Prompt in English? Independent thinker. Switch to Chinese? Suddenly collectivist and intuitive. This changes prompt engineering forever.
Your English prompts are biasing AI toward Western individualism - and you didn’t even know it. A bombshell MIT study proves language flips generative models’ cultural worldview, with medium-large effect sizes that could derail global apps.[2]
Researchers tested GPT and ERNIE on core psych tasks: circle overlap for self-view, logic vs. intuition, and change predictions. Chinese prompts yield interdependent selves, holistic reasoning (rejecting logic for gut feel), and fluid futures. English? Distinct selves, analytic logic, stable predictions. Consistent across models.[2]
Devs building international tools, this screams ‘audit your multilingual prompts.’ Chatbots for Asia? Expect relationship-focused advice. Logic-heavy finance apps? Language could sway risk assessments. Effect sizes are ‘substantial enough for real-world decisions,’ per the authors.[2]
Unlike language-specific fine-tunes, this emerges from training data biases. Beats culture-agnostic assumptions - English LLMs aren’t neutral, they’re analytic by default. Competitive edge: competitors ignoring this risk culturally myopic outputs.[2]
Test it now: Duplicate your top prompt in Chinese via DeepL, compare responses. Track for production apps serving diverse users. Question is, how will API providers normalize this before it bites?
Source: PsyPost