Former Vice President Kamala Harris appeared on "Off Air with Big Boy" to discuss how social media algorithms shape information consumption and influence voters ahead of elections.
Harris told host Big Boy that personalized algorithms repeatedly feed users similar content, a practice she said amounts to companies "trying to dumb people down with the assumption that people don't have any interest beyond what they've already seen."
She illustrated the point with a metaphor: if she looks at a yellow flower, the algorithm assumes she is "only interested in yellow flowers, as though my brain can't handle the fact that there may be a pink flower that I might be interested in looking at." She urged people to "figure out how we're going to psych it out a bit."
The explanation drew mockery from Fox News. Sean Hannity played the sound bite and asked, "What was that?" His guest, Fox News host Jimmy Failla, joked that Harris believes "AI is Allen Iverson from the Philadelphia 76ers."
Harris, the Democratic Party's 2024 presidential nominee, has faced past criticism for her explanations of artificial intelligence. In 2023, while serving as vice president, she described AI as "kind of a fancy thing," then clarified: "It's two letters. It means artificial intelligence, but ultimately what it is is it's about machine learning."
Harris previously held a leading role in the Biden administration's work on artificial intelligence. She has not publicly declared whether she will seek the White House again in 2028.
