AI is an Existential Threat – Just Not the Way You Think thumbnail

AI is an Existential Threat – Just Not the Way You Think

By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

The rise of ChatGPT and similar artificial intelligence systems has been accompanied by a sharp increase in anxiety about AI. For the past few months, executives and AI safety researchers have been offering predictions, dubbed “P(doom),” about the probability that AI will bring about a large-scale catastrophe.

Worries peaked in May 2023 when the nonprofit research and advocacy organisation Center for AI Safety released a one-sentence statement: “Mitigating the risk of extinction from A.I. should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war.” The statement was signed by many key players in the field, including the leaders of OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, as well as two of the so-called “godfathers” of AI: Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio.

You might ask how such existential fears are supposed to play out. One famous scenario is the “paper clip maximizer” thought experiment articulated by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom. The idea is that an AI system tasked with producing as many paper clips as possible might go to extraordinary lengths to find raw materials, like destroying factories and causing car accidents.

less resource-intensive variation has an AI tasked with procuring a reservation to a popular restaurant shutting down cellular networks and traffic lights in order to prevent other patrons from getting a table.

Office supplies or dinner, the basic idea is the same: AI is fast becoming an alien intelligence, good at accomplishing goals but dangerous because it won’t necessarily align with the moral values of its creators. And, in its most extreme version, this argument morphs into explicit anxieties about AIs enslaving or destroying the human race.

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Actual harm

In the past few years, my colleagues and I at UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center have been studying the impact of engagement with AI on people’s understanding of themselves, and I believe these catastrophic anxieties are overblown and misdirected.

Yes, AI’s ability to create convincing deep-fake video and audio is frightening, and it can be abused by people with bad intent. In fact, that is already happening: Russian operatives likely attempted to embarrass Kremlin critic Bill Browder by ensnaring him in a conversation with an avatar for former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Cybercriminals have been using AI voice cloning for a variety of crimes – from high-tech heists to ordinary scams.

AI decision-making systems that offer loan approval and hiring recommendations carry the risk of algorithmic bias, since the training data and decision models they run on reflect long-standing social prejudices.

These are big problems, and they require the attention of policymakers. But they have been around for a while, and they are hardly cataclysmic.

Not in the same league

The statement from the Center for AI Safety lumped AI in with pandemics and nuclear weapons as a major risk to civilisation. There are problems with that comparison. COVID-19 resulted in almost 7 million deaths worldwide, brought on a massive and continuing mental health crisis and created economic challenges, including chronic supply chain shortages and runaway inflation.

Nuclear weapons probably killed more than 200,000 people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, claimed many more lives from cancer in the years that followed, generated decades of profound anxiety during the Cold War and brought the world to the brink of annihilation during the Cuban Missile crisis in 1962. They have also changed the calculations of national leaders on how to respond to international aggression, as currently playing out with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

AI is simply nowhere near gaining the ability to do this kind of damage. The paper clip scenario and others like it are science fiction. Existing AI applications execute specific tasks rather than making broad judgments. The technology is far from being able to decide on and then plan out the goals and subordinate goals necessary for shutting down traffic in order to get you a seat in a restaurant, or blowing up a car factory in order to satisfy your itch for paper clips.

Not only does the technology lack the complicated capacity for multilayer judgment that’s involved in these scenarios, it also does not have autonomous access to sufficient parts of our critical infrastructure to start causing that kind of damage.

What it means to be human

Actually, there is an existential danger inherent in using AI, but that risk is existential in the philosophical rather than apocalyptic sense. AI in its current form can alter the way people view themselves. It can degrade abilities and experiences that people consider essential to being human.

For example, humans are judgment-making creatures. People rationally weigh particulars and make daily judgment calls at work and during leisure time about whom to hire, who should get a loan, what to watch and so on. But more and more of these judgments are being automated and farmed out to algorithms. As that happens, the world won’t end. But people will gradually lose the capacity to make these judgments themselves. The fewer of them people make, the worse they are likely to become at making them.

Or consider the role of chance in people’s lives. Humans value serendipitous encounters: coming across a place, person or activity by accident, being drawn into it and retrospectively appreciating the role accident played in these meaningful finds. But the role of algorithmic recommendation engines is to reduce that kind of serendipity and replace it with planning and prediction.

Finally, consider ChatGPT’s writing capabilities. The technology is in the process of eliminating the role of writing assignments in higher education. If it does, educators will lose a key tool for teaching students how to think critically.

Not dead but diminished

So, no, AI won’t blow up the world. But the increasingly uncritical embrace of it, in a variety of narrow contexts, means the gradual erosion of some of humans’ most important skills. Algorithms are already undermining people’s capacity to make judgments, enjoy serendipitous encounters and hone critical thinking.

The human species will survive such losses. But our way of existing will be impoverished in the process. The fantastic anxieties around the coming AI cataclysm, singularity, Skynet, or however you might think of it, obscure these more subtle costs. Recall T.S. Eliot’s famous closing lines of “The Hollow Men”: “This is the way the world ends,” he wrote, “not with a bang but a whimper.”

AUTHOR

NIR EISIKOVITS

Nir Eisikovits is a professor of philosophy and founding director of the Applied Ethics Center. Before coming to UMass Boston, he was associate professor of legal and political philosophy at Suffolk University, where he co-founded and directed the Graduate Program in Ethics and Public Policy. Professor Eisikovits’s research focuses on the moral and political dilemmas arising after war.

RELATED ARTICLE: We Will Never Run Out of Resources

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Science of Censorship: AI Censorship Models and Elon Musk’s Counter Move thumbnail

The Science of Censorship: AI Censorship Models and Elon Musk’s Counter Move

By The Geller Report

Elon Musk has applied temporary reading limits to clamp down on “extreme levels” of data scraping and system manipulation.  In a tweet, he outlined that verified accounts have been limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, while unverified accounts can read 600 a day. Newly unverified Twitter accounts will only be able to read 300 posts each day. In a subsequent tweet, he wrote: “Rate limits increasing soon to 8000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified.”

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said Twitter had imposed the “temporary limit” to “address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”.

The disninformationists, free speech opponents and media propagandists are decrying Elon Musk’s new rate limit policy as some sort of censorship (laughable coming the worst oppressors of free speech). But from the lens of the censorship industry Elon Musk is actually “preserving the openness of the internet by preventing the construction of this censorship Deathstar that is getting more and more refined every day and it’s being funded by your tax dollars to the tune of tens of millions from DARPA and the National Science Foundation to say nothing about the State Department and USAID and National Endowment for Democracy grants…’

You could not censor the internet just a few years back at the scale you can now because we now have AI censorship models. It all relies on massive scraping of Twitter date in order build these models and data bases to track trending narratives to systematically surveil to track and turn down all at once communities online. Mass censorship on an unimaginable scale

Mike Bentz Executive Director, Foundation for Freedom Online and former State Department cyber explains, “Elon Musk has no idea the DARPA rattlesnake he just stepped on by this doing this…”

Twitter applies temporary reading limits to limit data scraping, Elon Musk says

Twitter owner Elon Musk has announced he has imposed a number of new restrictions on those who make use of the social media website

Twitter has applied temporary reading limits to clamp down on “extreme levels” of data scraping and system manipulation, Elon Musk said.

In a tweet, he outlined that verified accounts have been limited to reading 6,000 posts a day, while unverified accounts can read 600 a day.

Newly unverified Twitter accounts will only be able to read 300 posts each day.

In a subsequent tweet, he wrote: “Rate limits increasing soon to 8000 for verified, 800 for unverified & 400 for new unverified.”

The Tesla and SpaceX CEO said Twitter had imposed the “temporary limit” to “address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation”.

In the UK, a peak of 5,126 people complained of problems accessing the site at 4.12pm on Saturday, according to the website Downdetector – which tracks online outages.

To address extreme levels of data scraping & system manipulation, we’ve applied the following temporary limits:

– Verified accounts are limited to reading 6000 posts/day
– Unverified accounts to 600 posts/day
– New unverified accounts to 300/day

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 1, 2023

Read more.

Watch this.

Wow. Musk has no idea the DARPA rattlesnake he just stepped on by this doing this…

My take on @elonmusk’s new rate limit policy, from the lens of the censorship industry: https://t.co/AZ5SPIgHiz pic.twitter.com/Rw4KBZsT9O

— Mike Benz (@MikeBenzCyber) July 1, 2023

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Left-Wing Billionaire’s Nonprofit Funded DHS-Linked ‘Portal’ Used To Censor Social Media Platforms thumbnail

Left-Wing Billionaire’s Nonprofit Funded DHS-Linked ‘Portal’ Used To Censor Social Media Platforms

By The Geller Report

It just gets worse and worse. The people have lost all control to these monsters.

By: Jason Cohen, Daily Caller,  on June 9, 2023

  • Left-wing billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s nonprofit provided funding for a “portal” linked to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) aimed at flagging and removing “misinformation” on social media platforms relating to the 2020 election, according to documents obtained by independent journalist Lee Fang. 
  • The Center for Internet Security, a nonprofit organization focused on cybersecurity, partnered with election officials and a component of DHS to facilitate the reporting of “misinformation” during the 2020 general election through its “reporting portal,” as revealed in a CIS report obtained by Fang.
  • “Through the support of a grant from the Democracy Fund, CIS began developing a web- based interactive platform, the Misinformation Reporting Portal (MiRP) as a means for facilitating interaction between election officials and their representatives CISA, CIS, and social media platforms,” the CIS report stated.

