Written by by Kyle Becker at trendingpoliticsnews.com
The U.S. government is providing taxpayer funding to universities and non-profits to develop AI-powered tools to permanently establish a mass online censorship regime.
The House Judiciary’s Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government Committee earlier revealed the U.S. government is funding Artificial Intelligence (AI) censorship technology through the National Science Foundation (NSF) in order to distribute to Big Tech platforms for the purpose of censoring public debate of political issues and government policies.
“This interim report details the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) funding of AI powered censorship and propaganda tools, and its repeated efforts to hide its actions and avoid political and media scrutiny,” the report states.
“In the name of combatting alleged misinformation regarding COVID-19 and the 2020 election, NSF has been issuing multi-million-dollar grants to university and non-profit research teams. The purpose of these taxpayer-funded projects is to develop artificial intelligence (AI)- powered censorship and propaganda tools that can be used by governments and Big Tech to shape public opinion by restricting certain viewpoints or promoting others,” the report adds.
The NSF also developed a media strategy “that considered blacklisting certain American media outlets because they were scrutinizing NSF’s funding of censorship and propaganda tools,” the report added.
As reported by The Epoch Times on March 2, an NSF spokesman categorically rejected the report’s allegations.
“NSF does not engage in censorship and has no role in content policies or regulations. Per statute and guidance from Congress, we have made investments in research to help understand communications technologies that allow for things like deep fakes and how people interact with them,” the spokesman said.
“We know our adversaries are already using these technologies against us in multiple ways. We know that scammers are using these techniques on unsuspecting victims. It is in this nation’s national and economic security interest to understand how these tools are being used and how people are responding so we can provide options for ways we can improve safety for all.”
As the report added, “the spokesman also denied that NSF ever sought to conceal its investments in the so-called Track F program, and that the foundation does not follow the policy regarding media that was outlined in the documents discovered by the committee.”
The House committee report cites the Speaker’s notes from the University of Michigan’s first pitch to the National Science Foundation about its NSF-funded, AI-powered WiseDex tool.
“Our misinformation service helps policy makers at platforms who want to… push responsibility for difficult judgments to someone outside the company… by externalizing the difficult responsibility of censorship,” the statement reads.
The Congressional report reveals the censorship and propaganda tools, universities and non-profits, as well as Big Tech companies involved in the mass censorship campaign.
The National Science Foundation is distributing grants to the University of Michigan, the University of Washington, the University of Wisconsin, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the non-profit Meedan to develop public censorship tools such as WiseDex, Course Correct, SearchLit, and Co-Insights, which are or were to be used at Big Tech firms like Facebook, Reddit, YouTube, and Twitter (now X), among others, the report revealed.