Did the Biden Administration Order Big Tech to Censor AI Platforms? Republican Congressman Issues New Letter to Find Out

 

16 of America’s leading tech companies were issued letters, including the likes of Google and OpenAI, to determine whether or not the Biden administration had ordered censorship on AI tools.

The letter was issued by Republican Congressman Jim Jordan who demanded reports of past communications that might give rise to this alarming finding of the former president regarding censorship of lawful speech inside AI platforms.

We’ve seen Trump’s top tech advisors hit on the subject in the past, including how they would be getting to the bottom of this. This matter is the next phase inside the culture war between Silicon Valley and conservatives. Many held the opinion that silencing voices on various social media apps was unlawful to begin with. Now, the Trump administration wants to know if AI giants and other intermediary firms were involved in it or not.

Letters were released to the heads of OpenAI, Apple, and Google, where a report was highlighted that spoke about the Biden administration’s efforts to suppress speech inside AI.

The latest case also saw other tech companies like Amazon, IBM, Meta, Scale AI, Microsoft, Cohere, and more get asked for more details on this matter. The deadline is March 2,7, where all companies are asked to provide replies on this front.

What everyone is curious about is how one leading tech giant is missing from the list, and it’s Musk’s xAI. This obviously has a lot to do with the fact that Musk’s entry into politics and closeness with the president makes him immune to such investigations.

Many companies were anticipating such an investigation to come sometime soon and that’s why many leading AI firms have altered the ways AI chatbot assistants handle all sorts of politically sensitive questions.

During the year’s start, OpenAI shared how it was altering how it trains AI models to represent different perspectives and make sure ChatGPT was not censoring certain people’s views.

OpenAI denied that this was an attempt to appease the Trump admin but instead a means to double down on the firm’s core values. Meanwhile, Anthropic shared how its latest AI model won’t reply to fewer queries any longer. No matter how controversial the question might be, it would try its best to provide a nuanced reply.

Other firms were slower in the race to make changes to their AI systems and how they tackle political prompts. Remember. Google shared how its Gemini won’t be giving out replies to any political themed queries. Interestingly, even after the elections were over, the assistant does not consistently reply to political questions such as who is the head of state of America.

Some tech giant executives like Meta’s CEO appear to have added more fuel to the fire of conservative accusations regarding censorship at Silicon Valley. Zuckerberg mentioned that his firm was pressurized to silence certain kinds of content related to COVID-19 misinformation.