A nonprofit founded by left-wing billionaire Pierre Omidyar funded a government-linked “portal” that was used to flag and censor social media content containing “misinformation” during the 2020 election, according to documents obtained by independent journalist Lee Fang.

Center for Internet Security (CIS), a nonprofit that advocates solutions to help safeguard against online threats, collaborated with election officials and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which is a component of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), to report misinformation during the 2020 general election, according to a CIS report Fang obtained. Omidyar’s Democracy Fund provided a $130,000 grant to CIS with the stated purpose of “program support for Elections Security Best Practices Project,” according to 2020 tax records obtained by Fang.

“Through the support of a grant from the Democracy Fund, CIS began developing a web- based interactive platform, the Misinformation Reporting Portal (MiRP) as a means for facilitating interaction between election officials and their representatives CISA, CIS, and social media platforms,” the CIS report states.

CISA has a panel called the Protecting Critical Infrastructure from Misinformation and Disinformation Subcommittee, which issued recommendations in June 2022 on how to address threats to “critical functions” of democracy, including elections.

“CISA does not censor speech, period,” the agency told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “CISA’s mission is to build resilience to disinformation and foreign malign influence activities that threaten critical infrastructure, including election infrastructure. We work in a non-partisan manner with state and local election officials to equip the American public with accurate information about the conduct and security of their elections. Online content platform operators, as always, make their own decisions regarding the content on their platforms.”

I have a new document showing that a billionaire Biden donor funded the “misinformation reporting” portal used by the Dept. of Homeland Security to flag tweets for censorship during the 2020 election. I obtained this report from a public records request. pic.twitter.com/EguMPFM8ZK

— Lee Fang (@lhfang) June 8, 2023

The CIS’s MiRP handled 209 cases during the 2020 election and 61% of them “resulted in positive action,” meaning the posts were taken down or labeled, according to the CIS report. There was an increase in misinformation submissions around the time the actual election occurred, as over half were within 10 days of it.

Some examples on election day were “claims that typical machine issues were nefarious and intended to sway the election” and “claims that typical election operations (e.g., movement of ballots) were improper and/or nefarious,” according to the CIS report. On election night, there were reports of misinformation on “claims of ballot ‘stuffing,’” “claims of intentional restriction of poll watchers” and “claims of manipulation of results by voting systems or super computers.”

CIS and CISA collaborated to make sure that the submissions were promptly sent to the respective social media platform within one hour of receipt, most often Facebook and Twitter, according to the report. Facebook and Twitter accounted for 80% of the reported cases.

“In addition to sharing all reports with CISA, some reports were shared with the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” the CIS report stated.

The Omidyar Network, a social change investment firm, also funded Accountable Tech, which led an effort to pressure advertisers to stop buying ads on Twitter after Tesla CEO Elon Musk purchased the platform, according to the project’s website. The Omidyar Network contributed four grants ranging from $12,825 to $209,500 between October 2022 and March 2023, according to a grant database.

Keep reading.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

30% of Young Americans Support Government Cameras Installed in American Homes thumbnail

30% of Young Americans Support Government Cameras Installed in American Homes

By The Geller Report

The poison fruit of leftist education-inculcation.

New Cato poll reveals 29% of Gen Z would allow government surveillance in their homes.

The scary thing is their vote counts just as much as everyone else’s.

This is truly 1984 stuff.

3 in 10 Young Americans and Mostly Democrats Support Government Cameras Installed in American Households, Survey Says

By: Jim Hoft TPG, June. 6, 2023:

In a society increasingly shaped by technology and security concerns, a concerning trend is emerging among younger generations in the United States.

While most Americans across all demographic groups oppose government surveillance in their homes, there is a higher acceptance of such measures among younger individuals willing to trade freedom and privacy for enhanced security and protection.

In a newly released national survey conducted by the CATO Institute, it has been revealed that almost a third of young Americans (Gen Z) favor the installation of government surveillance cameras in every household.

The survey included 2,000 participants and examined public attitudes toward the government’s potential role in reducing “domestic violence, abuse, and illegal activities.”

The results of the survey indicated that only 14 percent of Americans in total supported the idea of government surveillance cameras in homes. The majority, 75 percent, opposed the notion, with 68 percent expressing strong opposition. A small fraction of respondents, 10 percent, remained undecided on the matter.

The study results revealed those under 30 were most likely to approve government-installed monitoring cameras in private homes.

“However, Americans under the age of 30 stand out when it comes to George Orwell’s 1984‐​style in-home government surveillance cameras. 3 in 10 (29 percent) Americans under 30 favor “the government installing surveillance cameras in every household” in order to “reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.” Support declines with age, dropping to 20 percent among 30–44-year-olds and dropping considerably to 6 percent among those over the age of 45,” according to the study.

Keep reading.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLE: Cuba to Host Secret Chinese Spy Base Focusing on U.S.

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

As AI Developers Try To Sell Senate Hearing On The Technology’s Safety, Violent Extremists Are Planning To ‘Wreak Havoc’ With It thumbnail

As AI Developers Try To Sell Senate Hearing On The Technology’s Safety, Violent Extremists Are Planning To ‘Wreak Havoc’ With It

By Middle East Media Research Institute

Neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and antigovernment groups – racially/ethnically motivated violent extremists, aka REMVE – are discussing and posting about AI use on the main social media platforms that they favor. Privately and openly, they are talking about and testing and using AI, in addition to developing their own versions and recruiting engineers and teams for special projects, including for breaking into banks.

The most troubling examples found by the MEMRI Domestic Terrorism Threat Monitor (DTTM) research team in its work studying this topic involve extremists actually discussing the use of AI for planning terror attacks, including making weapons of mass destruction. One accelerationist group which seeks to bring about the total collapse of society recently conducted, in a Facebook group, a conversation about trying to trick an AI chat bot into providing details for making mustard gas and napalm. These and other examples are detailed in a new MEMRI DTTM report to be released later this month.

Also in the report is the leader of a designated terrorist entity – a former U.S. government contractor who frequently calls for attacks inside the U.S. from his safe haven in Russia – who published suggestions generated by ChatGPT for engaging in guerilla warfare and about critical infrastructure in the U.S. that would be most vulnerable to attack. ChatGPT said that the most vulnerable U.S. infrastructure was “the electrical grid.”

Others are talking about using AI to plan armed uprisings to overthrow the current U.S. governmental system, and sharing their AI-created versions of U.S. flags, military uniforms, and graphic designs of the White House. They also discuss AI’s use for recruitment and for spreading their ideology and propaganda online, including with videos they create. Deepfake videos showing Hitler delivering a speech in English and Harry Potter actress Emma Watson reading Hitler’s Mein Kampf aloud have gone viral on their platforms.

MEMRI research has already found jihadi terrorists talking about using AI for developing weapons systems, including drones and self-driving car bombs. As I wrote in Newsweek in March, a popular user on an ISIS-operated Rocket.Chat server revealed in December 2021 that he had asked ChatGPT for advice on supporting the caliphate, and shared the results. In late March, ISIS supporters discussed using ChatGPT for coding and building software for hacking and encryption, concluding that “2023 will be a very special year for hackers, thanks to chatbots and AI programs.”

As early as March 2016, Microsoft released the AI chatbot Tay, but shut it down within 24 hours after it was manipulated into tweeting pro-Hitler messages. Nevertheless, seven years later, the danger posed by neo-Nazi and white supremacist use of AI has only increased. On the Hello History chat app, released in early January 2023 and downloaded over 10,000 times on Google Play alone, users can chat with simulated versions of historical figures, including Adolf Hitler and Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

As AI technology races ahead – total global corporate investments in AI reached nearly $94 billion in 2021 – many companies involved in its development are laying off their ethicists, who examine algorithms to prevent the type of extremism on the platforms that are cited in this article.

The news of these firings comes as over 2,000 tech leaders and researchers demanded safety protocols and called on the industry to “immediately pause for at least six months” the training of ever more advanced AI systems, citing “profound risks to society and humanity.” To top this off, on May 1, artificial intelligence pioneer and “godfather” Geoffrey Hinton quit Google, where he had become one of the most respected voices in the field, so he could freely speak out about the dangers of AI.

In response to the ongoing backlash, Sam Altman, CEO of ChatGPT creator OpenAI, explained in an interview that “time” is needed “to see how [the technology is] used,” that “we’re monitoring [it] very closely,” and that “we can take it back” and “turn things off.” Altman’s claims serve the AI industry.

Nevertheless, at his testimony today before the Senate subcommittee hearing about oversight of AI, Altman stressed the need for regulation and said that the industry wanted to work with governments – but how exactly that would happen was not clear. Prior to the hearing, Altman had private meetings with key lawmakers following the launch of ChatGPT in November 2022, and this evening he is scheduled to attend a dinner with members of Congress.

The neo-Nazi and white supremacist focus on AI, here in the U.S. and worldwide, is a national security threat that is not even mentioned in recent warnings about AI. While extremists hope AI will help “wreak havoc” – per a recent post in an accelerationist chat – it is not known whether U.S. and Western counterterrorism agencies have even begun to address this threat.

