An informed populace makes it easier to challenge authority. That’s why they’re banning books.

One year after the passage of Florida’s draconian so-called Don’t Say Gay law, Iowa’s Republican Governor Kim Reynolds signed Senate File 496. The law bans went into effect on July 1 and bans lessons and discussions about sexual orientation and gender identity in grades K-6. It orders administrators to inform parents if students ask to use pronouns or names that do not align with their sex assigned at birth and mandates that all library materials are “age appropriate.” The law also does not allow any books that describe or contain depictions of sex.

A K-12 Iowa school district, used artificial intelligence to determine which books to remove from school libraries in an attempt to comply with the law.

Mason City, Iowa schools employed the unique method of determining which books needed to be removed without actually reading them. Entering data into the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT, the school administration generated instant responses after asking it to come up with books that contained depictions of sex.

The bot created a list of 42 entries, including such classics as Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Color Purple by Alice Walker, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, plus Friday Night Lights: A Town, a Team, and a Dream by H. G. Bissinger, Gossip Girl by Cecily von Ziegesar, and many others.

Increasing numbers of school districts across the country are clamping down on students’ access to books and other resources on topics like…

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