Staff Reports
An action reminiscent of a dystopian novel, the administration led by President Joe Biden has formed alliances with left-leaning philanthropies in order to promote its artificial intelligence (AI) agenda. A staggering $200 million has been pledged by ten progressive organizations, including the infamous Open Society Foundations and Omidyar Network, to advance the administration's AI priorities, according to an announcement by the White House. However, there is a catch: these organizations have previously provided financial support to groups that censor conservative content on the internet.
Biden Admin Collaborates With Left-Wing Donors Bankrolling Censorship In AI 'Safety' Initiativehttps://t.co/4p7i2wiswt
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) November 2, 2023
During her visit to the United Kingdom, Vice President Kamala Harris formally introduced the "Global Summit on AI Safety," an initiative she duly named. The philanthropies participating in this questionable collaboration are delighted to provide Harris with support for his selected objectives, which encompass preserving democracy, developing global regulations, promoting worker empowerment, establishing fair policies, and enhancing transparency and accountability. As stated in the official document, the objective of the initiative is to safeguard democracy against threats posed by artificial intelligence and counteract disinformation. It is essential to note, however, that a number of these philanthropies have previously supported initiatives to demonetize and censor conservative content online.
Consider, for instance, Pierre Omidyar's Omidyar Network. A sum in excess of $400,000 has been benevolently contributed to Accountable Tech, an initiative that advocates for advertisers to cease their expenditures on Twitter on the grounds of "misinformation." North Fund, a left-leaning dark money organization, finances Accountable Tech, which is an entirely different bag of snakes. In addition, they published a report advocating for the Food and Drug Administration to be a model regulator of artificial intelligence, arguing that it could be used to manipulate elections and perpetuate prejudice and discrimination.
However, Omidyar's frenzy for funding does not end there. The Center for Internet Security was awarded a $130,000 grant by His Democracy Fund with the objective of establishing a "Misinformation Reporting Portal" in preparation for the 2020 election. The primary function of this portal was to identify and designate social media posts for deletion, thereby silencing voices that were in opposition to their objectives. In 2016, even more benevolently, Omidyar contributed $250,000 to NeverTrump PAC.
In contrast, Omidyar's Omidyar Group and the Open Society Foundations are funding the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a British NGO that works in tandem with online platforms to censor content. This organization frequently categorizes conservative journalism and discourse as hate speech or disinformation, even classifying the analogy between abortion and homicide as disinformation. Even the prominent conservative social media account Libs of Tik Tok was labeled a "prolific propagandist of hatred" by the platform.
Open Society Foundations and Omidyar's Luminate provided additional funding to the United Kingdom-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a non-profit organization whose mission is to "disrupt the business model of disinformation." The actual operation of the GDI is to blacklist conservative news websites according to its own partial criteria. It has even been observed that reputable conservative publications, such as The New York Post, have been assigned high risk scores, while liberal venues, including The New York Times, have been assigned low risk scores.
It is unsurprising that the White House, Omidyar Network, Democracy Fund, and Open Society Foundations declined to address inquiries from the Daily Caller News Foundation, in light of their disconcerting history. It appears that the Biden administration is more concerned with silencing conservative voices than with fostering innovation and protecting free speech in regards to artificial intelligence.