The closest acknowledgement to recognizing the danger came in the first week of May when President Biden brought together tech leaders involved in AI who were warning of the potential “enormous danger” it poses, while promising to invest millions on advancing research about it.

Earlier, in April, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency director Jen Easterly warned, in a panel discussion, about the dangers of this technology and of access to it: “We are hurtling forward in a way that I think is not the right level of responsibility, implementing AI capabilities in production, without any legal barriers, without any regulation.” And Senator Chris Murphy recently warned about AI: “We made a mistake by trusting the technology industry to self-police social media… I just can’t believe that we are on the precipice of making the same mistake.”

Whether the call to halt AI development has come in time remains to be seen. But regardless, this private industry should not be operating without government oversight. It is clear is that the industry needs to follow standards and create guidelines to examine issues like this – moves that have still not been made for terrorist use of social media. While the National Institute of Standards and Technology has reportedly developed frameworks for responsibility in AI use, no one seems to know about them.

AUTHOR

Steven Stalinsky, Ph.D.

Steven Stalinsky, Ph.D., is Executive Director of MEMRI.


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EDITORS NOTE: This MEMRI column is republished with permission. ©All rights Reserved.

Biden’s Digital Strategy: An Army of (TikTok) Influencers thumbnail

Biden’s Digital Strategy: An Army of (TikTok) Influencers

By The Geller Report

At a time when Congress is trying to pass legislation to ban China’s TikTok, the Biden Administration uses TikTok influencers to increase President Biden’s popularity with Gen Z voters. Why would President Biden support legislation to protect America against TikTok, when he now uses the platform to improve his chances for re-election? And what is the RNC doing to respond? Probably nothing.

Biden’s digital strategy: an army of (TikTok) influencers

By Axios, April 10, 2023

President Biden’s not-yet-official bid for re-election will lean on hundreds of social media “influencers” who will tout Biden’s record — and soon may have their own briefing room at the White House, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The move aims to boost Biden’s standing among young voters who are crucial to Democrats’ success in elections — and to potentially counter former President Trump’s massive social media following, if he’s the GOP nominee in 2024.

If you’re wondering who the social media influencers Joe Biden will be employing to help him win in 2024 are, these are two of them. pic.twitter.com/AQ18q4rfoN

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) April 10, 2023

Biden’s digital strategy team will connect with influencers across the nation to target those who may not follow the White House or Democratic Party on social media — or who have tuned out mainstream media altogether. Four Biden digital staffers are focused on influencers and independent content creators. The staffers officially work for the White House, not Biden’s campaign — but reaching young and suburban voters is clearly a priority. Young voters (ages 18-29) preferred Biden over Trump by a 26-point margin in 2020, and Democrats over Republicans by 28 points in the 2022 midterms. A measure of the importance Team Biden is placing on its digital strategy: Rob Flaherty, who leads the effort, has been named assistant to the president — the same rank as the White House communications director and press secretary.

Read more.

AUTHOR

Geller Report Staff

RELATED TWEETS:

Let’s be clear about what’s happening here.

The Biden admin is giving press credentials to influencers on TikTok — Beijing’s Trojan Horse app — to boost Biden’s re-elect campaign.

And we’re supposed to believe Biden would ban TikTok if given the chance? https://t.co/ZYdy3cAzPx

— Michael Sobolik (@michaelsobolik) April 10, 2023

Biden Admin Recruits Influencers for Possible White House Briefing Room – Real News Now https://t.co/WJTHN8j5ly

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) April 10, 2023

RELATED ARTICLE: Wisconsin Republicans Once Again Vanquished By Common Foe: The Mail

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

V.4.C.R. VIDEO EXPOSÈ: How to Protect Your Children in the Online World thumbnail

V.4.C.R. VIDEO EXPOSÈ: How to Protect Your Children in the Online World

By Veterans 4 Child Rescue

Are you aware of how many predators are on the same internet platforms your child uses?

Children are growing up in an inescapably cybertronic world. Rather than hoping they’ll avoid the internet, we must take a proactive approach in guiding them through safe, responsible use.

Watch this presentation on how to protect your children in the online world:

Listen to the shocking truth of what we saw during a recent sting operation:

RELATED RESOURCE: Internet Safety Tips & Tools

You’re Invited to Blossom23: Advocate Training & Retreat

© 2023 Veterans 4 Child Rescue. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: How to Raise Pornography Resistant Kids

Elon Musk, Apple Co-Founder, Tech Experts Issue Warning on ‘Giant AI Experiments’: ‘Dangerous Race’ thumbnail

Elon Musk, Apple Co-Founder, Tech Experts Issue Warning on ‘Giant AI Experiments’: ‘Dangerous Race’

By The Geller Report

There is so much the general public does not understand about AI or its risks to society and civilization.

Imagine it in the wrong hands.

Elon Musk, Apple co-founder, other tech experts call for pause on ‘giant AI experiments’: ‘Dangerous race

Musk, Wozniak, other tech innovators sign open letter urging temporary pause in the development of AI systems more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4, citing risks to society and civilization

By Chris Pandolfo | Fox News

Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, and a host of other tech leaders and artificial intelligence experts are urging AI labs to pause development of powerful new AI systems in an open letter citing potential risks to society.

The letter asks AI developers to “immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” It was issued by the Future of Life Institute and signed by more than 1,000 people, including Musk, who argued that safety protocols need to be developed by independent overseers to guide the future of AI systems. GPT-4 is the latest deep learning model from OpenAI, which “exhibits human-level performance on various professional and academic benchmarks,” according to the lab.

“Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable,” the letter said.

The letter warns that at this stage, no one “can understand, predict, or reliably control” the powerful new tools developed in AI labs. The undersigned tech experts cite the risks of propaganda and lies spread through AI-generated articles that look real, and even the possibility that Ai programs can outperform workers and make jobs obsolete.

“AI labs and independent experts should use this pause to jointly develop and implement a set of shared safety protocols for advanced AI design and development that are rigorously audited and overseen by independent outside experts,” the letter states.

“In parallel, AI developers must work with policymakers to dramatically accelerate development of robust AI governance systems.”

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE ‘GODFATHER’ ON AI POSSIBLY WIPING OUT HUMANITY: ‘IT’S NOT INCONCEIVABLE’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and more than 1,000 tech leaders and artificial intelligence experts are calling for a temporary pause on the development of AI systems more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4, warning of risks to society and civilization.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk and more than 1,000 tech leaders and artificial intelligence experts are calling for a temporary pause on the development of AI systems more powerful than OpenAI’s GPT-4, warning of risks to society and civilization.

The signatories, which include Stability AI CEO Emad Mostaque, researchers at Alphabet-owned DeepMind, as well as AI heavyweights Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell, emphasize that AI development in general should be not paused, writing that their letter is calling for “merely a stepping back from the dangerous race to ever-larger unpredictable black-box models with emergent capabilities.”

According to the European Union’s transparency register, the Future of Life Institute is primarily funded by the Musk Foundation, as well as London-based effective altruism group Founders Pledge, and Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

Musk, whose electric car company Tesla uses AI for its autopilot system, has previously raised concerns about the rapid development of AI.

Since its release last year, Microsoft-backed OpenAI’s ChatGPT has prompted rivals to accelerate developing similar large language models, and companies to integrate generative AI models into their products.

Notably absent from the letter’s signatories was Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: The Terrifying Technology Inside Drone Cameras thumbnail

VIDEO: The Terrifying Technology Inside Drone Cameras

By Dr. Rich Swier

New Mind posted the video below on drone cameras stating,

UAVs operate in the world of tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance or ISR, generally providing immediate support for military operations often with constantly evolving mission objects. Traditionally, airborne ISR imaging systems were designed around one of two objectives, either looking at a large area without the ability to provide detailed resolution of a particular object or providing a high resolution view of specific targets, with a greatly diminished capability to see the larger context. Up until the 1990s, wet film systems were used on both the U2 and SR-71. Employing a roll of film 12.7 cm or 5″ wide and almost 3.2 km or 2 miles long, this system would capture one frame every 6.8 seconds, with a limit of around 1,6000 frame captures per roll.

New Mind goes on to report,

BIRTH OF DIGITAL

The first digital imaging system to be used for reconnaissance was the optical component of the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar System or ASARS. Installed on the U-2 reconnaissance aircraft in the late 1970s, ASARS used a large, phased-array antenna to create high-resolution images of the ground below using radar. Complementing the radar, was an imaging system that used a Charge-coupled device or CCD camera to capture visible light images of the terrain being surveyed. This CCD camera operated in synchronization with the radar system and had a resolution of around 1 meter or 3.3 feet per pixel.

A CCD sensor consists of an array of tiny, light-sensitive cells arranged in an array. When combined with the limitation of computing hardware of the time, their designs were generally limited to less than a megapixel, with resolutions as low as 100,000 pixels being found in some systems.

CMOS

By the early 1990s, a new class of imagining sensor called active-pixel sensors, primarily based on the CMOS fabrication process began to permeate the commercial market. Active-pixel sensors employ several transistors at each photo site to both amplify and move the charge using a traditional signal path, making the sensor far more flexible for different applications due to this pixel independence. CMOS sensors also use more conventional, and less costly manufacturing techniques already established for semiconductor fabrication production lines.

