"...if you focus your regulation on the goal of equal outcomes, you will have to keep upping the ante every time equal outcomes don’t occur (which will basically be always)..."
This is the engine of the Left's Permanent Revolution, which is really the will-to-power of adversary intellectuals funded and lauded by American academia and our liberal gentry: an infinite moral, political, social and epistemic crusade for the Left priesthood to own and operate our entire cognitive infrastructure and to be the official embodiment of the True and the Good.
And as utopia is always just beyond our grasp, there will always be more commissars needed, more rules and laws and speech codes, more Struggle Sessions and lessons in etiquette, all with the goal of making us passive puppets who obey on command and are programmed to regurgiate approved dogma.
It seems that the West is just stuck with a permanent class of moral entrepreneurs who are always wielding heavy doses of guilt and shame, always demanding we repent and atone for original sin and bow down to their sacred commandments—the faith may be different, but we seem to have no way to rid us of these meddlesome priests.
I remember experiencing the same liberal guilt at my high school. FIRE has been incredible for me. I'm a fiction writer, in addition to writing articles (you might've seen me at The Coddling Substack!) I used to go to great lengths to delete and destroy any stories that contained a small piece of language deemed "offensive" by some. Every time I release a story with controversial ideas now, I remind myself I have free speech to do so!
AI has been a tense topic in my community thanks to artists perceiving it as stealing their jobs and their work. While I agree that there are ethical concerns to be heard here, I'm not sure if training a device on many artworks or written works it observes a small portion of is considered copyright infringement - then I'd also owe royalties to every book I've ever read (or at least be considered a thief!) for influencing my language development. And I don't want to restrict the use of tools in an admittedly competitive field, one that nobody is entitled too given we may stop caring about any given entertainment product any day now... It's not a role like teachers or lawyers where we need personnel for a clear societal purpose.
My point being, I'm taking advantage of my free speech here... But despite the many important perspectives in this conversation, not just my own, I feel like that's an easy way to be guilted into AI bans too. And not all, but some pockets of artist culture are already filled with that kind of "liberal guilt" you mention!
Anyways, thanks for the piece and for doing the work that you do.
SIR, YOUR ''CIRCULAR'' ARGUMENT BORDERS ON SOPHISTRY. ANTI-DISCRIMINATORY ACTS AND PRACTICES OF THE PAST ARE STILL ''ALIVE AND WELL''; THEY ARE LIKE THE ''EMBERS'' OF A SLOW-BURNING HUGE LOG OF WOOD. ALL THE ''UGLY'' IMPULSE OF PAST RACIAL INJUSTICES HAVE NOT YET BEEN FULLY ADDRESSED AND RECTIFIED, IN SPITE OF A FEW TEPID/LUKEWARM PRETENSES AT RACIAL JUSTICE. THIS PROCLIVITY AND CRASS TENDENCY OF ONE RACE TO SUBJUGATE THE OTHER HAS BEEN ''INCONTROVERTIBLY'' PROVEN DURING ALMOST HALF A CENTURY OF SLAVERY AND RACIAL INJUSTICES. SO, TO PRETEND AND HIDE BEHIND YOUR SO-CALLED DEFENSE OF ''INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM/INDEPENDENCE'' IS THE HEIGHT OF INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY. WE WILL SEE AN ''UPTICK'' AND A RETURN TO RACIAL INJUSTICE IN THE COMING YEARS. AS YOU CORRECTLY STATED, POWER NEEDS MORE POWER TO JUSTIFY AND CARRY OUT ITS NEFARIOUS AGENDAS. THE HUMAN BEING HAS A VERY BAD HISTORY OF SUBJUGATING THOSE IT DOES NOT LIKE. THE NAZI REGIME AND THE ATROCITIES IT COMMITTED UNDER THE TRUMPED UP BELIEVE OF ITS RACIAL SUPERIORITY OVER OTHERS/ANOTHER RACES IS THE EVIL CIVIL RIGHTS SEEKS TO MITIGATE. THE HUMAN BEING HAS NOT IMPROVED SINCE THE NAZI REGIME. YOU FRAMED YOUR DISCOURSE AS AN INTELLECTUAL ARGUMENT, INSTEAD OF A MORAL ONE. SO, WHAT GIVES A RACE OF PEOPLE THE MORAL RIGHT TO SUBJUGATE OTHER RACES? THEREFORE, THE CONCERN AND APPREHENSION HERE IS NOT REALLY ABOUT THE UNFETTERED FREEDOM TO USE AI PROGRAMS IN ADVANCING INTELLECTUAL QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE, BUT RATHER IT'S NEFARIOUS APPLICATIONS IN RACE RELATIONS, GIVEN OUR PAST HISTORIES OF SORDID RACE RELATIONS. THE ''PAST'' HAS A WAY OF REARING UP ITS UGLY HEAD WHEN THE SOPHISTRY OF ''REVISIONIST'' HISTORY IS INVOKED.
