Speaker 1: Chairwoman Maloney, Ranking Member Jordan, and members of the Committee,
Speaker 1: thank you for inviting me to speak today. My name
Speaker 1: is Meredith Whitaker and I'm the co founder of the
Speaker 1: AI Now Institute.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty, Meredith Whittikue gave testimony to US Congress
Speaker 2: about the threat of artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: Facial recognition poses serious dangers to our rights, liberties, and values.
Speaker 1: Whether it's used by the state or private actors, the
Speaker 1: technology does not work as advertised. Research shows what tech
Speaker 1: companies are.
Speaker 2: She turned her back on a career at Google and
Speaker 2: wanted to send the public message.
Speaker 1: Facial recognition relies on the mass collection of our biometric data.
Speaker 1: It allows government and private actors to persistently track where
Speaker 1: we go, what we do, and who we associate with.
Speaker 3: But she didn't turn her back on tech entirely.
Speaker 1: If you care about the over policing of community, communities
Speaker 1: of color, or gender equity, or the constitutional right to
Speaker 1: do process and free association, then the secret of unchecked
Speaker 1: deployment of flawed facial recognition systems is an issue you
Speaker 1: cannot ignore.
Speaker 2: From Schwartz Media, I'm Ashlin Macgee. This is seven AM.
Speaker 2: Meredith Whittaker is one of the world's most influential people
Speaker 2: in AI, except she doesn't work in it anymore. She
Speaker 2: spent years deep in the bowels of Google until a
Speaker 2: secretive defense contract changed.
Speaker 3: Her entire perspective.
Speaker 2: She's now the president of Signal, an encrypted messaging app
Speaker 2: used by journalists, whistleblowers, drug dealers, militants, and really anyone who.
Speaker 3: Wants to keep their communications secure.
Speaker 2: Privacy advocates love it, law enforcement hate it, and Meredith
Speaker 2: Whittaker is fighting governments desperate to regulate it. Today, the
Speaker 2: President of the Signal Foundation, Meredith Whittaker a head of
Speaker 2: her public appearance at the Wheeler Center in Melbourne on
Speaker 2: the tech giant to rule the future and why she
Speaker 2: says signals not one of them.
Speaker 3: That's after the break, Meridith.
Speaker 2: A lot of people would describe the moment that we're
Speaker 2: in now when it comes to artificial intelligence is a
Speaker 2: really pivotal one. But I wanted to ask about you
Speaker 2: personally and what led you to begin researching and examining AI.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it boils down to my having been in
Speaker 1: the tech industry now for almost twenty years and a
Speaker 1: little over ten years ago or so beginning to see
Speaker 1: AI or machine learning as we called it, then emerge
Speaker 1: as a heart new thing inside Google where I worked,
Speaker 1: and starting to ask questions about what AI was and.
Speaker 4: How it worked.
Speaker 1: That led me to a more critical perspective on these
Speaker 1: set of technologies and actually to understanding their deep inextricable
Speaker 1: connection to the platform surveillance business model.
Speaker 3: So talk to me a little bit more about that.
Speaker 2: What were you working on at Google at the time,
Speaker 2: and how did you see it come up in your workplace.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I'd done a number of initiatives at Google
Speaker 1: by that time, and one of the big projects that
Speaker 1: I kind of cut my teeth on in tech was
Speaker 1: an effort called Measurement Lab whether we can trust data
Speaker 1: or not, whether it should inform our decision makings, or
Speaker 1: whether we need to be a little bit wary. So
Speaker 1: I was coming into this AI moments around the early
Speaker 1: twenty tens with that type of skepticism, and of course
Speaker 1: when I saw that these technologies we were calling AI,
Speaker 1: these machine learning models were being trained, were being informed
Speaker 1: by much less robust data, often data that was making
Speaker 1: very socially sensitive claims about people and population, data that
Speaker 1: was created in service of selling ads or you know,
Speaker 1: tracking clicks and preferences across browsers or the search instance
Speaker 1: or what have you. That really animated my concern around AI.
Speaker 1: There was a moment where I realized that there were
Speaker 1: some real high stakes to what I was seeing, you know,
Speaker 1: and potentially those stakes were beyond what I had understood before.
Speaker 4: And this was.