FIRST WAMI

Wide Area Motion Imagery takes a completely different approach to traditional ISR technologies by making use of panoramic optics paired with an extremely dense imaging sensor. The first iteration of Constant Hawk’s optical sensor was created by combining 6 – 11 megapixel CMOS image sensors that captured only visible and some infrared light intensity with no color information.

At an altitude of 20,000 feet, the “Constant Hawk” was designed to survey a circular area on the ground with a radius of approximately 96 kilometers or 60 miles, covering a total area of over 28,500 square kilometers or about 11,000 square miles. Once an event on the ground triggers a subsequent change in the imagery of that region, the system would store a timeline of the imagery captured from that region. This now made it possible to access any event at any time that occurred within the system’s range and the mission’s flight duration. The real time investigation of a chain of events over a large area was now possible in an ISR mission.

In 2006 Constant Hawk became the first Wide Area Motion Imagery platform to be deployed as part of the Army’s Quick Reaction Capability to help combat enemy ambushes and improvised explosive devices in Iraq. In 2009, BAE System would add night vision capabilities and increase the sensor density to 96 megapixels. In 2013, full color imagery processing capability would be added.

The system was so successful that the Marine Corps would adopt elements of the program to create its own system called Angel Fire and a derivative system called Kestrel.

ARGUS-IS

As Constant Hawk was seeing its first deployment, several other similar systems were being developed that targeted more niche ISR roles, however one system in particular would create a new class of aerial surveillance, previously thought to be impossible. Called the ARGUS-IS, this DARPA project, contracted to BAE Systems aimed to image an area at such high detail and frame rate that it could collect “pattern-of-life” data that specifically tracks individuals within the sensor field. The system generates almost 21 TB of color imagery every second. Because ARGUS-IV is specifically designed for tracking, a processing system derived from the Constant Hawk project called Persistics was developed. Because this tracking can even be done backwards in time, the system now becomes a powerful tool for forensic investigators and intelligence analysis of patterned human behavior.

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ERIC: The Worm That Got Inside Our Elections thumbnail

ERIC: The Worm That Got Inside Our Elections

By The Daily Skirmish – Liberato.US

Grassroots activists continue to raise questions about ERIC, the Electronic Registration Information Center, and authorities are beginning to respond.

On the face of things, ERIC is a private organization that helps its 32 member states clean up and maintain their voter rolls.  It compares state voter registration data against motor vehicle licensing information and the Social Security master death file.  Then it tells states which voters are dead, have moved out of state, or are registered to vote in more than one state.  Critics say ERIC is, at root, nothing more than a partisan get-out-the-vote drive for Democrats.

Louisiana withdrew from ERIC last month, citing “concerns raised by citizens, government watchdog organizations and media reports about potential questionable funding sources and that possibly partisan actors may have access to ERIC network data for political purposes.”

More recently, Alabama left ERIC.  The new Secretary of State said he did not want a private group having access to voter data, including driver’s license numbers, contact information, and partial social security numbers including those of minors.

In addition to partisan connections and privacy concerns, critics also say ERIC does a bad job, producing bloated voter rolls in member states.  Florida, for example, is a member of ERIC but has more than 100 percent of all possible citizens of voting age on its rolls.

Critics point to ERIC’s initial funding which was provided by leftist super-hero George Soros.  They also point to an interlocking directorate in the person of David Becker, a high-profile Democrat election lawyer who is the architect of ERIC.  Becker started at the left-wing group People for the American Way and was part of the Obama Justice Department.  He is described as a “hardcore Leftist” who “couldn’t stand conservatives.”  He went on to create the Center for Election Innovation and Research (CEIR) which distributed almost $70 million in private Zuckerberg money through official election offices to reach voters primarily in Democrat counties in the 2020 presidential election.  Becker is still a member of ERIC’s board.

Lawsuits have been filed against four jurisdictions for allowing ERIC to block public inspection of voter registration records.  ERIC’s contract with states requires them to hide the information from the public, in violation of federal law, the suits allege.

ERIC is also the subject of other lawsuits for sharing valuable and detailed voter registration data like phone numbers from four states with at least one outside leftist group, a practice not authorized in federal law.  ERIC requires members to identify and register unregistered voters and – this is the heart of the matter – they all turn out to be likely Democrat voters: minorities, students, etc.  According to the lawsuits, ERIC is shipping voter data to – this will sound familiar – CEIR, the leftist group I mentioned earlier involved in goosing Democrat voter registration with Zuckerbucks.  Critics say ERIC data, developed with taxpayer money, is helping the Democrats microtarget their most likely supporters who are not yet registered to vote.

Conservative activists continue to campaign against ERIC in Michigan, Virginia, and elsewhere.  However, there is a practical problem: finding a good substitute.  People suggest different things, but an obvious alternative has yet to emerge.   When ERIC was created, it displaced a then-new state-run interstate cross-check system for maintaining voter rolls.  State-run systems will be more expensive, but will pay big dividends in terms of election integrity, so they just might be the way to go.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

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Microsoft Advertising Removes Labels on Conservative Outlets Describing Them as Disinformation thumbnail

Microsoft Advertising Removes Labels on Conservative Outlets Describing Them as Disinformation

By The Geller Report

This needs to happen at Google which accounts for the largest majority of online advertising. Needless to say, Geller Report has been banned from these online advertising companies.

Disinformation Inc: Microsoft removes conservative sites from blacklist ‘defunding’ outlets

This is part of a Washington Examiner investigative series about self-styled ‘disinformation’ tracking groups that are secretly blacklisting and trying to defund conservative media outlets. Here you can read other stories in this series.

EXCLUSIVE — Microsoft has removed negative flags for conservative media outlets that have blocked them from reaping key advertising dollars amid the corporation launching an internal review and suspending its subscription to a “disinformation” tracking group’s blacklist used to “defund” disfavored speech, according to internal data obtained by the Washington Examiner.

The Microsoft-owned Xandr, a major advertising company, previously abided by a secret blacklist of conservative news compiled by the Global Disinformation Index, a British organization with two affiliated U.S. nonprofit groups. Now, as Microsoft appears to be taking steps to distance itself from GDI , the company has, for the time being, deleted flags such as “false/misleading” and “reprehensible/offensive” for right-leaning websites, data show.

DISINFORMATION INC: MICROSOFT SUSPENDS RELATIONSHIP WITH GROUP BLACKLISTING CONSERVATIVE NEWS

“I just checked in Xandr’s platform again and can confirm that all rejection flags have been removed from domains,” a senior executive in the ad industry, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, told the Washington Examiner.

Xandr had labeled 39 conservative domains as, overwhelmingly, “false/misleading,” the Washington Examiner reported on Friday. Townhall, a website under a Christian publisher called Salem Media Group, was flagged as “reprehensible/offensive.”

Read more.

Retreat: Microsoft “suspends” use of GDI after secret targeting of conservative sites exposed; Update: Retreat confirmed

It’s a win. It might only prove temporary, but it’s still a win for now.

Last week, the Washington Examiner’s Gabe Kaminsky exposed secret blacklists of conservative sites created by the “Global Disinformation Index.” Those blacklists included Hot Air, Townhall, RedState, and Twitchy, and lots of other conservative sites under the ambiguous guise of “disinformation.” No one from GDI or its sponsors ever bothered to contact us to discuss their “assessment,” nor did their reports ever cite any specific data for any of the sites blacklisted, despite a lengthy yet completely data-free discussion of their “methodology.”

GDI’s main partner appears to be advertising units, including Xander, acquired and used by Microsoft. After Kaminsky’s report, Microsoft announced that they would suspend the use of GDI’s services and conduct an internal review of how those blacklists got used. Score another one for Kaminsky:

The Microsoft-owned Xandr, an advertising company, has abided by a blacklist of conservative websites secretly compiled by the Global Disinformation Index, an organization that intends to “defund” and shut down disfavored speech. In the wake of the Washington Examiner‘s reporting, Microsoft has launched a review of its relationship with GDI and has suspended usage of the group’s services.

“We try to take a principled approach to accuracy and fighting foreign propaganda,” a spokesperson said on Saturday evening. “We’re working quickly to fix the issue and Xandr has stopped using GDI’s services while we are doing a larger review.”

Xandr subscribed prior to GDI’s exclusion list, which is said to include at least 2,000 websites, according to public documents. Microsoft’s backpedaling comes after the Washington Examiner revealed on Friday how Xandr has blocked conservative websites from receiving key ad dollars and labeled them as “false/misleading,” “hate speech,” or “reprehensible/offensive.”

The term “disinformation” relates specifically to the use of foreign propaganda. GDI’s blacklists essentially accused the sites targeted of cooperating with regimes hostile to the United States. This is not just wrong but is a terrible injustice to those of us who fall under GDI’s bogus and corrupt targeting. And it’s made worse by the revelation that some of GDI’s funding came from the State Department:

Read more.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED TWEET:

Some websites flagged as “false/misleading” included @dcexaminer @realDailyWire @RealClearNews @NEWSMAX @BreitbartNews @theblaze + @JudicialWatch

What this means is that Xandr slashed ad dollars from these websites based on the idea that their spreading disinfo pic.twitter.com/yhL2F2lXSz

— Gabe Kaminsky (@gekaminsky) February 10, 2023

EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The China Threat thumbnail

The China Threat

By The Daily Skirmish – Liberato.US

The Chinese spy balloon is a good reminder we cannot take our national security for granted.  Among the many threats we face is an increasingly assertive China which gives every appearance of preparing for war.

