{"id":1182649,"date":"2023-08-16T17:29:55","date_gmt":"2023-08-16T17:29:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/?p=441593"},"modified":"2023-08-16T17:29:55","modified_gmt":"2023-08-16T17:29:55","slug":"ai-isnt-banning-books-in-iowa-schools-republicans-are","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/08\/16\/ai-isnt-banning-books-in-iowa-schools-republicans-are\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Isn\u2019t Banning Books in Iowa Schools. Republicans Are."},"content":{"rendered":"
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It reads like<\/u> a headline pulled from a dystopian near future: Artificial intelligence is being used to ban books by Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, and Maya Angelou from schools. To comply with recently enacted state legislation<\/a> that censors school libraries, Iowa\u2019s Mason City Community School District used ChatGPT to scan a selection of books and flag them for \u201cdescriptions or visual depictions of a sex act.\u201d Nineteen books<\/a> \u2014 including Morrison\u2019s \u201cBeloved,\u201d Margaret Atwood\u2019s \u201cThe Handmaid\u2019s Tale,\u201d and Khaled Hosseini\u2019s \u201cThe Kite Runner\u201d \u2014 will be pulled from school library collections prior to the start of the school year.<\/p>\n This intersection of generative AI and Republican authoritarianism is indeed disturbing. It is not, however, the presage of a future ruled by censorious machines. These are the banal operations of reactionary social control and bureaucratic appeasement today. Unremarkable algorithmic systems have long been used to carry out the plans of the power structures deploying them.<\/p>\n AI is not banning books. Republicans are. The law with which the school district is complying, signed<\/a> by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds in May, is yet another piece of astroturfed right-wing legislation aimed at eliminating<\/a> gender nonconformity, anti-racism, and basic reproductive education from schools, while solidifying the power of the conservative family unit. <\/p>\n <\/p>\n