Speaker 1: Twenty fourteen when a research group from Harvard was presenting
Speaker 1: to myself and some colleagues an initiative that aimed to
Speaker 1: create an AI system to predict genocide. And I remember
Speaker 1: some of thinking through what they were doing, and you know,
Speaker 1: asking some pretty basic questions, right, Like, the term genocide
Speaker 1: is not clearly defined. It is a politically contested term.
Speaker 1: So I was asking questions around, Okay, well, how do
Speaker 1: you define genoide? What type of data do you rely
Speaker 1: on to model predictors for genocide?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 1: So you know, where are you getting this? How do
Speaker 1: you take responsibility for the fact that if you deployed
Speaker 1: such a predictor you may be putting your thumbs on
Speaker 1: the scale, You may be in fact inflaming or otherwise
Speaker 1: shaping volatile political context outside of your scope of awareness.
Speaker 4: And I got no good answers to those questions.
Speaker 3: So you stayed on a Google after that? Then what happens?
Speaker 4: Yeah, twenty seventeen.
Speaker 1: Someone sent me a signal message one night in the
Speaker 1: fall of twenty seventeen saying, Hey, I think you need
Speaker 1: to know this. I happen to privilege access to the
Speaker 1: small team of people who are working on this secretive
Speaker 1: contract with the Defense Department to build machine vision and
Speaker 1: surveillance systems for the US drone war, you know, which
Speaker 1: had been deemed illegal by every blue chip human rights organization.
Speaker 1: So I was extremely angry, and I was very worried
Speaker 1: because this was Google, who is a company that had
Speaker 1: effectively been enabled by regulators and governments around the world
Speaker 1: to take on incredibly significant roles in our society.
Speaker 4: Right, you know, you no longer go to the library,
Speaker 4: You google it.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 1: They are positioning themselves as the gateway to the world's
Speaker 1: knowledge and understanding.
Speaker 4: They are, you know, creating.
Speaker 1: The platforms for human interpersonal communication. And so we had
Speaker 1: given this power to these companies on the basis of
Speaker 1: very clear promises to do the right thing, to not
Speaker 1: be evil, to not misuse this power. And this was
Speaker 1: crossing a red line in my view.
Speaker 6: Artificial intelligence drones warfare and Google. It's a mixture that
Speaker 6: caused an uproar inside the tech giint, where the early
Speaker 6: motto was don't be evil. So what's behind Google's contract
Speaker 6: with the Department of Defense for a project called mabn
Speaker 6: me Now from.
Speaker 1: Google, who was now yoking their fortunes to the world's
Speaker 1: most lethel military in the context of a drone war
Speaker 1: that was again deemed illegal, that was massacring wedding parties
Speaker 1: based on inaccurate data streams, and that was setting a
Speaker 1: precedent for a kind of technologically enabled empire that I
Speaker 1: found really dangerous and morally repugnant.
Speaker 3: Is that why you left Google?
Speaker 1: No, That's why I started organizing at Google. That's why
Speaker 1: I started rallying the people around me to push back.
Speaker 1: That's why your thousands of people along with me, wrote letters,
Speaker 1: gave out literature, signed petitions, went to the press, spoke
Speaker 1: publicly against this contract, and ultimately forced Google to cancel it.
Speaker 7: A letter to Google CEO Sunder Pitchai signed by more
Speaker 7: than three thousand Google workers.
Speaker 3: Here's what it says.
Speaker 7: Quote, we believe Google should not be in the business
Speaker 7: of war. Therefore, we ask that project may then be
Speaker 7: canceled and that Google draft public publicized, and.
Speaker 4: So you know, no, it's not where I left.
Speaker 1: It's why I started fighting in a much more concerned
Speaker 1: way and started relying on.
Speaker 4: Techniques from the past of you know.
Speaker 1: Kind of building power among workers and stakeholders to push
Speaker 1: back on corporate decisions. Because it became very clear that
Speaker 1: you change from the insight doesn't happen simply by making
Speaker 1: a good point.
Speaker 2: After the break the harmful content on Signal that Meredith
Speaker 2: whittyk says is being weaponized. So, Meredith, you now the
Speaker 2: president of the Signal Foundation. What was it about Signal
Speaker 2: that appeals?
Speaker 3: Why join?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: I love Signal. I've been a Signal super fan since
Speaker 1: day one. I've been friends and admirers of the Signal folks.