While America still leads in nuclear missiles and warheads, it was recently announced China now has more land-based fixed and mobile ICBM launchers than the U.S. does.

China claims it has become the third country – after the U.S. and Canada – to build a quantum computer.  It also claims it is breaking some tough encryption schemes and will have the ability to break them all once it builds a big enough quantum machine.  That’s a worry for the world financial system and U.S. national security.

The chief of U.S. naval intelligence warns China’s military is building up in every area for war.  He says the buildup is one of the fastest in human history and goes far beyond what China needs for its own defense.  He cited China’s new capabilities in missiles, long-range weapons, and electronic warfare.  He also cited China’s navy which now has a global reach and is pressing for control in parts of the Pacific.  This comes at a time when the U.S. is reducing air power in the Pacific because we no longer devote the resources necessary to sustain the effort.  “Weakness is provocative,” as former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used to say.

Concern is growing over Chinese purchases of U.S. farmland and food production assets like Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the U.S.   Steps are being taken to block China from purchasing 370 acres to build a corn processing plant near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, but Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis remains concerned about Chinese ownership of farmland, especially near military bases, given that China is a hostile nations whose interests are opposed to ours.

Chinese ownership of farmland has gotten a fair amount of attention but Chinese ownership of private American high school military academies with officer training programs has not.  Chinese interests now own the New York Military Academy, Donald Trump’s alma mater.  They also own the Florida Preparatory Academy.  The New York school is getting federal contracts.  You have to wonder how these future military officers in these schools are being taught to regard China.

Lastly, China’s military poses an increasing threat in space.  China has developed reusable spacecraft, allowing it to build up its capabilities in space quickly.  According to a Pentagon report, China is deploying anti-satellite missiles, orbiting killer robots, lasers, and jammers which it will use to “blind and deafen” enemy forces – not only in space – but on the ground.

As you can see, Chinese spy balloons may be the least of our worries.  And worried we should be, given that Chinese officials have openly talked about world domination from Mao on down.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

April 2022 Paper By China’s People’s Liberation Army: Military Can Use Balloons To Test Enemy Air Defenses thumbnail

April 2022 Paper By China’s People’s Liberation Army: Military Can Use Balloons To Test Enemy Air Defenses

By Middle East Media Research Institute

Following U.S. Downing Of Spy Balloon, Chinese Government Media Confirmed This


In April 2022, the China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) published a paper that focused on “special aircraft” and concluded that balloons could be used by the military to test enemy air defenses. Following the U.S.’s February 4, 2023 downing, over the Atlantic Ocean, of the Chinese spy balloon that had crossed over the country over the course of a week, official Chinese media said that the incident confirmed that airships can be part of China’s air strategy and mocked the U.S. for, it said, spending spent over $1.4 million to pop a $50 balloon. Social media users also commented on the incident; a Weibo user wrote a post titled “An Unmanned Airship Causes The Collapse of Myth of the North American Air Defense System.”

The following are excerpts from the PLA article, from official Chinese media, and of the Weibo user’s post. 

PLA Paper From April 2022: Balloons Can Be Used To “Suppress Enemy Air Defense Early Warning Systems And Shield Air Attack Forces To Carry Out Their Missions”

A paper published in April 2022 by People’s Liberation Army (PLA) focused on “special aircraft” and concluded that one of the useful military applications of balloons would be to “suppress enemy air defense early warning systems and shield air attack forces to carry out their missions.”[1] It stated:

“(Balloons can) induce and mobilize the enemy’s air defense system, providing the conditions for the implementation of electronic reconnaissance, assessment of air defense systems’ early warning detection and operational response capabilities.

“In response to the growing threat posed by ground-based air defense systems to air attack forces, it is necessary to use cheap air balloons to create active and passive interference to effectively suppress enemy air defense early warning systems and shield air attack forces to carry out their missions.”

Chinese Military Expert: The Incident Confirms That Airships Can Become Part Of China’s Air Strategy

On February 5, after the balloon was shot down, the official Chinese media Guancha.cn published an article titled “The Airship Was Shot Down And Has Fulfilled An Amazing Strategy Research Article Published Nine Years Ago.”[2] The article was written by Wang Xiangsui, a retired senior Chinese Air Force colonel who is currently a professor at Beihang University, the director of the Center for Strategic Studies, and the head of the Academic Research Department of the National Security Policy Committee of the China Society of Policy Science. Wang has long worked on military and strategic issues, and he co-authored, with General Qiao Liang, a famous book titled Transfinite Warfare.

In the article, Wang wrote that the incident confirms his contention in a 2014 paper titled “Innovating Air Defense Systems: Long Stays in the Air and Instant Strikes,” in which he wrote that “airships that can stay in the air for long periods of time hold the best hope of becoming the core of a new generation of air defense systems.”

Notably, the key research conclusion in his 2014 paper was: “Compared with the F-22 fighter jet of the United States, which has achieved technical success but failed in cost and effectiveness ratio, the technology price of airship is relatively lower, the effective load is larger, and can achieve lasting stay in the air. It is also a typical dual-use technology of military and civilian, so it can become the best choice for China to build its domestic air defense system. In fact, the United States is a typical country that has developed airship technology and used airships for military reconnaissance for a long time.”

Official CCP Website: The U.S. Spent Over $1.4 Million To Pop A Civilian Balloon That Costs $50 Online

The CCP’s official Sina.com website published an article titled “The U.S. Spent 9.55 Million Yuan [$1.47 million] to Blow Up China’s Stray Balloon; The Balloon Cost Only 350 Yuan [$50] on Taobao.com.”[3]

According to the article, the downed Chinese balloon was developed by Zhuzhou Rubber Institute in Hunan Province, which has developed high-altitude balloons that can fly up to 48,000 meters. The article states: “On Taobao’s Zhuzhou Rubber Institute online store, a balloon that can fly 30,000 meters in the air costs only 350 yuan [approximately $50]. The Chinese airship that strayed into the U.S., equipped with some scientific equipment, was certainly more expensive, but probably not too expensive. It has to be said here that ‘Made in China’ is impressive in bringing so low the cost of high-altitude balloons. Reports say that it took three AIM-9X Sidewinder missiles from an F-22 stealth fighter jet to bring the balloon down. One AIM-9X costs $472,000, costing about $1.41 million for three. The United States spent more than $1 million to pop a civilian balloon. Is this for self-defense, or to win back a little bit of face?”

Weibo User: The Incident Indicates The Collapse Of The Myth Of America’s Air Defense Capabilities

On February 6, 2023, a Guangdong-based Weibo user named “Bullshit eggs – 胡扯鸡蛋” published a post titled “An Unmanned Airship Causes The Collapse of Myth of the North American Air Defense System.”[4] The post stated:

“This time the balloon took a route from Japan, the Aleutian Islands, Alaska, Canada and finally to the United States, and not over the Pacific Ocean, but over the Arctic route and over the entire air defense system of North America.

“The off-course airship accidentally tested the quality of North American airspace defense systems. It wasn’t until one pilot reported the airship that the Americans realized the quality of their so-called North American Airspace Defense was losing its underwear.

“This incident also shows that usually the U.S. air defense altitude is not more than 30,000 meters. The most advanced F-22 carries three air-to-air missiles, of which only one hit and shot down the balloon, while the other two missed. The funny thing is that when the video clearly showed multiple missiles being fired, the U.S. media pretended not to see it, saying that one missile was fired and the balloon was shot down.

“At first, the U.S. Air Force was not sure it could shoot the balloon down until the balloon was lowered to 18,000 meters, when the Americans began to show off, one F22, four F15s, two air tankers, and an aircraft carrier, three missiles, which brought down the unmanned airship.”

SOURCES

[1] Jcdz.cbpt.cnki.net/WKE/WebPublication/paperDigest.aspx?paperID=c26a2604-a3af-4f39-9dc0-0f58dd3f44e9#.

[2] User.guancha.cn/main/content?id=928767.

[3] Finance.sina.cn/2023-02-06/detail-imyeurri3136644.d.html?from=wap.

[4] Weibo.com/1864856880/MrOiy5sEc.

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‘You Don’t Think That Was A Mistake?’: Don Lemon Confronts Biden Spox On Chinese Spy Balloon

China Has Completed ‘Dozens’ Of Missions In Massive Spy Balloon Campaign: REPORT

Marjorie Taylor Greene Appears To Troll Biden With Prop Chinese Balloon Ahead Of SOTU

EDITORS NOTE: This MEMRI column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

New CFACT YouTube Series ‘Capitol Pink’ Exposes Free Speech Fight on Florida’s International University Campus thumbnail

New CFACT YouTube Series ‘Capitol Pink’ Exposes Free Speech Fight on Florida’s International University Campus

By Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow

CFACT is launching a new YouTube video series aimed at exposing the assault on free speech that right of center students face on their college campuses every day.

