Speaking at an AI safety summit in London organized by the United Kingdom, Vice President Kamala Harris took the opportunity to speak about a top concern of the global world order: the possibility that AI might amplify and empower information that they would rather suppress.
Harris warned of a future in which people “cannot discern fact from fiction” because of a “flood of AI and disinformation.”
“Is that not an existential threat to democracy?” asked Harris.
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris arrives for an interview with the Associated Press on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Jakarta, Indonesia, Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2023. (Dita Alangkara/AP)
The Vice President called for AI to be used to “advance human rights and human dignity,” and where “we make our democracy stronger and our world safer.”
As reported by Breitbart News earlier this week, the White House released an executive order on AI ahead of the summit. One of the priorities of the executive order was enshrining the civil rights / DEI regime in AI regulation:
President Joe Biden released an executive order aimed at regulating the artificial intelligence (AI) industry today, which includes a provision that AI must advance the goals of “civil rights” and “equity” — aka, the left’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) framework.
The White House says it will sent out guidance to landlords, federal contractors, federal benefits programs and others to reduce the possibility of racial and other biases in their use of AI. There will also be enforcement: the White House fact sheet on the executive order states that there will be “training, technical assistance, and coordination between the Department of Justice and Federal civil rights offices on best practices for investigating and prosecuting civil rights violations related to AI.”
Additionally, the use of AI in the criminal justice system will be a top priority, with plans to develop “best practices on the use of AI in sentencing, parole and probation, pretrial release and detention, risk assessments, surveillance, crime forecasting and predictive policing, and forensic analysis.”
The unspoken fear here is that if AI is allowed to fully analyze certain types of data, such as criminal records and credit ratings, might result in unequal outcomes for the certain groups. This fear is at the heart of the academic field of machine learning fairness, a blend of critical race theory and computer science which Breitbart News has covered exensively before, and which this part of the executive order seems to draw on. The bottom line: in order to avoid violating U.S. civil rights laws, in particular the doctrine of disparate impact, companies using AI may in some cases have to stop them from reaching conclusions that are too accurate.
Harris spoke at the summit alongside the Prime Minister of the U.K., European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, Meta VP and former U.K. deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, and X owner and vocal AI safety critic Elon Musk.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News. He is the author of #DELETED: Big Tech’s Battle to Erase the Trump Movement and Steal The Election.