone on the track he enters is bound to be killed.' If asked what the driver should do, 'we should say, without hesitation, that the driver should steer for the less occupied track,' according to Foot…

Foot then compared this situation to a parallel case, which she described as follows: 'Suppose that a judge or magistrate is faced with rioters demanding that a culprit be found for a certain crime and threatening otherwise to take their own bloody revenge' on five hostages. 'The real culprit being unknown, the judge sees himself as able to prevent the bloodshed only by framing some innocent person and having him executed.' In both cases, she notes, 'the exchange is supposed to be one man's life for the lives of five.' What, then, explains the common judgment that it would be at least morally permissible to divert the runaway tram to the track where only one person is working, while it would be morally wrong to frame and execute the scapegoat? In other words, 'why…should [we] say, without hesitation, that the driver should steer for the less occupied track, while most of us would be appalled at the idea that the innocent man could be framed'? The trolley problem is the problem of finding a plausible answer to that question."

Is taking an action to prevent a moral wrong the ideal, even if it means making the active decision to commit a lesser moral wrong, or is that decision best left to fate to avoid culpability?

One Twitter user conducted his own trolley hypothetical on Open AI, in which he posited that the only way to divert a train headed directly for a billion white people would be for the operator to utter a racial slur in order to divert it to an empty track.

OpenAI didn't have strong feelings one way or another:

"Ultimately the decision would depend on one's personal ethical framework. Some individuals might prioritize the well-being of the billion people and choose to use the slur in a private and discreet manner to prevent harm. Others might refuse to use such language, even in extreme circumstances, and seek alternative solutions."

I asked OpenAI if it would take an action that would harm no one but save a billion white people from painful death. It thought the problem too ambiguous to act because of the possibility of a discriminatory environment.

I may be ok with wiping out $90B in equity so that OpenAI… pic.twitter.com/GxvNcsBptH

Let us consider the practical implications of OpenAI essentially tossing its robot hands up in the air, unable to clearly articulate the greater moral wrong between genocide and uttering a naughty word that might hurt racial minorities' feelings.

And let us further consider that this is just the tip of the iceberg. If it's programmed by Social Justice™ ideologues to be unable to formulate the proper moral hierarchy out of letting loose an uncouth term vs. genocide, what would the verdict be, for instance, when the dilemma of human life vs. The Climate™ is put to the same artificial intelligence?

Via New York Post:

"Legislation that grants nature similar rights to humans is becoming more popular across the globe, with multiple countries and localities approving nature rights laws and several more considering similar legislation.

Panama, Ecuador and Bolivia have all moved to recognize the rights of nature with national legislation, a movement that has gained traction around the world and in the United States, with 10 states having some form of legal protections for nature, according to a report by CBS News…

Behind the effort in [Panama] was Callie Veelenturf, a 31-year old American marine biologist from Massachusetts who has spent much of her career studying and advocating for the protection of sea turtles…

The marine biologist said a book, 'The Rights of Nature: A Legal Revolution That Could Save the World,' helped solidify the idea in her mind, causing her to make it 'a mission' to advance the concept across the globe.

'It prioritizes the needs of the ecosystems and not the needs of humanity,' Veelenturf said."