"We do not ban or regulate controversial or even bigoted ideas because they may inspire others to discriminate"
Great call to sense in the article, Lukianoff, but this made me laugh quite hard. Who is the "we" who do not ban or regulate? Banning AND regulating ideas believed to be damaging to some group or principle is a millenary behaviour of humanity. Individual freedom of conscience and expression is a very recent development and only very precariously established, in a very small, if rich, part of the world. Constitutional protection for free speech only exists in your country... and as the history of the many organizations devoted to upholding it shows how embattled it has always been.
Today it has become seriously embattled again... and like you have noticed several times, on both sides of the political spectrum. The left wants to ban "damaging" ideas which it believes are harmful to the downtrodden. The right wants to ban "damaging" ideas which it believes are harmful to children and traditional moral principles. The centre is silent and getting thinner by the day.
This is not to say that it is futile to keep fighting for reason, moderation, and freedom of speech and conscience. Vigilance and neverending battles is how liberty is preserved. But there is no "we" save for these few of us here.
So, what's the answer to actually prevent algorithmic discrimination? Not under the absurdly broad "disparate impact" theory, but against the digital equivalent of redlining?
If Google added a 'job search' function to Google search tomorrow and it DELIBERATELY only showed C suite job openings to women and minorities, or dynamically altered the expected pay for positions to quote lower pay to men, or excluded Christian users from seeing postings for teaching positions... What then? Who can be held responsible? How?
Unlike a person, an AI doesn't have a free speech right. They are, AFAICT, often something of a black box, where even if you suspect a malicious intent on the part of someone involved with developing or training it, the code itself is generally proprietary and the training set too massive for any sort of independent review.
The argument that the proposed legislation is overbroad seems solid, but the absence of some legislation likewise seems a problem in that AI very much CAN be used in ways that will truly violate nondiscrimination laws and yet be uniquely difficult to legally establish as having done so.
"...if you focus your regulation on the goal of equal outcomes, you will have to keep upping the ante every time equal outcomes don’t occur (which will basically be always)..."
This is the engine of the Left's Permanent Revolution, which is really the will-to-power of adversary intellectuals funded and lauded by American academia and our liberal gentry: an infinite moral, political, social and epistemic crusade for the Left priesthood to own and operate our entire cognitive infrastructure and to be the official embodiment of the True and the Good.
And as utopia is always just beyond our grasp, there will always be more commissars needed, more rules and laws and speech codes, more Struggle Sessions and lessons in etiquette, all with the goal of making us passive puppets who obey on command and are programmed to regurgiate approved dogma.
It seems that the West is just stuck with a permanent class of moral entrepreneurs who are always wielding heavy doses of guilt and shame, always demanding we repent and atone for original sin and bow down to their sacred commandments—the faith may be different, but we seem to have no way to rid us of these meddlesome priests.
I remember experiencing the same liberal guilt at my high school. FIRE has been incredible for me. I'm a fiction writer, in addition to writing articles (you might've seen me at The Coddling Substack!) I used to go to great lengths to delete and destroy any stories that contained a small piece of language deemed "offensive" by some. Every time I release a story with controversial ideas now, I remind myself I have free speech to do so!
AI has been a tense topic in my community thanks to artists perceiving it as stealing their jobs and their work. While I agree that there are ethical concerns to be heard here, I'm not sure if training a device on many artworks or written works it observes a small portion of is considered copyright infringement - then I'd also owe royalties to every book I've ever read (or at least be considered a thief!) for influencing my language development. And I don't want to restrict the use of tools in an admittedly competitive field, one that nobody is entitled too given we may stop caring about any given entertainment product any day now... It's not a role like teachers or lawyers where we need personnel for a clear societal purpose.
My point being, I'm taking advantage of my free speech here... But despite the many important perspectives in this conversation, not just my own, I feel like that's an easy way to be guilted into AI bans too. And not all, but some pockets of artist culture are already filled with that kind of "liberal guilt" you mention!
Anyways, thanks for the piece and for doing the work that you do.
