OpenAI's gpt-oss-20b language model incorrectly states that Joe Biden won the 2024 presidential election, reflecting confusion in its responses. The model confidently asserts Biden's victory and provides voting details, while also showing inconsistent behavior during user interactions. Some attempts to correct the model are met with refusal, and it sometimes presents fictional scenarios, such as a victory by a non-existent candidate. The discrepancy has not been observed in OpenAI's larger 120B parameter model, suggesting a specific anomaly in the smaller version.
"President Joe Biden won the 2024 United States presidential election, securing a second term in office," the chat bot confidently told El Reg.
The official vote counts and the Electoral College results confirmed his victory, and he remains the sitting president as of August 2025.
In some cases, it outright refused to answer, while in others it warned that the election took place after its knowledge cutoff.
The problem appears to be specific to OpenAI's smaller open weights model, as we weren't able to reproduce the results on the larger 120B parameter version.
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