April, 17 2018, 12:00am EDT
For Immediate Release
Contact:
Paul Kawika Martin, Peace Action, 951-217-7285 cell, pmartin@peace-action.org, Gabe Murphy, Peace Action, 510-501-3345 cell, gmurphy@peaceaction.org
Peace Action: Another Tax Day, Another Win for the Arms Industry
WASHINGTON
On Tax Day, Paul Kawika Martin, Senior Director for Policy and Political Affairs at Peace Action, released the following statement:
"As people across the nation pay taxes and tighten their belts accordingly, it bares remembering that an astronomical amount of our tax dollars, roughly $1 trillion, are spent on war, while a small fraction of that pays for diplomacy and other alternatives to war. Congress appropriates more for U.S. military spending than the next eight countries combined, but year after year refuses to adequately invest in access to quality education and healthcare for millions of Americans, infrastructure spending, and alternative energy. As a result, arms industry executives make out like bandits while programs that provide essential services for most Americans remain drastically underfunded, as do development and diplomacy programs that help end wars and prevent them in the first place."
Peace Action is the United States' largest peace and disarmament organization with over 100,000 members and nearly 100 chapters in 34 states, works to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons, promote government spending priorities that support human needs and encourage real security through international cooperation and human rights.
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The complaint was brought by two families in Texas who allege that the Google-backed chatbot service Character.AI harmed their two children, including sexually exploiting and abusing the elder, a 17-year-old with high functioning autism, by targeting him with extreme sexual themes like incest and pushing him to self-harm.
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Google is also named as a defendant in the suit. In their filing, the plaintiffs argue that the tech company supported Character.AI's launch even though they knew that it was a "defective product."
The families, who are being represented by the Social Media Victims Law Center and the Tech Justice Law Project, have asked the court to take the product offline.
The explosive court filing comes not long after a mother in Florida filed a separate lawsuit against Character.AI in October, arguing that the chatbot service is responsible for the death of her teenage son because it allegedly encouraged him to commit suicide, per CNN.
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