After eagle-eyed onlookers noticed that two amendments had been made to the online copy of the US Constitution earlier this week, a number of alarming theories gripped the internet.
One of these postulations centred on the dangers and possible downsides of AI.
For those out of the loop with the political controversy, scourers of the Library of Congress' website noticed on Wednesday (6 August) that both Sections 9 and 10 from Article I had seemingly disappeared.
Alarm bells started ringing when it emerged that the piece of legislation that had gone missing hinged on both detention and prison proceedings, known as habeas corpus.
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Not only does this law guarantee a person's right to challenge their detention if they're apprehended by authorities, but it also demands that the US government justify the confinement of said person.
It didn't take long for some critics to point their fingers at Donald Trump, believing he may have arranged the Constitution's amendment given his ongoing focus on the 'largest deportation in American history'.
The accusation also comes with minimal surprise given that his White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, previously suggested suspending habeas corpus to aid the politician's arrest and deportation plans, as per Rolling Stone.
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Trump's Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also defined habeas corpus as 'a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country', before being swiftly corrected.
That said, however, after no concrete evidence regarding Trump's alleged involvement, and the Library of Congress clarified that the missing sections were the result of a 'coding error', some conspiracy theories have turned their attention elsewhere.
More specifically, these individuals have started blaming AI.
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Taking to Reddit, one onlooker explained: "One theory bouncing around is that the website was changed not to fool people, but to change the training data for AI. Ostensibly the official website for a document like this would be weighted more heavily than other digital outlets.
"That gives an opening for these AIs to start responding with 'no, the constitution does not include a writ of habeas corpus' whether organically or as a forced response and a reference article to back itself up. Millions upon millions of people will instantly take that AI response as fact."
If that explanation went somewhat over your head, said user is seemingly suggesting that the removal was conscious in a bid to increase the sophistication of AI tools, so they wouldn't make incorrect claims going forward.
After another user chimed in suggesting that this tech-based theory is both 'a really ominous and upsetting take', a third added: "What's funny is that the fact that it was pointed out and all the buzz produced as a result means that the model will be trained to identify that it was hidden."
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A fourth went on to explain: "What’s more most AI don’t just web search for every elementary question like 'what’s in the constitution'.
"They have a set of materials that the AI was trained on and uses web search for things that are more timely."
A spokesperson for the Library of Congress told Tyla: "We regret the confusion resulting from the missing content on the Constitution Annotated (CONAN) website yesterday.
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"It’s been our urgent priority to re-publish the content and determine what happened. CONAN is an educational tool which includes discussions of the Supreme Court’s latest opinions linked to the text of the Constitution.
"When updating the site to reflect our constitutional scholars’ analysis of the impact of the latest cases on Article I, Sections 8-10, the team inadvertently removed an XML tag.
"This prevented publication of everything in Article I after the middle of Section 8. The problem has been corrected, and our updated constitutional analysis is now available. We are taking steps to prevent a recurrence in the future."
Topics: Donald Trump, US News, Politics
Rhianna Benson