FTC’s Artificial Intelligence ‘Policy Statement’ Is Latest White House Effort To Distort The Law And Censor Speech
By Free Press Photos: Wikimedia Commons WASHINGTON — On Friday, Free Press told the Federal Trade Commission that its latest effort to regulate artificial intelligence is an unconstitutional abuse of the agency’s authority. In July, the FTC invited comments on a proposed policy that would treat AI outputs the Trump administration considers “ideologically motivated” as a deceptive consumer product. The FTC cited its authority to create a policy statement in this matter under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which governs false advertising of consumer products. In reality, reads Free Press’ filing, the proceeding is an unconstitutional attempt to police speech that the Trump administration disagrees with.In response to the FTC’s proposed policy statement on AI, Free Press wrote that the proceeding’s supposed goal of mitigating bias in the technology is “yet another prong of [the administration’s] foolhardy war on diversity, equity and inclusion.”Shilpa Jindia, Free Press policy counsel and coauthor of the filing, said: “To serve the Trump White House’s censorship goals, the FTC appears dead-set on abandoning its own precedent and practice while violating the First Amendment in the process.“The ultimate aim of the agency’s policy statement is to anoint itself judge and jury over AI content, deciding on the truthfulness and accuracy of what it vaguely describes as ‘ideological’ statements. And while there are many sound reasons to provide public-interest oversight of the unaccountable tech companies behind AI systems, this type of speech control is not one of them. “Instead of opening these platforms up to independent researchers seeking to prevent actual discrimination against protected classes, this FTC and allied tech companies endorse the Trump White House’s efforts to advance a white-supremacist belief system determined to silence dissent and alternative viewpoints. “This tech-Trump alliance — far from bringing expertise to responsibly guide policy on tech and AI — has only furthered the administration’s corruption and enabled its campaign to censor and control our information ecosystem.“And as much as the Trump administration would like to pretend otherwise, AI algorithms and large-language models can produce outputs that discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics. The FTC is simply picking sides about how to address these inaccuracies and biases in order to unconstitutionally suppress certain viewpoints and elevate others.“This distortion of consumer-protection enforcement under Section 5 of the FTC Act is a prime example of government overreach to control speech produced by private enterprises. The FTC should abandon this policy statement and all of its efforts to silence views it disagrees with.”
Black News 
By Free Press
Photos: Wikimedia Commons
WASHINGTON — On Friday, Free Press told the Federal Trade Commission that its latest effort to regulate artificial intelligence is an unconstitutional abuse of the agency’s authority.
In July, the FTC invited comments on a proposed policy that would treat AI outputs the Trump administration considers “ideologically motivated” as a deceptive consumer product. The FTC cited its authority to create a policy statement in this matter under Section 5 of the FTC Act, which governs false advertising of consumer products. In reality, reads Free Press’ filing, the proceeding is an unconstitutional attempt to police speech that the Trump administration disagrees with.
In response to the FTC’s proposed policy statement on AI, Free Press wrote that the proceeding’s supposed goal of mitigating bias in the technology is “yet another prong of [the administration’s] foolhardy war on diversity, equity and inclusion.”
Shilpa Jindia, Free Press policy counsel and coauthor of the filing, said:
“To serve the Trump White House’s censorship goals, the FTC appears dead-set on abandoning its own precedent and practice while violating the First Amendment in the process.
“The ultimate aim of the agency’s policy statement is to anoint itself judge and jury over AI content, deciding on the truthfulness and accuracy of what it vaguely describes as ‘ideological’ statements. And while there are many sound reasons to provide public-interest oversight of the unaccountable tech companies behind AI systems, this type of speech control is not one of them.
“Instead of opening these platforms up to independent researchers seeking to prevent actual discrimination against protected classes, this FTC and allied tech companies endorse the Trump White House’s efforts to advance a white-supremacist belief system determined to silence dissent and alternative viewpoints.
“This tech-Trump alliance — far from bringing expertise to responsibly guide policy on tech and AI — has only furthered the administration’s corruption and enabled its campaign to censor and control our information ecosystem.
“And as much as the Trump administration would like to pretend otherwise, AI algorithms and large-language models can produce outputs that discriminate on the basis of protected characteristics. The FTC is simply picking sides about how to address these inaccuracies and biases in order to unconstitutionally suppress certain viewpoints and elevate others.
“This distortion of consumer-protection enforcement under Section 5 of the FTC Act is a prime example of government overreach to control speech produced by private enterprises. The FTC should abandon this policy statement and all of its efforts to silence views it disagrees with.”
