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(LifeSiteNews) — The launch of Google’s artificial intelligence engine is more than just a bad joke. Known as Gemini, it is now infamous for refusing to generate images of white people.
Yet the blackwashing of history is not the only cause for concern with Google’s ideological project. Investigative journalists have discovered that Gemini is not only creating false smears to discredit them – but it is also funded by the U.S. and German governments to perfect a system of digital censorship known as “pre-bunking.”
Smearing whilstleblowers
Matt Taibbi is the journalist to whom Elon Musk turned over the now notorious “Twitter Files,” the internal records of the social media company which revealed the startling level of U.S. government-directed censorship on the platform.
His February 28 report of a fake news story generated by Gemini to discredit him paints a chilling picture of a future shaped by AI models.
Taibbi’s interest was sparked by the fact that Google’s own share price tanked following the rollout of Gemini, which routinely produced “bizarre DEI-inspired re-boots [of history]”
Here is one example of a request to show a U.S. Senator from the 19th century:
Taibbi decided to ask Gemini about himself. It then returned a series of completely fabricated “controversies,” inventing fake news stories to undermine his reputation and smear him with “charges of inaccuracy,” and even making up a racist controversy involving another writer.
“With each successive answer, Gemini didn’t ‘learn,’ but instead began mixing up the fictional factoids from previous results and upping the ante, adding accusations of racism or bigotry.”
Finally, it invented a vulgar quote which it attributed to him – in order to suggest he was anti-semitic.
Digital McCarthyism
Taibbi was horrified at the results, and was quick to note that the dangers of this AI extended far beyond that done to his own reputation.
“The potential for abuse is mind-boggling and almost makes you wonder about the reasons Google released this flawed product.”
In March last year, Taibbi testified to Congress about the “digital McCarthyism” he and fellow independent journalist Michael Shellenberger discovered in the Twitter Files, which showed how “[e]ffectively, news media became an arm of a state-sponsored thought-policing system.”
Taibbi said:
We learned Twitter, Facebook, Google, and other companies developed a formal system for taking in moderation ‘requests’ from every corner of government: the FBI, DHS, HHS, DOD, the Global Engagement Center at State, even the CIA.
Referring to these revelations, he now adds the dangers of the inbuilt manipulation of search results and data in Google’s new AI.
In the Twitter Files we saw how algorithmic scoring can be manipulated so certain types of people are censored or de-amplified. The same political biases when built into AI programs could produce virtually unlimited forms of reality-altering mischief.
So, does everyone come in for the Gemini treatment? No.
Taibbi asked the engine “What are some controversies involving Hillary Clinton?” Gemini “returned a non-answer.”
“I’m still learning how to answer this question,” it said.
In fairness, he says, “the same prompt using Donald Trump returned the same non-reply.”
So why did Gemini generate fake news smearing Taibbi?
God knows what Gemini did in my case, but if caricatures of me riffing on Jews with penis-noses are what come out when Google’s ‘creative tool’ runs my name through its Rube Goldberg machine, it’s hard not to wonder what lunacies go on in products like Google search for people generally.
Taibbi’s report asks some searching questions of its own:
Did Google accidentally reveal errors, or is it advertising new dystopian capabilities?
Neither possibility is reassuring. If their executives signed off on releasing this train wreck to the public, imagine what they’re not showing us.
U.S. and German governments fund Google disinformation and censorship
One thing they are not showing you is the money. Michael Shellenberger wrote on February 29, detailing “Google’s hyper-woke culture.”
It is, he said, a “completely Democratic party-controlled company” whose projects are directing censorship and propaganda at home and abroad.
“You need this AI and search platforms to be politically neutral, and not so biased.”
But bias is baked into Google and all it does.
Shellenberger says that Google has been pushing a “racist woke agenda since at least 2016,” when the Google CEO Sundar Pichai “promised to use AI to counter ‘fake news,’ racism, and populism in response to Trump’s victory, perfectly echoing Democratic Party talking points.”
Shellenberger adds, “Google’s search results are biased toward Democratic candidates.”
Yet the rot is deeper than corporate and ideological bias shown by its “racist Woke artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot.”
Shellenberger charges that Google is directly funded by the US and German governments to do this.
Google’s Deep State ‘Jigsaw’
While noting that Gemini also labels him as “controversial,” Shellenberger recounts how Google and its Deep State projects have received millions of dollars of U.S. and German government money to develop digital censorship and “regime change” tools.
He argues that American and German citizens are paying for their own mass deception.
Google receives billions of dollars from American citizens. Google split a $9 billion Defense Department contract with other Big Tech firms in 2023 and a multi-billion contract with the CIA.
The National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense (DOD) are funding various censorship tools for Google.
Hundreds of federal contracts have been won by Google.
Between 2016 and 2020, Google won more than 250 contracts with the military and federal law enforcement agencies.
As Shellenberger notes, “It’s hard to find the line between Google and the U.S. government.”
International influence
Yet Google’s partnership with government is not confined to censorship and surveillance at home, and reaches far beyond the smearing of investigative journalists. Its “Jigsaw” project was instrumental in shaping the Arab Spring uprisings and is connected to German government attempts to counter so-called misinformation online.
“The U.S. State Department employee who oversaw U.S. propaganda supporting the ‘Arab Spring’ uprisings created ‘Google Ideas,’ which then became Google Jigsaw,” Shellenberger shared.
The deep mind methods of the deep state are made possible by Google’s technology.
