Biden Administration Funding AI Tools to Censor Americans’ Speech

“The purpose of these taxpayer-funded projects is to develop AI-powered censorship and propaganda tools that…

Children's Health Defense

The Biden administration is funding research on artificial intelligence (AI) tools to identify and censor “misinformation,” “disinformation” and “malinformation” online, according to a U.S. House of Representatives interim report released Monday.

“The purpose of these taxpayer-funded projects is to develop AI-powered censorship and propaganda tools that can be used by governments and Big Tech to shape public opinion,” the Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government said Tuesday in a press release.

The report was followed by a contentious hearing before the subcommittee Tuesday that focused on the use of AI for censorship.

On Monday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the subcommittee and the House Judiciary Committee, released the “Amazon Files” on X, formerly known as Twitter. The files contain documents highlighting how the Biden administration exerted pressure on Amazon to censor books critical of COVID-19 vaccines.

The subcommittee’s report cites non-public documents and focuses on grants the National Science Foundation (NSF) provided to nonprofit and academic institutions to develop AI tools.

The NSF funded the projects under its “Trust & Authenticity in Communication Systems,” part of a larger NSF initiative launched in 2021, that aims to identify “misinformation” and develop “education and training materials” for those with “vulnerabilities to disinformation methods.”

According to the report, these tools would allow for faster and more expansive content moderation than can be accomplished by humans. The tools could be made available to social media giants to aid them in efforts to remove non-establishment narratives, such as posts questioning the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.

The efforts are part of a reported $38.8 million the NSF spent on “misinformation” efforts during the Biden administration up to November 2022, according to a report published last month by the Foundation for Freedom Online…