Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio wants answers as to whether Google’s disastrous AI project, known as Gemini, was an effort to accommodate President Joe Biden’s push for expanded DEI.
The Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee on Saturday sent a letter to a lawyer representing Google’s parent company, Alphabet, seeking to learn if Google and its new Gemini feature came about after “the Executive Branch has coerced or colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor lawful speech.”
“To develop effective legislation, such as the possible enactment of new statutory limits on the Executive Branch’s ability to work with Big Tech to restrict the circulation of content and de-platform users, the Committee must first understand how and to what extent the Executive Branch coerced and colluded with companies and other intermediaries to censor speech,” Jordan wrote to lawyer Daniel Donovan.
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Jordan noted that the committee requested information about Alphabet’s communications with the Biden administration in February 2023, which was followed a month later by a subpoena.
While Alphabet’s “rolling productions were insufficiently responsive to the Committee’s request,” GOP lawmakers learned after issuing the subpoena that the federal government “coerced or colluded with technology, social media, and other companies, including Alphabet, to moderate content online.”
In Alphabet’s case, that included pressure from the Biden administration to censor some content that didn’t violate some firms’ policies.
But also at issue is whether Alphabet “intentionally biased” its AI program, Gemini, with algorithms that purposefully distorted the results for Google searches.
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As was noted on X, Gemini went haywire upon launch last month. The AI image generator specifically refused to show images of white people, leading to ridiculous results such as depicting America’s Founding Fathers and Nazi soldiers as black.
Jordan noted that the debacle occurred roughly four months after Biden issued an executive order claiming that the “safe, secure, and trustworthy” development of artificial intelligence should include steps to “advance equity.”
Gemini staff admitted that they allowed outsiders to evaluate the product. Those groups were selected based on their alignment with Biden’s executive order.
“Alphabet claimed that it worked with these external groups ‘to help identify areas for improvement,’ including ‘societal risk,’ such as alleged ‘representational harms,’” Jordan wrote.
The outcome of these so-called “improvements,” however, only revealed Gemini’s clear and inherent anti-white bias.
“These examples reinforce the Committee’s serious concerns about the Executive Branch engaging in censorship by proxy—using surrogates to censor, suppress, or discourage speech in a manner that the government is unable to do itself,” Jordan wrote.
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The chairman also noted that top executives working on the Gemini program publicly “ expressed significant racial and political bias.”
He added, “Given that Alphabet has censored First Amendment-protected speech in the past as a result of government agencies’ requests and demands, the Committee is concerned about potential First Amendment violations that have occurred with respect to Alphabet’s Gemini model.”
He then reminded Donovan the scope of the subpoena included materials relating to the creation, training, and deployment of Gemini.
As a consequence, Jordan wanted the company to hand over all documents and communications about the “inputs and content moderation,” especially if it was programmed to promote or advance “diversity, equity, or inclusion” in conjunction with the White House.
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