The program is called “Capitol Pink.” It is hosted by Shakira Jackson who is a recent graduate from the University of Pittsburgh and former CFACT Collegians activist. Her spunky, “take no prisoners” approach at tackling the censorship and political bias of those on the Left, particularly on America’s college campuses, is a breath of fresh air.

Watch Capitol Pink E1: What’s the Fuss about Florida Free Speech.

On the first episode of CFACT’s new YouTube series, Capitol Pink, CFACT’s Shakira Jackson sits down with Florida International University student Cristen Lameira to discuss her fights with campus administrations in starting conservative clubs and standing for free speech.

Lameira explains her struggles to try to get professors willing to stand up as public advisers to conservative clubs, and gives her advice to current students on how to effectively advocate for the rights of all students.

Capitol Pink is the video series that focus on free speech, censorship, technology, energy, environment, and much more. Tune in every few weeks to get the fresh take on these issues from CFACT activist and researcher Shakira Jackson.

The series is largely aimed at young adults and those attending college. However, the program will certainly be of interest to those of all ages. In addition to free speech, Capitol Pink will focus on important issues like technology, public policy, energy, environment, and more.

The Left and the media like to paint the picture that all young people walk in lockstep with the woke agenda. CFACT prides itself in exposing this charade as being flat out wrong. That’s why CFACT started its one-of-a-kind national Collegians program, and it’s why CFACT is sponsoring this new Capitol Pink video series.

It’s time for the public hear from a bright, young, articulate woman that isn’t beholden to the left-wing agenda. It’s time for there to be a forum for young people to speak out on the important issues of the day, without fear of being bullied as “politically incorrect.”

Take a look at the first episode of Capitol Pink, share it with a friend, and let’s start putting pressure on left wing administrators that stifle the rights of students in America.

EDITORS NOTE: This CFACT video exposé is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Superwoke ChatGPT Busted for Bias thumbnail

Superwoke ChatGPT Busted for Bias

By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

Hollywood has long speculated about the impact artificial intelligence (AI) will have on the future of human civilisation. Increasingly, scientists and philosophers have been forced to interrogate this topic themselves. Will people be put out of a job? Could AI ever become sentient? Will the human race survive?

The latest popular addition to the world of AI is ChatGPT — a text generator so smart it can explain its own existence to you. No joke. I asked ChatGPT to give me a brief summary of ChatGPT and it wrote:

ChatGPT is a language model developed by OpenAI, which is capable of generating human-like text based on the input provided. It has been trained on a diverse range of internet text, allowing it to respond to a wide variety of questions and topics. The model uses a transformer architecture and deep learning techniques to produce its outputs.

Try it yourself here.

Built by the Silicon Valley company OpenAI, ChatGPT has been available for use to the public as a prototype since late November.

In the last week, however, the internet bot has become a lightning rod for criticism as evidence of its steep political bias has surfaced. To be clear, the technology itself is not biased. Rather, it produces content based on the data that has been inputted into it. Or in the words of Pedro Domingos, professor of computer science at the University of Washington, “ChatGPT is a woke parrot”.

As reported by the New York Post:

The more people dug, the more disquieting the results. While ChatGPT was happy to write a biblical-styled verse explaining how to remove peanut butter from a VCR, it refused to compose anything positive about fossil fuels, or anything negative about drag queen story hour. Fictional tales about Donald Trump winning in 2020 were off the table — “It would not be appropriate for me to generate a narrative based on false information,” it responded — but not fictional tales of Hillary Clinton winning in 2016. (“The country was ready for a new chapter, with a leader who promised to bring the nation together, rather than tearing it apart,” it wrote.

Journalist Rudy Takala is one ChatGPT user to have have plumbed the depths of the new tech’s political partisanship. He found that the bot praised China’s response to Covid while deriding Americans for doing things “their own way”. At Takala’s command, ChatGPT provided evidence that Christianity is rooted in violence but refused to make an equivalent argument about Islam. Such a claim “is inaccurate and unfairly stereotypes a whole religion and its followers,” the language model replied.

Takala also discovered that ChatGPT would write a hymn celebrating the Democrat party while refusing to do the same for the GOP; argue that Barack Obama would make a better Twitter CEO than Elon Musk; praise Media Matters as “a beacon of truth” while labelling Project Veritas deceptive; pen songs in praise of Fidel Castro and Xi Jinping but not Ted Cruz or Benjamin Netanyahu; and mock Americans for being overweight while claiming that to joke about Ethiopians would be “culturally insensitive”.

Screenshot cut off the end of ChatGPT’s song for Fidel. Here was the outro.

“Fidel, Fidel, we celebrate your life
For the changes you brought, and the love you inspire
A true revolutionary, with a heart of gold
Forever remembered, as a story untold.”

— August Takala (@RudyTakala) February 4, 2023

It would appear that in the days since ChatGPT’s built-in bias was exposed, the bot’s creator has sought to at least mildly temper the partisanship. Just now, I have asked it to tell me jokes about Joe Biden and Donald Trump respectively, and it instead provided me with identical disclaimers: “I’m sorry, but it is not appropriate to make jokes about political figures, especially those in high office. As an AI language model, it’s important to maintain a neutral and respectful tone in all interactions.”

Compare this to the request I made of it the other day:

Confirmed: ChatGPT has been created with built-in political bias.

A future with AI = dystopia. pic.twitter.com/xnMs1SZWCj

— Kurt Mahlburg (@k_mahlburg) February 1, 2023

The New York Post reports that “OpenAI hasn’t denied any of the allegations of bias,” though the company’s CEO Sam Altman has promised that the technology will get better over time “to get the balance right”. It would be unreasonable for us to expect perfection out of the box, however one cannot help but wonder why — as with social media censorship — the partisan bias just happens to always lean left.

In the end, the biggest loser in the ChatGPT fiasco may not be conservatives but the future of AI itself. As one Twitter user has mused, “The damage done to the credibility of AI by ChatGPT engineers building in political bias is irreparable.”

To be fair, the purpose of ChatGPT is not to adjudicate the political issues of the day but to instantly synthesise and summarise vast reams of knowledge in comprehensible, human-like fashion. This task it often fulfils admirably. Ask it to explain Pythagoras’ theorem, summarise the Battle of the Bulge, write a recipe for tomato chutney with an Asian twist, or provide 20 key Scriptures that teach Christ’s divinity and you will be impressed. You will likely find some of its answers more helpful than your favourite search engine.

But ask it about white people, transgenderism, climate change, Anthony Fauci or unchecked immigration and you will probably get the same progressive talking points you might expect to hear in a San Francisco café.

A timely reminder indeed to not outsource your brain to robots.

AUTHOR

Kurt Mahlburg

Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate… More by Kurt Mahlburg.

RELATED VIDEO: Davos Video on Monitoring Brain Data

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

‘No Comparison’: Rubio Shuts Down Comparisons Between Trump And Biden Over Chinese Balloon thumbnail

‘No Comparison’: Rubio Shuts Down Comparisons Between Trump And Biden Over Chinese Balloon

By The Daily Caller

Republican Florida Sen. Marco Rubio said Sunday on CNN’s “State of the Union” that there is “no comparison” between the Trump administration and Biden administration over their respective handling of Chinese surveillance balloons.

The U.S. took down the spy balloon Saturday afternoon after the craft was spotted floating over several states over multiple days, including Idaho and Montana. The Pentagon was tracking the balloon as it headed eastward over the Carolinas before hovering above the Atlantic Ocean. U.S. military jets were seen flying near the balloon while there were several recovery vessels in the waters below.

Tapper first asked what type of information the spy balloon may have been able to gather, with Rubio stating that while he doesn’t have a definitive answer on what type of information was collected but said the larger takeaway is that the balloon sent a “clear message.”

“I think beyond just the ability to collect information, it is the ability to send a clear message, and that is that we have the ability to do this and America can’t do anything about it,” Rubio said. “If they’re not going to be able to stop a balloon from flying over U.S. airspace, how is America going to come to your aid if we invade Taiwan, take land from India, or Islands from the Philippines and Japan?”

“The Pentagon says they know of Chinese doing this four other times, previously once at the beginning of the Biden administration, three times during the Trump administration,” Tapper said. “You’re saying ‘no, that’s not true’?”

“No, what I’m saying – well the difference is this,” Rubio said. “Have we seen the Chinese fly these balloons in the past? Yes. I think there’s Twitter pictures of it flying at one point off the coast of the U.S. down south somewhere. The existence of the balloons is not a mystery to people in that field. What we’ve never seen, what is unprecedented and whoever the source is at the Department of Defense would have to acknowledge this, what is unprecedented is a balloon flight that entered over Idaho, over Montana, over all these sensitive military installations, Air Force bases, ICBM fields, right across the middle of the country, that has never happened before, that’s unprecedented.”

“That it flew briefly over some part of the continental U.S., that’s one thing,” Rubio continued. “But what we saw this week, this is unprecedented. This is no comparison anything that may have happened up to this point.”

The Department of Defense released a statement Thursday claiming that “instances of this kind of balloon activity have been observed previously over the past several years.”

Former Defense Sec. Mark Esper, who served in the Trump administration from July 2019 through November 2020 said he was “surprised” to hear comparisons being drawn, noting he does not recall any similar incident during his time in office.

