Doesn't your description of hysteria track 100% with what is happening in Britain and Germany right now? I'm not so worried about the US since we seem to have turned a corner with new leadership and we have a strong Free Speech tradition enshrined in our Bill of Rights, but Europe seems to be rapidly descending into a new Dark Age!
What made you think I was denying Biden authoritarianism? Right now, Big Brother is cleaning out the Pride flags and BLM stickers and replacing them with American flags and MAGA caps.
There is a terrific book that takes up many of the sociological issues attendant on the growth of printing and literacy in early modern Europe. It's called 'St. Augustine's Bones,' by Harold Stone.
Henry VIII probably ate lamb legs rather than turkey legs. IF any turkeys had been sent to Europe by then they would have been very few and also turkeys were much smaller in those days.
A county in PA waits until it has a majority at a meeting because of non allied member absences. Calls an impromptu executive session and votes to fire an administrator because they conceivably want to censor what books are in their library.
It’s so often and so many instances that can be so disheartening
To continue with these reflections because, as a human being, they stirred in me more associations and more ideas. Our human nature is based in large part on our desires, intuitions, longings, abilities to recognize our mistakes, our awareness of our own mortality and limits, and our sadness that we cannot seem to make things work out in the ways we imagine, no matter how hard we try. All of these qualities are distinctly absent in AI and chatbots and algorithms. Our human desires and needs to learn from each other and from what we say and reflect together are shot through with our subjectivity. Whether our expressions are written on rocks, in books, on computers or etched into our tattoos, they are infused with these qualities of human subjectivity. AI and algorithms imitate human subjectivity, but they can never possess it because they are not driven by emotions, as we are from birth and even prior to birth, we we communicate with others to get our needs met without language or culture. And yet, although we recognize other subjectivities through our emotions, we are easily fooled by imitations and fictions about our experiences. As Harari points out, Homo Sapiens cannot easily discern the difference between “truth” and “fiction” because we rely on many fictions — such as money, state, identity, and mathematics — to establish what we take to be “true.” We are a tangle of different kinds of experiences that we sort out in part through communications with each other and in part through how things seem and feel to us as individuals. Despite the movie “Her” where the operating system becomes conscious of herself and decides to leave the human sphere for a better one, AI and operating systems do not have self-conscious emotions and they will never make the distinction between an “I” that observes and the “me” it comments on. So…free speech for humans helps us sort out our subjectivity, the truth about our environment and our self-awareness. Free speech for bots and AI means something entirely different from the printing press; it means that humans will have to develop a new kind of discernment about fiction and imitation. Are you my sister or are you imitating my sister? If I were with a person imitating my sister, I could sense and smell and touch and push on her to find out. How do I find out if the picture and speech and narrative are conveyed only online and social media?
Bravo. An excellent rousing speech about the disruptive virtues of free speech. The category of “speech” needs some refinement in our era, however, because bots and other algorithms that imitate human speech are not human speech. This problem goes back to the Turing Test. Can we tell what is human speech and what is not? Also, I recall in my own life time the fact that the pronoun “she” was never applied to the category of medical doctor because the medical doctor was freely called “he.” That later problem was a human problem and eventually could be debated and challenged by a lot of “she’s” although the use of that pronoun was recently attacked again. So…there are concerns with notion of “speech” and “freedom” as AI and chatbot enter the scene. Because I am a developmental psychologist and a psychoanalyst, I know that human speech is vulnerable to “runaway associations” in that humans picture and say a lot of things to themselves based on momentary associations. Then we have to sort through those associations, if we can, to discern what is true or free to say. Human speech, to be free or true, requires reflection and sorting out. AI and bots are not doing that. And so, there’s a whole new issue with AI and our abilities to discern what kind of speech we are affected by. I can’t say I have any kind of “answer” to the problems that AI is introducing, but I do know this: human speech is subjective and is based on our perceptions, emotions and associations. AI and the like are based on algorithms. These algorithms can imitate human speech but they cannot discern and feel and intuit in the ways we humans can. So…is AI speech “free” or is it something else? There are many issues with AI that go far beyond the printing press and/or the reproductions of human communications and art. These have to do with imitation and fooling humans. I am grateful to FIRE for its protections of free speech for humans. I am concerned about free speech for AI and bots.
I’ve always respected the work of FIRE, even when I, as director of religious life at a major university (Vanderbilt, 2012-2018), was caught in the crossfire between the administration I represented and the student organizations who were disenfranchised because of perceived principles of non-inclusion in their bylaws and behaviors. As a center-left Protestant minister who had been impacted, for good and for ill, by the Christian fundamentalism of my youth, I was always open to the free exercise of religious belief, especially when misinformed by questionable theology, as the only way to advance the educational goals of a free thinking society that any credible university should inspire (and not dampen). My only concern at this moment in history is about how, in practical ways, we have allowed major social media platforms to “flood the zone” with disinformation in the name of free speech protections. While all human beings should be allowed to say what they want from any digital megaphone at hand, should that same right be given to bots? Does the First Amendment extend to AI generated speech that’s facilitated entirely by non-human agents? If not, who needs to be held accountable and how should it be done?
