White House Meets AI Leaders, FTC Claims Meta Violated Privacy Order, Graham Targets Section 230

May 5, 2023 — Vice President Kamala Harris and other senior officials on Thursday met with the CEOs of Alphabet, Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI to discuss the risks associated with artificial intelligence technologies, following the administration’s announcement of $140 million in funding for national AI research.

President Joe Biden briefly stopped by the meeting, telling the tech leaders that “what you’re doing has enormous potential and enormous danger.”

Government officials emphasized the importance of responsible leadership and called on the CEOs to be more transparent about their AI systems with both policymakers and the general public.

“The private sector has an ethical, moral and legal responsibility to ensure the safety and security of their products,” Harris said in a statement after the meeting.

In addition to the new investment in AI research, the White House announced that the Office of Management and Budget would be releasing proposed policy guidance on government usage of AI systems for public comment.

The initiatives announced Thursday are “an important first step,” wrote Adam Conner, vice president of technology policy at the Center for American Progress. “But the White House can and should do more. It’s time for President Joe Biden to issue an executive order that requires federal agencies to implement the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and take other key actions to address the challenges and opportunities of AI.”

FTC claims Facebook violated privacy order

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday proposed significant modifications to its 2020 privacy settlement with Facebook, accusing the company of violating children’s privacy protections and improperly sharing user data with third parties.

The suggested changes would include a blanket prohibition against monetizing the data of underage users and limits on the uses of facial recognition technology, among several other constraints.

“Facebook has repeatedly violated its privacy promises,” said Samuel Levine, director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “The company’s recklessness has put young users at risk, and Facebook needs to answer for its failures.”

Although the agency voted unanimously to issue the order, Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya expressed concerns about whether the changes exceeded the FTC’s limited order modification authority. “I look forward to hearing additional information and arguments and will consider these issues with an open mind,” he said.

Meta responded to the FTC’s action with a lengthy statement calling it a “political stunt” and outlining the changes that have been implemented since the original order.

“Let’s be clear about what the FTC is trying to do: usurp the authority of Congress to set industry-wide standards and instead single out one American company while allowing Chinese companies, like TikTok, to operate without constraint on American soil,” wrote Andy Stone, Meta’s director of policy communications, in a statement posted to Twitter.

Meta now has thirty days to respond to the proposed changes. “We will vigorously fight this action and expect to prevail,” Stone said.

Sen. Graham threatens to repeal Section 230 if tech lobby kills EARN IT Act

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday unanimously approved the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act, a controversial bill that would create new carveouts to Section 230 in an attempt to combat online child sexual abuse material.

But Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., the bill’s cosponsor and ranking member of the committee, expressed doubt about the legislation’s future, claiming that “the political and economic power of social media companies is overwhelming.”

“I have little hope that common-sense proposals like this will ever become law because of the lobbying power these companies have at their disposal,” he said in a statement on Thursday. “My next approach is going to be to sunset Section 230 liability protection for social media companies.”

If Congress fails to pass legislation regulating social media companies, Graham continued, “it’s time to open up the American courtrooms as a way to protect consumers.”

However, large tech companies are not the only critics of the EARN IT Act. The American Civil Liberties Union on Thursday urged Congress to reject the proposed legislation, alongside two other bills related to digital privacy.

“These bills purport to hold powerful companies accountable for their failure to protect children and other vulnerable communities from dangers on their services when, in reality, increasing censorship and weakening encryption would not only be ineffective at solving these concerns, it would in fact exacerbate them,” said Cody Venzke, ACLU senior policy counsel.