{"id":13654,"date":"2023-09-30T21:26:08","date_gmt":"2023-09-30T11:26:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/?p=13654"},"modified":"2023-09-30T21:31:28","modified_gmt":"2023-09-30T11:31:28","slug":"does-ai-have-a-right-to-free-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rationalemagazine.com\/index.php\/2023\/09\/30\/does-ai-have-a-right-to-free-speech\/","title":{"rendered":"Does AI have a right to free speech?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world has witnessed breathtaking advances in generative artificial intelligence (AI), with ChatGPT being one of the best known examples. To prevent harm and misuse of the technology, politicians are now considering\u00a0regulating AI<\/a>. Yet they face an overlooked barrier: AI may have a right to free speech.<\/p>\n

Under international law, humans possess\u00a0an inviolable right to freedom of thought<\/a>. As part of this, governments\u00a0have a duty<\/a>\u00a0to create an environment where people can think freely.<\/p>\n

As we\u2019ve seen with ChatGPT, AI can support our thinking, providing information and offering answers to our questions. This has led some to argue that our right to think freely may require giving AI a right to speak freely.<\/p>\n

Recent\u00a0articles<\/a>,\u00a0papers<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0books<\/a> from the United States have made the case that AI has a right to free speech.<\/p>\n

Corporations, like AI systems, are not people. Yet the\u00a0US Supreme Court<\/a>\u00a0has ruled that government should not suppress corporations\u2019 political speech. This is because the\u00a0first amendment<\/a>\u00a0protects Americans\u2019\u00a0freedom to think for themselves<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Free thought, says the US Supreme Court, requires us to hear from \u201cdiverse and antagonistic sources<\/a>\u201d. The US government telling people where to get their information would be an unlawful use of \u201ccensorship to control thought<\/a>\u201d. So corporations\u2019 free speech is believed to create an environment where individuals are free to think.<\/p>\n

The same principle could extend to AI. The US Supreme Court says that protecting speech \u201cdoes not depend upon the identity of its source<\/a>\u201d. Instead, the key criterion for protecting speech is that the speaker, whether an individual, corporation or AI, contributes to the marketplace of ideas.<\/p>\n

Yet, an unthinking application of\u00a0free speech law to AI<\/a> could be damaging. Giving AI free speech rights could actually harm our ability to think freely. We have a term \u2013<\/span> ‘sophist’ \u2013<\/span> for those who use language to persuade us of falsehoods. While AI super-soldiers would be dangerous, AI super-sophists could be much worse.<\/p>\n

An unconstrained AI might pollute the information landscape with misinformation, flooding us with \u201cpropaganda and untruth<\/a>\u201d. But punishing falsehoods could easily\u00a0stray into censorship<\/a>. The best antidote to AI\u2019s\u00a0falsehoods and fallacies<\/a>\u00a0could be more AI speech that\u00a0counters misinformation<\/a>.<\/p>\n

AI could also use its knowledge of human thinking to systematically attack\u00a0what makes our thought free<\/a>. It could control our attention, discourage pause for reflection, pervert our reasoning, and intimidate us into silence. Our minds could therefore become moulded by machines.<\/p>\n

This could be the wake-up call we need to spur a renaissance in human thinking. Humans have been described as \u201ccognitive misers<\/a>\u201d, which means we only really think when we need to. A free-speaking AI could force us to think more deeply and deliberately about what is true.<\/p>\n

However, the huge quantities of speech that AI can produce could give it an oversized influence on society. Currently, the US Supreme Court views silencing some speakers to hear others better as \u201cwholly foreign to the Frst Amendment<\/a>\u201d. But restricting the speech of machines might be necessary to allow human speech and thought to flourish.<\/p>\n

An unconstrained AI might pollute the information landscape with misinformation, flooding us with \u201cpropaganda and untruth\u201d. But punishing falsehoods could easily\u00a0stray into censorship.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both\u00a0free speech law<\/a>\u00a0and AI regulation must consider their impact on free thought. Take the\u00a0European Union\u2019s draft AI act<\/a>\u00a0and its proposed regulation of generative AI such as ChatGPT.<\/p>\n

Firstly, this act requires AI-generated content to be disclosed. Knowing content comes from an AI, rather than a person, might help us evaluate it more clearly \u2013 promoting free thought.<\/p>\n

But permitting some anonymous AI speech could help our thinking. AI\u2019s owners may experience less public pressure to censor legal but controversial AI speech if such speech was anonymous. AI anonymity could also have the effect of making us judge AI speech on its merits rather than\u00a0reflexively dismissing it as \u201cbot speech\u201d<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Secondly, the EU act requires companies to design their AI models to avoid generating illegal content, which in those countries includes hate speech. But this could prevent both legal and illegal speech being generated. European hate speech laws already cause both legal and illegal online comments to be deleted,\u00a0according to a think tank report<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Holding companies liable for what their AI produces could also incentivise them to unnecessarily restrict what it says. The US\u2019s section 230 law shields social media companies from much legal liability for their users\u2019 speech, but\u00a0may not protect AI\u2019s speech<\/a>. We may need new laws to insulate corporations from such pressures.<\/p>\n

Finally, the act requires companies to publish summaries of copyrighted data used to train (improve) AI. The EU wants AI to share its library record. This could help us evaluate AI\u2019s likely biases.<\/p>\n

Yet humans\u2019 reading records are protected for good reason. If we thought others could know what we read, we might be likely to shy away from controversial but potentially useful texts. Similarly, revealing AI\u2019s reading list might pressurise tech companies not to train AI with legal but controversial material. This could limit AI\u2019s speech and our free thought.<\/p>\n

As Aza Raskin from the Center for Humane Technology\u00a0points out<\/a>, threats from new technologies can require us to develop new rights.\u00a0Raskin explains how<\/a>\u00a0the ability of computers to preserve our words led to a new\u00a0right to be forgotten<\/a>. AI may force us to\u00a0elaborate and reinvent our right to freedom of thought<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Moving forward, we need what the legal scholar Marc Blitz terms \u201ca right to think with technology<\/a>\u201d \u2013 freedom to interact with AI and computers, using them to inform our thinking. Yet such thinking may not be free if AI is compelled to be \u201csafe \u2026 aligned \u2026 and loyal<\/a>\u201d, as tech experts recently demanded in a petition to pause AI development.<\/p>\n

Granting AI free speech rights would both support and undermine our freedom of thought. This points to the need for AI regulation. Yet such regulatory action must clearly show how it complies with our inviolable right to freedom of thought, if we are to remain in control of our lives.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published in <\/strong><\/em>The Conversation<\/strong>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Photo by Mojahid Mottakin<\/a> on Unsplash.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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