President Joe Biden, in a visit Tuesday to the epicenter of the technology industry, pointed to the dangers of unrestrained social media as he called for federal laws to protect Americans from fast-accelerating new artificial intelligence.
“Social media is already showing us the harm … powerful technology can do without the right safeguards in place,” Biden said before a meeting with AI experts and researchers at the Fairmont Hotel in San Francisco. “That’s why I said at the State of the Union that Congress needs to pass bipartisan privacy legislation to impose strict limits on personal data collection, ban targeted advertising to our children, and require companies to put health and safety first.”
Significant downsides to social media have emerged in recent years, as researchers and news media documented shadowy sales of personal data, online-addiction maladies including eating disorders among children, the spread of divisive and politicized misinformation, and foreign interference in U.S. elections. Critics have pointed to purported failures by government and major technology companies to impose guardrails around social media to prevent damaging fallout. Worries that government and tech firms will move too slowly on the new generative AI have arisen as the cutting-edge technology makes lightning-fast inroads into many aspects of life and commerce.
