AI ‘Bias and Prejudice’ Is the Theme at Upcoming Biden Meeting in Silicon Valley
President Joe Biden will meet with activists, academics, and tech executives on June 20 to discuss artificial intelligence.
The latest of many recent Biden AI moves, it’s another signal of his administration’s continued focus on race and “algorithmic discrimination” in its attempts to control the evolution of the burgeoning technology.
In a June 19 statement to the press, a White House official said Biden’s summit in San Francisco would include experts known for being “outspoken on the impact of AI on jobs, children, bias and prejudice, [and] the risks posed by AI if it isn’t properly regulated.”
The official noted that it would also include “those who understand the benefits it [AI] provides for education and medicine if this technology is built safely from the start.”
“The White House Chief of Staff office is overseeing a process to rapidly develop decisive actions we can take over the coming weeks. White House principals have met to discuss this issue 2-3 times a week in addition to ongoing daily work being done across the White House and agencies,” the official added.
Those likely to take part include Joy Buolamwin, founder of the Algorithmic Justice League.
“Unchecked, unregulated and, at times, unwanted, AI systems can amplify racism, sexism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination,” the League’s website reads.
Other probable participants include frequent Democratic donor Tristan Harris, the founder of the Center for Humane Technology.
In 2020 testimony before Congress, Harris warned of “conspiracy theories” spreading absent stronger regulation of tech.
“Alex Jones InfoWars conspiracies were recommended 15 billion times before being removed,” he said.
The Biden White House official noted that Stanford University political science professor Rob Reich was also expected to attend the meeting.
“2015, 2016 rolls around. Brexit, the Trump election, Cambridge Analytica, and the bloom is starting to come off the rose of Silicon Valley. We’re all now aware of algorithmic bias of automation that displaces people from work, of privacy violations, of misinformation and disinformation in our news feeds, of hate speech that’s algorithmically amplified, and on and on,” Reich told a heavily masked audience in a 2021 talk.
The Rob Reich at Stanford should not be confused with an identically named influential liberal academic at a nearby university, former Labor Secretary Robert Reich.
(Mark Wilson/Getty Images)
Oren Etzioni, another tech insider expected to participate in the event, and the son of Israeli-born communitarian theorist Amitai Etzioni, has been even less shy in voicing anti-Trump sentiment.
In a November 2020 video post to Twitter, Etzioni jokingly described a deep fake of the former president as a “video of Trump leaked from the White House day care.”
Etzioni donated thousands to Biden during that election cycle.
Jim Steyer, the founder of Common Sense Media and brother of billionaire Democrat mega-donor Tom Steyer, will also be at the summit, according to the White House official.
Biden Focus on AI
The meeting comes amid a media-enabled hype cycle around AI. The latest bout of enthusiasm was touched off by innovative new generative AI platforms, most prominently OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
“AI is a top priority for the President and his team. Generative AI tools have increased significantly [sic] in the past several months and we don’t want to solve yesterday’s problem,” the official said.
“The Biden-Harris administration has focused on this issue since taking office. U.S. government agencies have ramped up their authorities to protect Americans from the risks posed by AI, including fraud and discrimination.”
Vice President Kamala Harris met with top tech CEOs several weeks ago to talk about responsible AI.
That came months after an executive order from Biden in which he maintained that the government should use AI systems “in a manner that advances equity.”
A May 23 report from the Department of Education on AI lays great emphasis on equity and related concerns over disparate outcomes between demographic groups.
“The department holds that biases in AI algorithms must be addressed when they introduce or sustain unjust discriminatory practices in education,” the report states.
It ranked algorithmic discrimination “of the highest importance” among the potential risks from AI.
Congress has also sought to make sense of ChatGPT, including in separate March 8 hearings in both the House and Senate.
One speaker, University of Michigan intermittent lecturer and AI ethicist Merve Hickok, proposed a possible “Algorithmic Safety Bureau” to address bias and other issues from the technology.
The San Francisco meeting comes after some tech leaders, most notably Elon Musk, have cooled on the commander-in-chief ahead of his reelection bid.
Silicon Valley was a major source of donations to Biden in the 2020 election cycle. The close ties between Big Tech and the Democrats, though arguably now fraying at the edges, were strengthened under Biden’s predecessor from that party, former President Barack Obama.
Top donors to Biden’s previous bid included Facebook billionaire Dustin Moskovitz as well as accused cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried.
Biden held a multi-day meeting with 150 top Democratic donors in late April of this year.
