Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared recently at an awards ceremony for the “Freedom House” — a nonprofit “founded on the core conviction that freedom flourishes in democratic nations where governments are accountable to their people.” Close to 90% of the organization’s funding comes directly from the U.S. government, providing the capacity to launder social control initiatives through the guise of “human rights.”
Embedded within Blinken’s rambling speech about Democracy™ and whatever, he slipped in a most troubling admission that the government is weaponizing AI to combat “Russian disinformation.”
Via U.S. State Department (emphasis added by PJ Media):
Russia continues to push a steady, relentless stream of disinformation about its war of aggression against Ukraine, to lie about and cover up horrific abuses it’s committed, to try to justify committing others.
In response, the State Department has developed an AI-enabled online Ukraine Content Aggregator to collect verifiable Russian disinformation and then to share that with partners around the world. We’re promoting independent media and digital literacy. We’re working with partners in academia to reliably detect fake text generated by Russian chatbots…
As a system that reflects the data on which it’s trained – including the biases embedded in that data – AI can, of course, amplify discrimination and enable abuses.
It also runs the risk of strengthening autocratic governments, including by enabling them to exploit social media even more effectively to manipulate their people and sow division among and within their adversaries.