The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in July issued a proposed policy statement “concerning the suppression of accuracy in artificial intelligence systems.
” We urge the FTC to withdraw this misguided proposal and instead focus on its core strengths and mission to protect consumers.
The new proposed policy builds on, and directly references, the Trump administration’s
“Preventing Woke AI in the Federal Government”
executive order—a
nightmare for civil liberties
that seeks to strong-arm AI companies into modifying their models to conform with the its ideological agenda.
In recently filed
comments
, EFF,
Public Knowledge
, and
Fight for the Future
call for the FTC to stop its unconstitutional efforts to regulate lawful speech, override state laws, and intimidate AI developers into ideological alignment with the Trump administration.
The government may not install itself as the arbiter of truth.
In the joint comments, we outline three critical flaws within the latest proposed policy. First, it violates the First Amendment. The policy calls for the Commission to become the judge of which AI outputs meet an undefined standard of accuracy. Installing the FTC as the authority of this sort of viewpoint-based judgment is a prior restraint on speech. Additionally, the policy
’
s proposed solution to address speech concerns compounds, rather than properly limits, the likely harms to speech. As we say in our comments: the government may not install itself as the arbiter of truth.
Second, it exceeds the FTC
’
s legal authority by claiming that its federal regulatory rules can override, or “preempt,
”
laws in states that have passed to regulate artificial intelligence use. This is clearly an attempt to target state laws the administration disagrees with. For example, the policy specifically criticizes
Colorado's automated decisionmaking law
, which applies when automated technology is used to consider consequential decisions such as those around employment, a
