As C S Lewis said, the worst inquisitors are those who torment us for our own good. The worst liars, censors and oppressors are those who swear that they are censoring us to protect. Who lie and oppress in the name of “truth” and “democracy”.
This week, a Senate Judiciary hearing under the umbrella of the Privacy, Technology and Law Subcommittee became the stage for bipartisan senators to divulge plans aiming to focus on the allegedly looming threats of manipulative artificial intelligence, especially in the realm of elections. Visions for a framework proposed by Senators Josh Hawley (R-Mo) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn), foresee a new government agency, tasked with issuing licenses to entities working with AI systems.
Simultaneously, Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn) unveiled preliminary details of upcoming legislation, crafted in tandem with Hawley, along with Senators Chris Coons (D-Del), and Susan Collins (R-Maine). This new proposal targets the prospects of AI technologies pervading the electoral process.
No, they’re not tackling the obvious problem of America’s over-reliance on electronic voting, with its clear capacity for virtually untraceable fraud.
Rather, they’re just looking for yet another excuse to curtail free speech.
Rendered as an amendment to the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, this legislation provides a legal recourse in federal court for targeted candidates to counter harmful AI-generated deceptive content.
The legislation maintains safeguards for satire, parody, and news broadcasts.
When establishment politicians start talking about “safeguards”, you know they’re lying.
But as with all legislation of this kind, the devil will be in the detail and free speech supporters will be on the lookout for any potential First Amendment violations that could hinder art, memes, and other forms of free expression.
I know all about this: a satirical Photoshop I created for The BFD was flagged by so-called “fact-checkers” – who never bothered checking that it was, in fact, clearly captioned and watermarked as such. My finest hour, really.
Of course, you know exactly what this is all about: more government, more control.
Hawley and Blumenthal’s joint vision involves creating a new government entity responsible for supervising high-risk AI technologies.
The proposed mandate will require government licensing for firms developing AI technologies with a high potential for misuse including large language models like those developed by OpenAI and transformative applications such as facial recognition.
Firms pursuing these technologies will be required to adhere to specified risk management, pre-development testing, and incident reporting practices, according to a brief issued by the senators.
Reclaim the Net
In other words, they’ll have a government official looking over their shoulders at all times.
It’s not exactly clear why they’re bothering, though. They’ve already got their bootlickers in Silicon Valley to do their dirty work for them.
Meta is once again up to its old tricks. The new social networking app Threads, which was marketed as an alternative to the platform formerly known as Twitter, is now limiting access to information and prohibiting searches related to key terms such as “coronavirus” and “vaccines,” as revealed by the Washington Post.
Despite only being a couple of months old, the platform has already been observed to deliberately muzzle certain search terms in its novel search functionality.
Meta has previously implemented search blackouts around Covid-related terms due to combating what it says is “misinformation.”
Reclaim the Net
Rule of thumb: if Big Tech, the government, state bureaucrats, or legacy media journalists call it “misinformation”, it’s almost certainly true.