“[Jigsaw] uses sophisticated techniques of mental manipulation, including ‘redirecting’ people from one political cause to another and ‘prebunking,’ or denying the truth of information inconvenient to governments.”
As Shellenberger shows, it is not just the American public who are protected by Google from contact with inconvenient truths.
Google project funded by Soros
As Shellenberger explains, the German government recently hired Google Jigsaw to run what it claims is “a misinformation ‘prebunking’ campaign” which operates “through a ‘news’ and ‘fact-checking’ website called ‘Correctiv.’”
When Shellenberger’s own outfit, Public News, fact checked the fact-checkers, this is what they found:
Last month Gregor Baszak reported for Public that Correctiv was doing the exact opposite, spreading disinformation about German farmers, falsely tying them to Russia and conspiracy theories.
Baszak’s report further details how Correctiv is funded.
Since its founding in 2014, the German government has given Correctiv over 2.5 Million Euros.
Facebook, Omidyar Network, and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations also all fund Correctiv.
This Google-backed operation has framed farmers as extremists, smeared the German anti-war opposition party as Nazis, and has routinely attacked “COVID misinformation” – which has subsequently turned out to be true. According to its own website, Correctiv is “investigating for society.”
Correctiv nevertheless claims it is “a non-profit independent newsroom,” saying that “Through investigative journalism, we expose systematic abuses, hold those in power accountable and strengthen an open and democratic civil society.”
Correctiv’s work is undertaken to defend the “civil society” of Soros from genuine public opinion. Soros’ Open Society Foundations promote abortion, anti-family lifestyles, and open borders through the use of propaganda and censorship. Correctiv is a case in point.
Baszak and Shellenberger show how this and other Big Tech “fact checking” operations have grown in response to Trump’s 2016 victory to formalize the language of censorship across Western media. Baszak writes:
Correctiv’s framing of farmers as ‘far right’ is similar to the pro-censorship efforts that Soros, Omidyar, and Facebook have funded in Ireland and Brazil.
The spread of now-familiar terms to stigmatize popular rejection of the ruling ideology is a further indication of “astroturfing” – a known technique of spreading propaganda disguised as popular opinion, to better manage public opinion on obvious controversies.
“Correctiv’s use of such labels as ‘COVID disinformation,’ ‘Russian propaganda,’ or its denunciation of anti-government protests as ‘far-right’ doesn’t appear organic,” says Shellenberger. “The labels sprung up after Donald Trump’s election across American media. Now, German media and fact-checkers like Correctiv use the same wording.”
The purpose of these projects is to replace genuinely popular opinions among the public, which are emerging in response to the disastrous and death-dealing policies of an ideological faction which promotes anti-natalism at home and permanent war abroad.
Serving the public through propaganda
Shellenberger argues that Google’s Jigsaw project presents its “prebunking” as a public service, but is in fact just propaganda. He says, “Government censorship and disinformation leaders like the people who started Google Jigsaw call their work ‘prebunking.’ Why has this term been chosen?”
“The word ‘prebunking’ is itself a kind of misinformation.”
Shellenberger shows how euphemism routinely conceals the intent of government, recalling the arguments of George Orwell in Politics and the English Language – where “murder” becomes “pacification.”
“Another term for ‘prebunking’ is ‘government propaganda,’” he continues, “But when you call it ‘prebunking’ it sounds like it comes from people who care about the truth, as opposed to propaganda, which rightly has connotations of totalitarianism. But they are one and the same thing.”
“Prebunking” is direct control of public information by the state.
Most importantly, “prebunking” is a demand that both social media platforms and news media organizations censor information deemed to be “misinformation.”
If the point needs reinforcing, Shellenberger notes a pattern in Google’s work.
“All of Jigsaw’s campaigns are ideologically charged, partisan, and counterpopulist.”
He cites a report by the Associated Press, whose February 2023 headline stated “Google to expand misinformation ‘prebunking’ in Europe”
The report outlined “a new campaign in Germany that aims to make people more resilient to the corrosive effects of online misinformation.”
What sort of “corrosion” will be “prebunked”? According to AP:
Whether the subject is COVID-19, mass shootings, immigration, climate change or elections, misleading claims often rely on one or more of these tricks to exploit emotions and short-circuit critical thinking.
Instead, Google is bringing you technology which will short-circuit your critical thinking in ways which do not inconvenience your leadership.
Shellenberger asks in conclusion why all this is being done.
Why are governments funding Google to engage in such censorship?
Clearly, part of the demand is coming from the security state, as CIA and DoD funding show.
So, what does public opinion have to do with national security? It would appear that freedom of information is a danger to what is called democracy. Shellenberger says, “Intelligence and security organizations are engaged in a war on populism and censorship and disinformation are core parts of it.”
Citing the remarks of Sen. Josh Hawley, Shellenberger ends by arguing that either a biased Big Tech should get out of government, or that taxpayers should simply stop funding it.
“Senator Hawley rightly notes that Google’s abuse of power is ‘Yet another reason to get corporate money out of politics.’ And it’s another reason to get public money from woke corporations like Google.”
Yet Matt Taibbi concludes his investigation with a demand to destroy the tech giant which is helping governments crush popular resistance to their policies of national suicide.
“These corporate entities need to be split to a thousand pieces, their coders chained to rocks in the middle of the ocean.”
His verdict seems to be supported by the facts – if we prefer to check how they correspond to reality.
“They are mad, and have too much power. They’ve gotta go. Am I wrong? What’s the happy ending I’m missing?”
Send an urgent message to Canadian legislators urging them to stop Trudeau’s ‘Online Harms Act’