The Biden White House is set to fund over $550,000 to develop artificial intelligence that will be used to flag “microaggressions” on social media. This bizarre earmark was granted through the so-called American Rescue Plan, which poured $1.9 trillion into leftists’ pet projects.
The Washington Free Beacon revealed through spending records that the money is going to University of Washington researchers. They in turn will produce technology that shields users from language deemed offensive.
Biden Admin to Drop Half a Million on Artificial Intelligence That Detects Microaggressions on Social Media https://t.co/OAX3SnngnQ
— Tom Fitton (@TomFitton) December 24, 2022
Records show $132,000 already delivered for this effort with more on the way over the next five years.
The researchers assert they are building machine-learning models that will not just look for a few specific words but will locate “implicit bias” and microaggressions.
A research project by the institution defined these murky terms as speech that could offend “marginalized groups.” And the lead researcher for the new project once headed a report that categorized praising meritocracy as a microaggression.
Funding for this highly questionable effort is being distributed even as allegations of suppression of free speech swirl around the Biden administration. The president in November remarked that there could be a probe into Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter over free speech concerns.
More specifically, allowing too much free speech.
It also comes at a time when Musk has released several huge batches of internal documents proving links between the FBI and Twitter’s content moderators.
The agency was shown to have had regular contacts with the social media platform over postings and accounts that it deemed possibly offensive.
Authoritarian regimes, as noted by Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton, regularly attempt to moderate free speech and block that which runs afoul of the state narrative. Fitton said the White House funding only makes it simpler “for their leftist allies to censor speech.”
The National Science Foundation, which issued the grant, pushed back against criticism that the funding runs counter to the 1st Amendment. A spokesman asserted that it will produce “automated ways of identifying biases in speech.”
It will also, he declared, counteract human biases in content moderators.
The Biden administration would do well to remember the sweeping rights afforded by the U.S. constitution. Leftists no longer control social media, so suddenly every attempt is being made to bring it back into the fold and have users comply with liberals’ narrow standard of free speech.
