AI ETHICS AND REGULATION
Meta claims LLaMA 4 lowered refusal rates on debatable political and social topics from 7 % to below 2 %
Without clear regulatory frameworks, companies deploying these systems face limited accountability.
When imbalance becomes harmful GLAAD, the LGBTQ + rights organisation, reports that Llama 4 now makes reference to discredited conversion therapy practices in some queries.“ Both-sidesism that equates anti-LGBTQ junk-science with wellestablished facts and research is not only misleading – it legitimises harmful falsehoods,” a GLAAD spokesperson says.
“ All major medical, psychiatric and psychological organisations have condemned so-called‘ conversion therapy,’ and the UN has compared it to‘ torture.’” This illustrates a central tension in AI ethics: the difference between political neutrality and factual accuracy.
When Meta frames“ both sides” of conversion therapy as legitimate debate rather than settled medical consensus, it’ s not removing bias but choosing different biases. The same principle applies to hiring algorithms that treat discriminatory patterns as neutral data points rather than ethical violations requiring correction.
What are AI giants really racing to achieve? Today, the legal and regulatory situation on AI bias mitigation remains fragmented. Tim Cook acknowledges the mounting pressure:“ The reality is that Big Tech is under a lot of scrutiny around the world,” he says, according to the Economic Times.
“ We need to continue to push on the intention of regulation and get them to offer that up, instead of these things that destroy the user experience and user privacy and security.”
So far, the EU’ s AI Act is the most comprehensive attempt at AI regulation, including provisions for transparency and accountability in high-risk applications like hiring.
Yet global consensus remains elusive and enforcement mechanisms remain untested. As AI systems become deeply embedded in consequential decisions – from hiring and lending to healthcare and criminal justice – the fight over whose values they encode will intensify. Meta and Grok’ s positioning as“ uncensored” alternatives, Musk’ s legal battles over market access – and ongoing debates over algorithmic fairness in hiring all reflect the same underlying struggle: control over the systems that increasingly mediate our world.
For the moment, the question facing regulators, ethicists and business leaders isn’ t whether AI will be biased. It’ s whose biases win – and who gets to decide. aimagazine. com 169