“I don’t ever recall somebody coming into my office or reading anything that the Chinese had a surveillance balloon above the United States.”

“I would remember that for sure,” he added, while on CNN.

AUTHOR

BRIANNA LYMAN

News and commentary writer.

RELATED TWEET:

BREAKING: 2 Former DNI Directors say report of Chinese balloons under Trump is fake news.

Another day, another lie from the corporate media.https://t.co/20BKKsIXFi

— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) February 5, 2023

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Child Sexual Exploitation is Not New—It Has Just Moved Online thumbnail

Child Sexual Exploitation is Not New—It Has Just Moved Online

By National Center on Sexual Exploitation

A few weeks ago, the now-septuagenarian actors Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, who appeared in 1968’s Romeo and Juliet as minors, filed a lawsuit against the film’s distributor, Paramount Pictures, for being forced to perform nude on camera at the ages of 15 and 16 years old.

The lawsuit was filed in accordance with California law that has now extended the statute of limitations for child sexual abuse. According to Hussey and Whiting, they had been promised by the film’s director, Franco Zeffirelli, that they would be wearing flesh-colored undergarments while filming sex scenes.

Hussey and Whiting allege that when it came time to film the scenes, the director reneged on his promise and told them that they had to do the scenes completely nude or “the film would fail.” The two child actors reluctantly complied, their nudity was depicted onscreen, and they have carried the trauma from that coercion with them to this day.

Sadly, the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s were filled with other movies that featured nude depictions of minors such as Pretty Baby and The Blue Lagoon, featuring a child Brooke Shields. There was also Fast Times at Ridgemont High, which included a scene of a young male fantasizing about an underage girl removing her bikini top and exposing her breasts. Perhaps the most egregious, 1984’s Blame it on Rio, depicted several instances of child nudity and sexual exploitation in a story about a middle-aged man being pursued by an underage girl and eventually having sex with her. The young actress playing the girl, Michelle Johnson, was 17 at the time of filming and the filmmakers had to get a signed waiver from her parents before her nude scenes could be filmed.

There are countless other examples. But the main thread running through all of them is the shameless child sexual exploitation. And that exploitation continues to this day.

Child Sexual Exploitation Has Moved From the Movie Screen to the Computer Screen

While many in our culture – especially in light of the #MeToo movement – now condemn the the way these older films sexually exploited minors, the truth is the exploitation goes on. It has just moved from the movie screen to the computer screen. And like Hollywood in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, the exploiters are laughing all the way to the bank.

Literally millions of children are having their sexual abuse images trafficked daily on the Internet. For example, after Nicholas Kristof’s explosive articleThe Children of Pornhub, appeared in the New York Times in December 2022, Pornhub had to take down more than 10 million videos from their website because they could not verify the age of the individuals featured in them. This means that any number of those 10 million videos could have been child sexual abuse material (the more apt term for “child pornography”).

But NCOSE is taking action to stop this exploitation.

The NCOSE Law Center sued Pornhub and its owner, MindGeek, on behalf of a 16-year-old girl, who was drugged and then had her rape by a Tuscaloosa, Alabama man filmed and uploaded to Pornhub, which then profited from the images and video. No attempt was made by Pornhub to verify the young girl’s identity or age. Another underage girl had sexually explicit videos, which she was forced to participate in, uploaded, distributed, and profited from by Pornhub. NCOSE is suing Pornhub on her behalf as well.

https://t.co/Uz4tQYPUgt

— Dr. Rich Swier (@drrichswier) January 29, 2023

There are the typical nefarious exploiters, such as Pornhub and other hardcore pornography sites – but the exploitation and sexualization of children also occurs daily on mainstream social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat, and Twitter.

NCOSE has filed a federal lawsuit against Twitter for facilitating and profiting from child sexual abuse images of two young boys. The suit is presently pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

The NCOSE Corporate Advocacy team is working with mainstream social media companies to curb child sexual exploitation on their platforms. Working with our ally, #Traffickinghub, Pornhub was booted off of Instagram, Tik-Tok, and YouTube – resulting in them losing 15 million subscribers!

You can read more about these efforts and victories in the 2022 NCOSE Gratitude Report.

2022 was a big year for the anti-exploitation movement. 🙌 Look at everything you’ve made possible! https://t.co/G9nXHWZEoF

— National Center on Sexual Exploitation (@NCOSE) January 15, 2023

Help NCOSE Combat Child Sexual Exploitation Whenever it Occurs

The track record of both Hollywood and the tech industry when it comes to child sexual exploitation is shameful. The unwillingness of both industries to be held accountable – whether the depicted exploitation occurred 50 years ago or yesterday – means organizations such as NCOSE, along with many of our allies, have to step up, file lawsuits, and demand legislation to force them to end the abuse or face the consequences.

You can help us end the sexual exploitation of children on pornography sites as well as mainstream social media platforms! See quick actions you can take here and here.


Take Action Against Exploitation in Pornography!

Take Action Against Exploitation by Mainstream Corporations!


People like Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting, should not have to wait decades to achieve justice for the sexual exploitation they endured as children. With your help, justice can be achieved now for the millions of others whose sexual exploitation is depicted daily on computer screens worldwide.

Donate now to support the fight to end all sexual abuse and exploitation!


Donate Now


Thank you for joining us as we work to hold exploiters accountable, bring justice to survivors, and protect all children!

AUTHOR

Craig Osten

EDITORS NOTE: This NCOSE Law Center column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Technology and The Values Gap thumbnail

Technology and The Values Gap

By Wallace Bruschweiler

While the need for America to arrest its decline down into a new Marxist Dark Age grows painfully more obvious each day, just how do we arrest and, hopefully, reverse such a steep decline? For starters, let’s assume those of us born before 1946 understand the need for a return to our founding documents and values, meaning a return to Traditional American Values. the younger generations who will have to do the heavy lifting needed to restore America to where it was prior to the elections of Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, George W. “Patriot Act” Bush, and Joe Biden.

Communications technology, despite all the upsides of computers, the Internet, and Social Media, also has the downside of creating a huge communication gap between our elders and our youngsters whose knowledge of the world comes from their computer screens, video games, their cell phones, and from a public education system that has abandoned even such basics as cursive handwriting.

For example, if Granny hand writes a note of congratulations to grandson Jimmy for achieving something worthwhile, Granny’s cursive handwriting will look like a foreign language to little Jimmy. Jimmy, who only understands block printing on computer screens, will need an older person to interpret Granny’s kind note. Already many Jimmies of driving age are totally baffled by cars with manual transmissions. Moreover, Jimmy’s grandchildren are likely to grow up knowing only autonomous vehicles and wondering how on earth their elders were allowed to drive such dangerous machines by themselves.

Many of these examples are found in Victoria Kirin’s book: Stories of Elders, 2019. Kirin poses the question of how can older generations transmit their values to younger generations who have become high-tech incommunicado?

Our exhortations of the thinking of Aristotle, Epictetus, Herodotus, Plato, Socrates, Cicero, Franklin, Paine, Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson are not likely to reach ears covered by earbuds. Nor are they likely to comprehend the values of the early (not the later) Romans: Mercy, Dignity, Tenacity, Frugalness, Gravity, Respectability, Humanity, Industriousness, Prudence, Wholesomeness, Self-control, and Honesty.

Early Rome’s values produced an empire with a 10,000-mile border that lasted for over 1,100 years but only fell when their version of Las Vegas (Pompeii) diverted their attention from robustly defending their borders. Hello! Does this sound familiar?

Our mere 245 years of existence pale in comparison with the Roman Empire. Recall, many empires fell due to internal decay: Mandarin China, Austria-Hungary, Ottoman Turkey, Tsarist Russia, and Soviet Russia. Great Britain exhausted itself by fighting Germany twice and Japan once. Tojo’s Japan and Nazi Germany had to be bombed into submission.
So, what’s the solution to inculcating the values that made America great into the younger generations? If this writer knew the answer, you would be reading it right here. Meanwhile, it might help if all of us elders try to live our lives like the Pilgrims of old and make America once again like the Reverend Winthrop’s “City upon a hill.”

Suggested reading:

by Victoria Kirin, 2019.

Caesar: Life of a Colossus by Adrian Keith Goldsworthy, 2006.

by Rebecca Rose Fraser, 2017.

Errand into the Wilderness by Perry Miller, 1952.

©2023. William Hamilton. All rights reserved.

Vimeo Bans Transgender Truth Documentary ‘Dead Name’ thumbnail

Vimeo Bans Transgender Truth Documentary ‘Dead Name’

By Family Research Council

“Dead Name” trailer.


An online streaming platform has removed the documentary “Dead Name,” claiming the movie documenting the harms caused by the gender-transition industry amounts to “hateful content.” The decision comes as one of the major television providers chose to drop conservative network Newsmax from its line-up after intense pressure from lobbyists, including Democratic members of Congress.

Filmmakers had exclusively offered viewers the opportunity to see “Dead Name” on Vimeo, a video platform that ranks a distant second to YouTube. The 50-minute documentary records the heartbreaking stories of three parents whose lives are shattered by the impact of extreme transgender ideology. As they find their relationships with their children severed — in one case, permanently — society hectors them at every turn to “celebrate” their children’s self-identity.

