(Fox News) President Biden signed an executive order on Thursday that critics warn will allow for the creation of woke artificial intelligence (AI) that “promotes racial division and discrimination.”
The order directs all federal agencies to establish a yearly “equity action plan” aimed at helping “underserved communities.”
In one section under “Embedding Equity into Government-wide Processes,” the Director of the Office of Management and Budget is instructed “to support equitable decision-making, promote equitable deployment of financial and technical assistance, and assist agencies in advancing equity, as appropriate and wherever possible.”
The section gives further instructions regarding AI, “When designing, developing, acquiring, and using artificial intelligence and automated systems in the Federal Government, agencies shall do so, consistent with applicable law, in a manner that advances equity.”
Political influencers and tech experts on Twitter all condemned such an initiative as a moral hazard.
Christopher Rufo, the journalist who helped draw public attention to “critical race theory,” warned, “Biden’s new executive order creating a national DEI bureaucracy has a special mandate for woke AI. The order instructs the federal government to ‘[protect] the public from algorithmic discrimination’ and to deploy AI systems ‘in a manner that advances equity.’”
Biden’s new executive order creating a national DEI bureaucracy has a special mandate for woke AI. The order instructs the federal government to “[protect] the public from algorithmic discrimination” and to deploy AI systems “in a manner that advances equity.” pic.twitter.com/pGKRWdTtIS
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) February 21, 2023
Manhattan Institute fellow Colin Wright claimed that such a technology could be fatal for our society.
“Biden is not a moderate. This is a legal sprint to inject as much radical ideology as broadly and as deeply as possible in our government. This cannot be allowed,” he wrote. “If Republicans take office, they must fully root out all of this ideological and social cancer.”
“The worst possible scenario imaginable for our future. Our children and their children will be suffering the consequences of this mandate,” software developer Jon Schlinkert tweeted. “AI is about to change the world in unprecedented ways, the last thing we need is an AI that promotes racial division and discrimination.”
Nothing to see here– just a new Biden executive order that threatens any social media or artificial intelligence company that isn’t completely woke,” senior fellow of the Claremont Institute Jeremy Carl wrote.
Nothing to see here– just a new Biden executive order that threatens any social media or artificial intelligence company that isn’t completely woke. pic.twitter.com/MKwHhduq3z
— Jeremy Carl (@jeremycarl4) February 16, 2023
Commentator Trent England tweeted a comparison to the uprising of killer robots in the Terminator movie series, “Biden Administration working on T-1000 woke edition.”