Speaker 1: I think there is a future in which Signal sustains
Speaker 1: and grows and continue the incredible momentum that it's already generating.
Speaker 1: And that is a future where we can speak privately,
Speaker 1: where journalism is possible, where human rights work is possible,
Speaker 1: where dissent is possible, where we can where activists and
Speaker 1: dissidents and militaries and CEOs and anyone with something important
Speaker 1: to say that could be weaponized against them by their
Speaker 1: adversaries or those in power. Can use signal to truly
Speaker 1: communicate privately, and that's the future that I think we need,
Speaker 1: particularly given so many gnarly issues in the world, particularly
Speaker 1: given the increasing prominence of authoritarians and government. We must
Speaker 1: preserve the ability to communicate in a truly private way
Speaker 1: because we cannot have all of our thoughts and our
Speaker 1: correspondence subjects to mass surveillance and then weaponized by those
Speaker 1: in power.
Speaker 2: Meredith, you've been in Australia now for a little over
Speaker 2: a week. There's a big push here for our government
Speaker 2: to improve regulation of the Internet. What do you make
Speaker 2: of it?
Speaker 1: You know, I'm learning and listening to a lot of
Speaker 1: folks in Australia. I think you know, I was really
Speaker 1: heartened to see that the E Safety Commissioner released language
Speaker 1: that you know, looks like a great first step in
Speaker 1: protecting encryption. I think Australia has a big role to
Speaker 1: play in these debates.
Speaker 8: We will be seeking cooperation wherever we can, but we
Speaker 8: need to take action and the online.
Speaker 2: There is one really gnlly issue though that signal is
Speaker 2: grappling at the moment, and that is this big conversation
Speaker 2: around how encryption and platforms that are encrypted, including signal,
Speaker 2: are being used to share terror and child exploitation content.
Speaker 3: That must weigh on your mind.
Speaker 1: Well, weays on my mind that people are weaponizing such
Speaker 1: socially significant and often monstrous issues to attack the one
Speaker 1: technology we have that actually enables private communication. Like Look,
Speaker 1: this is a long standing tension. The attack on encryption,
Speaker 1: the attack on the ability to communicate and transact privately
Speaker 1: over networked computation, has existed since the mid seventies, when
Speaker 1: public key encryption technologies were invented and security services in
Speaker 1: the US literally tried to stop publication of the paper
Speaker 1: that documented these systems. Then you go to the nineties
Speaker 1: and these same tropes emerge over and over again. You
Speaker 1: have a nineteen ninety two op ed and Wired by
Speaker 1: then NSA head Stuart Baker that claims that these very
Speaker 1: rudimentary encrypted systems are the providence of terrorists and pedophiles
Speaker 1: and that no one beyond those demographics should really be
Speaker 1: concerned about privacy because the rest of us don't have
Speaker 1: anything to hide. Now, the landscape of surveillance in the seventies,
Speaker 1: in the nineties, and now is vastly different, but somehow
Speaker 1: the arguments never change. Somehow it is always the state
Speaker 1: must have access to every realm of human life in
Speaker 1: service of rooting out the bad guys and supporting the
Speaker 1: good guys. But of course that is not how it
Speaker 1: works in practice, and what we see today, in my view,
Speaker 1: is a renewed attack on the ability to truly communicate privately,
Speaker 1: based on emotional claims that are not supported by data.
Speaker 1: There is no evidence that encryption is a causal factor
Speaker 1: in child abuse or terrorism.
Speaker 2: I'll just jump in their meritis because I just want
Speaker 2: to explore that a little bit more. And I guess
Speaker 2: what we're talking about is not whether it's a causal factor,
Speaker 2: but the fact that this type of content is shared
Speaker 2: on encrypted platforms. It does get shared on encrypted platforms.
Speaker 2: I think that that's fairly obvious these it do you accept, then.
Speaker 4: Well, the purpose of encryption.