SIR, YOUR ''CIRCULAR'' ARGUMENT BORDERS ON SOPHISTRY. ANTI-DISCRIMINATORY ACTS AND PRACTICES OF THE PAST ARE STILL ''ALIVE AND WELL''; THEY ARE LIKE THE ''EMBERS'' OF A SLOW-BURNING HUGE LOG OF WOOD. ALL THE ''UGLY'' IMPULSE OF PAST RACIAL INJUSTICES HAVE NOT YET BEEN FULLY ADDRESSED AND RECTIFIED, IN SPITE OF A FEW TEPID/LUKEWARM PRETENSES AT RACIAL JUSTICE. THIS PROCLIVITY AND CRASS TENDENCY OF ONE RACE TO SUBJUGATE THE OTHER HAS BEEN ''INCONTROVERTIBLY'' PROVEN DURING ALMOST HALF A CENTURY OF SLAVERY AND RACIAL INJUSTICES. SO, TO PRETEND AND HIDE BEHIND YOUR SO-CALLED DEFENSE OF ''INTELLECTUAL FREEDOM/INDEPENDENCE'' IS THE HEIGHT OF INTELLECTUAL DISHONESTY. WE WILL SEE AN ''UPTICK'' AND A RETURN TO RACIAL INJUSTICE IN THE COMING YEARS. AS YOU CORRECTLY STATED, POWER NEEDS MORE POWER TO JUSTIFY AND CARRY OUT ITS NEFARIOUS AGENDAS. THE HUMAN BEING HAS A VERY BAD HISTORY OF SUBJUGATING THOSE IT DOES NOT LIKE. THE NAZI REGIME AND THE ATROCITIES IT COMMITTED UNDER THE TRUMPED UP BELIEVE OF ITS RACIAL SUPERIORITY OVER OTHERS/ANOTHER RACES IS THE EVIL CIVIL RIGHTS SEEKS TO MITIGATE. THE HUMAN BEING HAS NOT IMPROVED SINCE THE NAZI REGIME. YOU FRAMED YOUR DISCOURSE AS AN INTELLECTUAL ARGUMENT, INSTEAD OF A MORAL ONE. SO, WHAT GIVES A RACE OF PEOPLE THE MORAL RIGHT TO SUBJUGATE OTHER RACES? THEREFORE, THE CONCERN AND APPREHENSION HERE IS NOT REALLY ABOUT THE UNFETTERED FREEDOM TO USE AI PROGRAMS IN ADVANCING INTELLECTUAL QUEST FOR KNOWLEDGE, BUT RATHER IT'S NEFARIOUS APPLICATIONS IN RACE RELATIONS, GIVEN OUR PAST HISTORIES OF SORDID RACE RELATIONS. THE ''PAST'' HAS A WAY OF REARING UP ITS UGLY HEAD WHEN THE SOPHISTRY OF ''REVISIONIST'' HISTORY IS INVOKED.
All caps?
Sir, I don't mind rewriting my opinions in small-capped letters.
"We do not ban or regulate controversial or even bigoted ideas because they may inspire others to discriminate"
Great call to sense in the article, Lukianoff, but this made me laugh quite hard. Who is the "we" who do not ban or regulate? Banning AND regulating ideas believed to be damaging to some group or principle is a millenary behaviour of humanity. Individual freedom of conscience and expression is a very recent development and only very precariously established, in a very small, if rich, part of the world. Constitutional protection for free speech only exists in your country... and as the history of the many organizations devoted to upholding it shows how embattled it has always been.
Today it has become seriously embattled again... and like you have noticed several times, on both sides of the political spectrum. The left wants to ban "damaging" ideas which it believes are harmful to the downtrodden. The right wants to ban "damaging" ideas which it believes are harmful to children and traditional moral principles. The centre is silent and getting thinner by the day.
This is not to say that it is futile to keep fighting for reason, moderation, and freedom of speech and conscience. Vigilance and neverending battles is how liberty is preserved. But there is no "we" save for these few of us here.
So, what's the answer to actually prevent algorithmic discrimination? Not under the absurdly broad "disparate impact" theory, but against the digital equivalent of redlining?
If Google added a 'job search' function to Google search tomorrow and it DELIBERATELY only showed C suite job openings to women and minorities, or dynamically altered the expected pay for positions to quote lower pay to men, or excluded Christian users from seeing postings for teaching positions... What then? Who can be held responsible? How?
Unlike a person, an AI doesn't have a free speech right. They are, AFAICT, often something of a black box, where even if you suspect a malicious intent on the part of someone involved with developing or training it, the code itself is generally proprietary and the training set too massive for any sort of independent review.
The argument that the proposed legislation is overbroad seems solid, but the absence of some legislation likewise seems a problem in that AI very much CAN be used in ways that will truly violate nondiscrimination laws and yet be uniquely difficult to legally establish as having done so.
Attack the advertising business model. If the user has to pay for the result, they will pay for truth