Former President Barack Obama is reportedly advising President Joe Biden, 82, behind the scenes on artificial intelligence (AI), “the most consequential technology of our time,” as Biden phrased it this week.

The report validates speculation that Obama is intimately involved in steering the Biden administration.

Obama advised Joe Biden and his aides over the past five months on a strategy to tackle artificial intelligence, “engaging behind the scenes with tech companies and holding Zoom meetings with top West Wing aides at President Joe Biden’s request, according to aides to both men,” NBC News reported on Friday:

The current and former presidents discussed the issue on a phone call in June, aides to both of them said. They agreed on the goal of maximizing the technology while limiting the risks, according to Obama and Biden aides.

After that, Biden asked Obama to consult with his team to develop a policy that encourages innovation but also directly addresses the dangers of AI, their aides said. They then continued the discussion during a lunch at the White House, they said.

They agreed that they have a “shared vision,” their aides said, and that the federal government should take swift action.
Obama’s influence over the Biden administration’s AI policy comes as conservatives worry that Biden’s aims to shape AI as a tool for Democrats to enforce censorship over conservatives.

This week, Biden announced an AI executive order, which he framed as an initiative to regulate the AI sector. “Biden’s approach is more carrot than stick,” Axios summarized. “The order commits to ‘ease AI professionals’ path into the Federal Government’ and offer expanded AI training to bureaucrats.”

US President Joe Biden during an event in the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on Monday, Oct. 30, 2023. President Joe Biden is directing the US government to take a sweeping approach to artificial intelligence regulation, his most significant action yet to rein in an emerging technology that has sparked both concern and acclaim (Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images).

“It appears as though the Biden administration’s first goals when it comes to AI is to use robots to enforce censorship of “misinformation” (i.e., normative conservative thought),” Alex Marlow, editor-in-chief of Breitbart News, wrote on Wednesday.

The executive order will launch bias of “enshrining trendy woke opinion as cold-hard facts,” Marlow added.
The law “must advance the goals of ‘civil rights’ and ‘equity’ — aka, the left’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) framework,” Breitbart’s senior Tech writer, Allum Bokhari, said.

Follow Wendell Husebø on Twitter @WendellHusebø. He is the author of Politics of Slave Morality.