The House Judiciary Committee’s Investigation into Possible AI Censorship by Biden Administration
The House Judiciary Committee, led by Republicans, is currently investigating whether the Biden administration attempted to censor artificial intelligence. Representative Jim Jordan has issued subpoenas to sixteen tech companies that engage with AI in various capacities, requesting all communications from the previous administration regarding the restriction of «harmful bias» and «algorithmic discrimination.»
The subpoenas were sent to Adobe, Alphabet, Amazon, Anthropic, Apple, Cohere, International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Inflection AI, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Open AI, Palantir, Salesforce, Scale AI, and Stability AI. These requests cover a wide range of information, spanning five years from January 1, 2020, to January 20, 2025. The companies are required to submit any documents and communications related to the moderation, deletion, suppression, restriction, or reduction of the content, input, or output of AI models, training datasets, algorithms, systems, or products. This includes communications between the companies and the previous administration, internal discussions, and talks with third parties.
Jordan and the committee claim that the former President’s executive order, which called for regulations on algorithmic discrimination and guidelines on the government’s use of AI, put pressure on private companies to censor speech. By delving into old documents and communications, they aim to establish a link between seemingly unrelated events.
This scrutiny of tech companies is not new for Jordan. Recently, he issued a subpoena to Google over separate censorship concerns. Over the years, he has frequently brought in tech CEOs to testify on moderation issues. What sets this current situation apart is that companies not primarily involved in speech platforms, such as Adobe and Nvidia, are also under scrutiny.
This article was originally published on Engadget.
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