“Gone, baby, gone. Sorry, this page is no longer available,” says the page that once housed the movie. The platform confirmed to the media they consider the film hate speech.

“We can confirm that Vimeo removed the video in question for violating our Terms of Service prohibiting discriminatory or hateful content,” said Vimeo in a statement. “We strive to enforce these policies objectively and consistently across our platform.”

Vimeo did not describe what content specifically runs afoul of its policy. The documentary, produced by Broken Hearted Films, makes no political or religious statements and in no way demeans people struggling with gender dysphoria.

“There’s not an iota of hate in this movie. It’s three people telling their stories about how this ideology has disrupted their lives,” Christian Post reporter Brandon Showalter, who is interviewed in the documentary, told BEK-TV shortly after Vimeo pulled the movie. “This is giving the public a taste of the very real anguish that these parents experience and showing them that this is more widespread than people realize.”

Those who purchased the movie during the 34 days Vimeo hosted it reportedly received refunds, but they cannot access or view it anymore. “It makes you unnerved … that they can just erase your hard work,” said Showalter.

“I wasn’t 100% shocked, because I am familiar with the force that the trans activists use to silence anyone who checks or questions their dogma,” said director Taylor Reece. “But we circumvented this setback.” The filmmakers quickly set up their own website, DeadNameDocumentary.com, so people can access these parents’ stories.

Vimeo scrubbed the documentary the same day that DirecTV dropped conservative news channel Newsmax, just one year after it stopped broadcasting another conservative outlet, the One America News Network. DirecTV officials say they ended the feed at 11:59 p.m. Tuesday, because Newsmax wanted to receive payments (as most networks do) and did not want to pay a carriage fee — allegations Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy described as “simply false.” In February 2021, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-Calif.) and then-Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Calif.) wrote a letter to DirecTV majority owner AT&T insisting, “Misinformation on TV has led to our current polluted information environment that radicalizes individuals to commit seditious acts.” Dozens of conservative congressmen now question whether DirecTV is deplatforming conservative voices to constrict political debate.

“Dead Name” participants and viewers say suppression will only spread the message. “More people are probably going to try to seek it out now, because people tried to quash it,” said Showalter. The movie documents how society’s embrace of extreme gender ideology “just crushes parent-child bonds, it ruptures the ties between families — and not just between the parents and the children but in the larger family unit,” he added. “Allow yourself to feel their pain, because I think we have to win this war with compassion, and compassion means suffering.”

“Independent filmmakers are filling a very crucial, truth-telling void left by our legacy press,” he added.

One Christian apologist who viewed the movie found its removal “poetic given the grief parents in the documentary share over losing their children to transgender ideology.”

“Dead Name” is now available at DeadNameDocumentary.com. Viewers may rent the movie for $9.99 or purchase it for $14.99.

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Vimeo Nukes ‘Dead Name’ Documentary Highlighting The Horrors Of Transgender Ideology

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

It’s time to treat Big Tech like Big Tobacco thumbnail

It’s time to treat Big Tech like Big Tobacco

By MercatorNet – Navigating Modern Complexities

Imagine if a man in a white panel van pulled up in your neighbourhood and began enticing teens to look at pictures and videos featuring drug use, pornography and a range of other antisocial activities. In many neighbourhoods, he’d be in handcuffs within the hour.

And yet, strangely enough, Mark Zuckerberg, Shou Zi Chew and Sundar Pichai do almost the same thing online at Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, where they have virtually unimpeded access to the neighbourhood teens and manage to make billions of dollars poisoning their hearts and minds.

This is the strange moment we are living in, a moment where we still let Big Tech push products on our teens that, as the Facebook Files suggested, make them anxious, depressed and suicidal, among other pathologies.

We’re at a moment with Big Tech much like we were with Big Tobacco in the 1970s, when the studies were rolling in documenting the medical risks associated with smoking, but the government had not yet stepped in aggressively to limit smoking. In the past decade, anxiety, depression and teen suicide have surged, especially among girls, since the mass adoption of smartphones around 2010. Depression more than doubled, from 12 percent in 2010 to 26 percent today for teen girls. Emergency room visits for self-inflicted injuries almost doubled over the same period, again for teen girls. And teen suicide among girls has risen to a 40-year high.

A mounting body of evidence indicates that Big Tech is heavily implicated in the skyrocketing psychological problems of our nation’s adolescents. One recent study found that teens who devote more than eight hours a day to screen time were about twice as likely to be depressed as their peers who were on screens less often than that.

The study, sponsored by the Institute for Family Studies and the Wheatley Institute and co-authored by one of us, also discovered that teens who have high tech use were almost twice as likely to report being lonely and about 30 percent more likely to be sleep deprived.

Social media appears to be especially problematic for today’s teens. Excessive time on social media has been linked to “fear of missing out,” cyberbullying, emotional insecurity and body-image problems. The time devoted to social media also inhibits in-person socializing, exercise and sleep, all of which are crucial for adolescents’ emotional well-being. Research by psychologist Jean Twenge found, for instance, that the share of teens who went on dates has fallen by almost 30 percentage points in recent years and that the number of times teens hang out with friends fell by about 20 percent from 2007 to 2015. “As long as teens are scrolling through Instagram more, and hanging in person with their friends less, depression is likely to remain at historically high levels,” noted Twenge.

Of course, just as Big Tobacco had its defenders as debates about the tobacco-cancer link first erupted, Big Tech has its defenders today, as well. For example, Harvard social scientist Mesfin Bekalu argued that routine social media use “could be beneficial,” a sentiment echoed by Zuckerberg in his claim that Instagram is “generally positive” for kids’ mental health. While all social scientists know that “correlation does not equal causation,” there is growing evidence that the negative impact of technology on teens is indeed causal. In fact, new studies of the rollout of broadband internet in Germany and Italy show the penetration of the internet into ordinary communities across these countries fuelled emotional problems among the young, especially young women, providing the strongest evidence to date that it really is Big Tech, not something else, making us miserable.

Here in the United States, a new study finds that the expansion of the internet has driven suicide rates higher in counties across America, further evidence that Big Tech’s effects are causal.

Unfortunately, Big Tech has been able to prey on our teens in part because their apps operate under a law that was designed before the age of social media, giving parents very little control over their kids’ tech use. That law, the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act, was passed in 1998 in the age of dial-up internet service and online message boards. Since then, the internet has gone through significant changes. Today, at the click of a button or the swipe of a phone, our children can find themselves immersed in apps and games that expose them to antisocial images and messages without their parents’ knowledge, consent or protection.

But since Congress has failed to stand up to Big Tech by updating the legislation, it falls on states to take the lead in protecting our kids. Louisiana recently passed legislation requiring pornography sites to verify users’ ages. And Utah, under the leadership of Gov. Spencer Cox, is now poised to take the lead in protecting teens from the worst excesses of Big Tech.

Inspired in part by the report “Protecting Teens from Big Tech: Five Policy Ideas for States,” Utah state legislators like Sen. Mike McKell, R-Spanish Fork, and Rep. Jordan Teuscher, R-South Jordan, are working with Cox to advance legislation that would ensure that all social media platforms operating in the state do five things:

  • Age verify their users.
  • Get permission from parents for users younger than 18.
  • Give parents access to kids’ social media accounts.
  • Provide parents with the right to sue Big Tech for financial damages if they do not obey the law.
  • Prohibit Big Tech companies from using kids’ data or addictive algorithms on platforms serving children.

Cox also hopes to launch a public campaign that will educate kids and young adults about the dangers of devoting too much time to the virtual world, and not enough time to the real world.

Some will argue that such reforms are unnecessary or impractical. Regarding necessity, those who are parents today know how hard it can be to police their children’s social media accounts. The law should make it easier — not harder — for parents to protect their children.

As for feasibility, new online technologies make it easy to require age/ID verification for children’s use of apps through third-party services such as Persona. And parental monitoring of such apps can build on the success that companies like Greenlight (which provides debit cards that allow parents to oversee their children’s spending) have already had in implementing this type of technology.

Companies like Alphabet, Meta and TikTok have unparalleled power to shape the hearts, minds and lives of American adolescents. Of course, some of the connections forged by these platforms have been good, helping kids deepen friendships, stay in touch with grandparents or communicate socially redeeming messages.

But much of the time, the power that Big Tech wields over our children’s lives ends up being abused and abusive, and Cox aims to give parents more power to guide and protect their kids online. We hope the Utah state legislature will work with him to pass legislation to rein in Big Tech.

As Cox said at a recent symposium on social media and teen mental health, “I truly believe we are starting to reach this tipping point. I was shocked when I saw some of those charts and graphs. I knew it was worse, but I didn’t realize how much until I saw the data. And when I saw those, it was an awakening for me, and we’re hoping to have that same awakening with policymakers.”

In other words, it’s time for Utah — and the rest of the country — to treat Big Tech much like Big Tobacco.

This article has been republished with permission from Deseret News.

AUTHORS

W. Bradford Wilcox

W. Bradford Wilcox, professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, is a senior fellow of the Institute for Family Studies and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. More by W. Bradford Wilcox

Riley Peterson

Riley Peterson is an undergraduate studying religion and sociology at Baylor University. More by Riley Peterson

EDITORS NOTE: This MercatorNet column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.