Vice President Kamala Harris’ gaffe-filled week got a little bit worse Friday when she appeared to mistakenly call for lowering population in order to provide cleaner air and drinking water.
“When we invest in clean energy and electric vehicles and reduce population, more of our children can breathe clean air and drink clean water,” Harris told a crowd at Coppin State University in Baltimore, Maryland in a speech centered on the Inflation Reduction Act.
Harris meant to say “pollution,” and her office said the vice president misspoke. The official transcript of the event reflects that Harris meant to say that electric vehicles and clean energy would reduce pollution.
The gaffe comes just days after Harris attempted to explain artificial intelligence at a roundtable of labor and civil rights leaders.
“I think the first part of this issue that should be articulated is AI is kind of a fancy thing,” Harris said at the Wednesday event. “First of all, it’s two letters. It means artificial intelligence, but ultimately what it is, is 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,” she added.
A day earlier, she was ridiculed for other comments during a roundtable discussion on transportation.
“This issue of transportation is fundamentally about just making sure that people have the ability to get where they need to go! It’s that basic,” she said.