Biden, at 80, wades into the cutting-edge tech policy debates

President Joe Biden has entered the fray of the Big Tech controversy.

The President held a meeting with the science and technology advisory council on Tuesday. The meeting yielded a resolution urging Congress to create legislation that limits personal data collected by tech companies and protects children.

In his speech, Biden recalled his message to Congress during the State of the Union address, and called for strict bipartisan privacy legislation to be imposed on tech companies. However, Congress has been holding discussions on technology regulations and bills for quite some time, with both parties concerned about Big Tech and the possible risks associated with artificial intelligence.

Elon Musk and other researchers in AI called for a halt to the dangerous AI market competition last week, which is relevant to the White House meeting that happened this week.

AI regulations have wide bipartisan support as well as significant opposition. Last Friday, a restriction bill, known as the RESTRICT Act, faced criticism from conservative groups and civil liberties advocates. The criticism claimed the bill would permit government overreach and violate civil liberties. Despite these criticisms, the Biden administration supports the RESTRICT Act.

Meanwhile, Senators Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley have pushed for a complete ban on social media app TikTok, citing privacy concerns and its relationship with the CCP. Democratic lawmakers formed a coalition opposing the ban.

Biden is the oldest President in U.S. history and some believe the tech regulation issue is unfamiliar to him. Biden, who reportedly still reads print newspapers, has taken steps before to ban TikTok on Government phones, and released an executive order focused on promoting the use of AI that could benefit government and business. The White House also pitched an AI bill of rights designed to protect users from algorithmic abuse delivered by companies and agencies in October 2021.

While the White House Meeting was closed to the public, Biden publicly acknowledged AI’s potential benefits in his opening statement. He called on tech companies to ensure that their creations are safe before they are released into the public domain, implying that the Government should enforce this.

The White House is also accused of intervening in tech controversies, ranging from allegations of Biden benefiting from the Hunter Biden laptop scandal’s media suppression to further accusations that he colluded with social media entities to censor misinformation.

Biden’s push for tech-related legislation and the RESTRICT Act may encounter opposition in Congress. James Czerniawski of American’s for Prosperity expressed his reservations about the RESTRICT Act, calling it the “wrong answer” that “misreads the room.”