Speaker 1: Is to provide provable privacy. We cannot look into the
Speaker 1: messages that you send on signal, so I'm sure a
Speaker 1: number of things are shared on encrypted platforms, but there
Speaker 1: is no evidence that encrypted platforms produce more abuse. You know,
Speaker 1: there are things that we do to ensure that the
Speaker 1: harm surface on signal is reduced. The primary one is
Speaker 1: we are not a social networking platform. But again that
Speaker 1: framing then immediately implies that somehow, if there were, if platforms,
Speaker 1: if tech companies just did the right thing, the deep
Speaker 1: sickness of child sexual abuse would somehow go away. And
Speaker 1: I think, to me, that's really dangerous because we've abstracted
Speaker 1: the issue of child sexual abuse into an online problem
Speaker 1: that a couple of engineers turning some knobs and giving
Speaker 1: law enforcement and potentially authoritarian governments in the US extra
Speaker 1: access will somehow solve. I don't think one person who
Speaker 1: showed up in Epstein's Black Book has been prosecuted, you know,
Speaker 1: I do need to say is incredibly dangerous in the
Speaker 1: US right now, there's a woman living in prison this
Speaker 1: moment because Facebook turned over messages between her and her
Speaker 1: daughter that documented their excess of reproductive care and dealing
Speaker 1: with the aftermath. In the state of Nebraska after the
Speaker 1: Dobbs decision, we are learning more.
Speaker 5: Now about how Facebook turned over a mom and her
Speaker 5: teen's daughter. Her teenage daughters chats to police in Nebraska
Speaker 5: court document show police served a Facebook a warrant as
Speaker 5: part of an investigation into an alleged illegal abortion. The
Speaker 5: probe started back in a year.
Speaker 1: We need to demand the kind of precision and rigor
Speaker 1: that is often difficult in the face of highly emotionally
Speaker 1: charged topics.
Speaker 4: But there's no way to get this right if we
Speaker 4: don't do that.
Speaker 2: Finally, Meredith, there are AI evangelists and AI doomsdays in
Speaker 2: this world.
Speaker 3: What do you identify as?
Speaker 1: I am an AI realist, which means I'm not clear
Speaker 1: that AI is what we should be interested in so
Speaker 1: much as the configurations of power that are going to
Speaker 1: use AI and the way that AI could be used
Speaker 1: to generally harm the most marginalized.
Speaker 4: I'm not really a user of AI, putting aside that I.
Speaker 1: Don't really use GPT or these sort of generative toys.
Speaker 1: I think in most cases, like most other people, I
Speaker 1: am more the subject of AI than a user of AI.
Speaker 1: And what I mean by that is, you know, well,
Speaker 1: all walk down the street and a CCTV camera will
Speaker 1: pick up our face, and that CCTV camera may transmit
Speaker 1: that biometric data to a clear view AI facial recognition
Speaker 1: database that then pulls up a profile of us.
Speaker 4: Right I walk into a bank, I might apply for
Speaker 4: a loan.
Speaker 1: An AI system that is a licensed from Microsoft on
Speaker 1: the back end may be involved in making a determination
Speaker 1: about whether I get that loan or not. But in
Speaker 1: none of those cases am I actually using AI. I
Speaker 1: am conscripted as an AI subject by the institutions and
Speaker 1: governments that have chosen to implement AI, and so I
Speaker 1: think we need to recognize that power dynamic when we
Speaker 1: think about using AI.
Speaker 4: This is generally a tool of.
Speaker 1: Those who have power that's used to subject those who
Speaker 1: have less.
Speaker 3: Thanks so much for your time, Meredith.
Speaker 4: Thank you, it's great to be here.
Speaker 2: Also in the news today, Julian Assange's walked free from
Speaker 2: Belmarsh Prison and will face court today on the island
Speaker 2: of Saipan, a US commonwealth in the Pacific Ocean. Under
Speaker 2: a deal struck with the US Justice Department. Assange is
Speaker 2: expected to be sentenced by a judge to time already served,
Speaker 2: and then he'll be free to return to Australia. Prime
Speaker 2: Minister Anthony Albanezi revealed Assange would be a company to
Speaker 2: court by the current UK High Commissioner, but said he
Speaker 2: wouldn't comment further until after a final judgment's being secured.
Speaker 9: We want him brought home to Australia and we have
Speaker 9: engaged and advocated Australia's interests using all appropriate channels to
Speaker 9: support a positive outcome, and I've done that.
Speaker 8: Since very early on in my prime ministership. I will
Speaker 8: have more to say when these legal proceedings have concluded,
Speaker 8: which I hope will be very soon, and I will.
Speaker 2: That's all from the team at seven am for today.
Speaker 2: My name is Ashlin McGhee. Thanks so much for your company.
Speaker 2: See you again tomorrow.