(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) Is President Joe Biden responsible for Google’s infamous blunder involving racist artificial intelligence? The House GOP may soon unveil the answers.
The House Judiciary Committee has called on Google’s parent company, Alphabet, to provide documents related to the development of the AI bot Gemini (formerly Bard), expanding an ongoing investigation into the collusion between Big Tech platforms and the federal government to suppress free speech.
Republicans are now investigating whether Biden’s 2023 executive order on artificial intelligence development influenced Google’s engineers to make Gemini depict historic white figures as people of color.
🚨 #BREAKING: @Jim_Jordan Demands Information on the Biden Administration’s Role in Google’s “Woke” Gemini AI
The Committee is investigating how and to what extent the Executive Branch has colluded with Big Tech and other intermediaries to censor Americans’ speech. pic.twitter.com/R2GKSpsRnG
— House Judiciary GOP (@JudiciaryGOP) March 2, 2024
In a Saturday letter to the legal counsel of Google’s parent company, Gemini, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, stated that the previously issued subpoena on censorship also applies to the AI creation.
“In light of new reporting regarding how Alphabet intentionally biased its AI model, Gemini, by giving it instructions that distort the results shared with Americans who use the model as a source for information, we write to inform you that the Committee views the subpoena as covering material relating to this technology,” Jordan wrote to King & Spalding LLP in a four-page letter.
“Given that Alphabet has censored First Amendment-protected speech as a result of government agencies’ requests and demands in the past, the Committee is concerned about potential First Amendment violations that have occurred with respect to Alphabet’s Gemini model,” Jordan added.
The letter also demanded the transcribed interview of Jack Krawczyk, the lead of Gemini who came under fire for past left-wing posts about systemic racism and Jen Gennai, the director of Google’s Responsible Innovation team. Both individuals have until March 16 to schedule the interviews.
2/ Here’s the founder of Google’s “AI Responsibility” initiative, Jen Gennai, speaking in a keynote address in 2021. She openly suggests that she treats “Black, Hispanic and Latinx” employees differently than white employees. pic.twitter.com/snJmtSDJnn
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) February 22, 2024
In October 2023, Biden signed an executive order mandating federal agencies to promote “equity” in AI development. Dubbed the “Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence,” the order faced backlash for suggesting that the Biden administration aimed to make AI “woke.”
Some critics may have been vindicated as the House Judiciary Committee’s letter followed widespread criticism of Google when Gemini refused to generate images of white individuals, instead portraying historically white figures as other ethnic groups.
Gemini depicted George Washington as black, the Pope as a woman, among others. The backlash led to Google losing $90 billion in market value. According to Bloomberg, Alphabet’s shares dropped 4.5% to $138.75—the lowest since Jan. 5.
“House Republicans demand Google reveal what role US government had in developing woke Gemini AI”https://t.co/TpVwoUG0Mt
— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) March 2, 2024
Google temporarily shut down its image generator AI while allegedly working on a fix. Google Senior Vice President Prabhakar Raghavan claimed that that the Big Tech giant’s attempt to show a diverse range of people did not consider the original race of the subject.
