Vice President Kamala Harris is facing ridicule over her latest awkward turn of phrase, after she delivered a jumbled explanation of artificial intelligence.
‘AI is kind of a fancy thing. First of all, it’s two letters. It means ‘Artificial Intelligence,” Harris told a roundtable gathering of labor and civil rights leaders in Washington DC on Wednesday.
She continued: ‘It’s about machine learning, and so, the machine is taught — and part of the issue here is what information is going into the machine that will then determine — and we can predict then, if we think about what information is going in, what then will be produced in terms of decisions and opinions that may be made through that process.’
The remarks drew criticism from conservatives on Twitter, especially after a clip of the event was posted by the Republican National Committee’s @RNCResearch account, which has been quick to pounce on Harris’ gaffes.
‘Why does she address us as if we are 5 years old?’ one user asked.
‘AI is kind of a fancy thing. First of all, it’s two letters. It means ‘Artificial Intelligence,” Harris told a roundtable gathering of labor and civil rights leaders in Washington DC on Wednesday
It came one day after the VP faced similar criticism over her simplified explanation of transportation at an event alongside Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday.
‘This issue of transportation is fundamentally about just making sure that people have the ability to get where they need to go,’ she told a gathering of disability rights advocates. ‘It’s that basic.’
Harris has had a string of similar recent gaffes, and last Friday she awkwardly spewed out a ‘word salad’ when trying to define ‘culture’ at New Orleans’ Essence Festival.
‘Culture is – it is a reflection of our moment and our time. Right?’ the vice president mused.
‘And present culture is the way we express how we’re feeling about the moment, and we should always find times to express how we feel about the moment,’ Harris continued.
‘That is a reflection of joy. Because, you know,’ she said, pausing and then breaking into laughter, ‘it comes in the morning.’
She then added, ‘We have to find ways to also express the way we feel about the moment in terms of just having language and a connection to how people are experiencing life. And I think about it in that way, too.’
Harris also got attention for a rambling speech she gave in February about abortion.
‘So I think it’s very important, as you have heard from so many incredible leaders for us at every moment in time and certainly this one, to see the moment in time in which we exist and are present, and to be able to contextualize it, to understand where we exist in the history and in the moment as it relates not only to the past but the future,’ she said at the time.
While President Joe Biden, 80, gets in trouble for verbal stumbles and gaffes, Harris has been accused of talking almost nonsensically at times, using cascading dependent clauses that make her sentences difficult to decipher.
The Daily Show compared her unfavorably to the HBO show Veep’s fictional character Selina Meyer, who had a penchant for using truisms and circular explanations.
In real life, other vice presidents have also faced intense ridicule for their verbal gaffes, as Republican Dan Quayle memorably discovered during George H.W. Bush’s administration.
Biden has already committed to keeping Harris on the 2024 ticket, though she faces approval ratings that are generally lower than his.
In late June, according to FiveThirtyEight.com, Harris held a 51.3 disapproval rating, with just 39.2 percent of Americans saying they approved of her.
