The Case of Elon Musk: AI, Big Tech, and the Wall-String Crisis of the U.S. After the First White House, a Policy Perspective
Mittelsteadt notes that Trump’s VP pick, JD Vance, has also talked of reining in Big Tech companies and gone as far as to call Google “one of the most dangerous companies in the world.”
An executive order of the first Trump administration targeted perceived bias at Big Tech companies and tried to hold them accountable for censoring information for political reasons. The pressure had a tangible impact, with Meta ultimately abandoning plans for a dedicated news section on Facebook.
Musk is right about the political biases of the artificial intelligence systems. The issue, however, is far from one-sided, and Musk’s framing may help further his own interests due to his ties to Trump. Musk’s company xai is a competitor to OpenAI, and should the company be targeted by the government, it could benefit.
“Musk clearly has a close, close relationship with the Trump campaign, and any comment that he’s making will hold a big influence,” says Matt Mittelsteadt, a research fellow at George Mason University. He could have a seat in a potential Trump administration, and his views could be enacted into policy.
Musk spoke at the Future Investment Initiative held in Riyadh this week and he said that a lot of the artificial intelligences that are being trained in the San Francisco Bay Area take on the philosophy of people around them. “So you have a woke, nihilistic—in my opinion—philosophy that is being built into these AIs.”
Elon Musk just dragged ChatGPT and other artificial intelligence programs into the Trump crosshairs by repeating his warning that current AI models are too “woke” and “politically correct.”
In the days following January 6, Meta, Twitter, YouTube, and Twitch suspended former president Donald Trump over posts the companies said glorified the violence at the Capitol. These companies had never made a decision like this before. Thousands of accounts belonging to militias, conspiracy theorists, and the content they shared that led to the US were removed by platforms.
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The balance of power in Congress had changed in the mid-twenties. The Republicans have a slim majority in the House of Representatives and they used that power to go after researchers and trust and safety workers who debunk election myths. Jim Jordan was elevated to chair of the powerful House Judiciary Committee and immediately launched investigations stifling the work of academics at best and launching harassment campaigns against entire moderation teams at worst. The attacks shut down the internet observatory, which was one of the top misinformation research groups.
In the months and days after the deadly riot, a lot of the social media infrastructure that was built to protect our democratic systems collapsed. There is only five days left to go before Election Day, and a chasm has emerged in what little foundation remains.
It’s known that Musk took over the company and turned it into a conspiratorial wasteland where professional liars make thousands of dollars peddling lies. Musk reinstated accounts belonging to Alex Jones and Andrew Tate, both of which were banned years before the 2020 election cycle even began. And, to bring us to the present day, Musk has spent the last few weeks campaigning for Trump and spreading election lies.
The platforms have fissures that have happened across the board. Last year, Alphabet, Meta, and X reduced the size of their trust and safety teams and Meta completely abandoned a project building a new fact-checking tool as a result of cuts. Meta casts a blind eye to the militias that are currently organizing on its platforms, but they are also auto-generating militia-related groups.