Alternative possibility -- institutions are weakening their protections for speech and free inquiry **because** they are now in the public eye. The declining acceptance of ideological diversity in the academy seems to have mostly been imported from social media and amplified by the sense that the public is listening creating the suspicion that you might be advocating an idea because you support the side of the argument it will help.
If you accept that free speech is (like the heading suggests) relatively unpopular at all times and places then it has to be institutions which protect it against elimination. But if the idea is often publicly impossible why would greater public oversight/influence over/etc not further endanger the principle?
Bravo, these are great points (hadn't been thinking of Henry VIII lately) and well said!! And they continuously need saying.
Doesn't your description of hysteria track 100% with what is happening in Britain and Germany right now? I'm not so worried about the US since we seem to have turned a corner with new leadership and we have a strong Free Speech tradition enshrined in our Bill of Rights, but Europe seems to be rapidly descending into a new Dark Age!
Wait for it. The right, and especially Donald Trump, aren't as enamoured of free speech as they're pretending at the moment.
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/donald-trump-is-no-warrior-for-free-speech-executive-order
please. “Biden staffers dealing with Facebook apparently did not violate any Americans’ constitutional rights,”
If you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn!
What made you think I was denying Biden authoritarianism? Right now, Big Brother is cleaning out the Pride flags and BLM stickers and replacing them with American flags and MAGA caps.
There is a terrific book that takes up many of the sociological issues attendant on the growth of printing and literacy in early modern Europe. It's called 'St. Augustine's Bones,' by Harold Stone.
https://www.amazon.com/St-Augustines-Bones-Microhistory-Paperback/dp/1558493883/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?
Henry VIII probably ate lamb legs rather than turkey legs. IF any turkeys had been sent to Europe by then they would have been very few and also turkeys were much smaller in those days.
You’re right! Good point!
Congratulations Greg. You gave a very inspirational speech. I am going to give a link to it to my students.
Thanks,
randy
A county in PA waits until it has a majority at a meeting because of non allied member absences. Calls an impromptu executive session and votes to fire an administrator because they conceivably want to censor what books are in their library.
It’s so often and so many instances that can be so disheartening
https://www.wvia.org/news/local/2025-01-28/library-administrator-laid-off-residents-fight-over-lgbtq-books-in-susquehanna-county
To continue with these reflections because, as a human being, they stirred in me more associations and more ideas. Our human nature is based in large part on our desires, intuitions, longings, abilities to recognize our mistakes, our awareness of our own mortality and limits, and our sadness that we cannot seem to make things work out in the ways we imagine, no matter how hard we try. All of these qualities are distinctly absent in AI and chatbots and algorithms. Our human desires and needs to learn from each other and from what we say and reflect together are shot through with our subjectivity. Whether our expressions are written on rocks, in books, on computers or etched into our tattoos, they are infused with these qualities of human subjectivity. AI and algorithms imitate human subjectivity, but they can never possess it because they are not driven by emotions, as we are from birth and even prior to birth, we we communicate with others to get our needs met without language or culture. And yet, although we recognize other subjectivities through our emotions, we are easily fooled by imitations and fictions about our experiences. As Harari points out, Homo Sapiens cannot easily discern the difference between “truth” and “fiction” because we rely on many fictions — such as money, state, identity, and mathematics — to establish what we take to be “true.” We are a tangle of different kinds of experiences that we sort out in part through communications with each other and in part through how things seem and feel to us as individuals. Despite the movie “Her” where the operating system becomes conscious of herself and decides to leave the human sphere for a better one, AI and operating systems do not have self-conscious emotions and they will never make the distinction between an “I” that observes and the “me” it comments on. So…free speech for humans helps us sort out our subjectivity, the truth about our environment and our self-awareness. Free speech for bots and AI means something entirely different from the printing press; it means that humans will have to develop a new kind of discernment about fiction and imitation. Are you my sister or are you imitating my sister? If I were with a person imitating my sister, I could sense and smell and touch and push on her to find out. How do I find out if the picture and speech and narrative are conveyed only online and social media?
Bravo. An excellent rousing speech about the disruptive virtues of free speech. The category of “speech” needs some refinement in our era, however, because bots and other algorithms that imitate human speech are not human speech. This problem goes back to the Turing Test. Can we tell what is human speech and what is not? Also, I recall in my own life time the fact that the pronoun “she” was never applied to the category of medical doctor because the medical doctor was freely called “he.” That later problem was a human problem and eventually could be debated and challenged by a lot of “she’s” although the use of that pronoun was recently attacked again. So…there are concerns with notion of “speech” and “freedom” as AI and chatbot enter the scene. Because I am a developmental psychologist and a psychoanalyst, I know that human speech is vulnerable to “runaway associations” in that humans picture and say a lot of things to themselves based on momentary associations. Then we have to sort through those associations, if we can, to discern what is true or free to say. Human speech, to be free or true, requires reflection and sorting out. AI and bots are not doing that. And so, there’s a whole new issue with AI and our abilities to discern what kind of speech we are affected by. I can’t say I have any kind of “answer” to the problems that AI is introducing, but I do know this: human speech is subjective and is based on our perceptions, emotions and associations. AI and the like are based on algorithms. These algorithms can imitate human speech but they cannot discern and feel and intuit in the ways we humans can. So…is AI speech “free” or is it something else? There are many issues with AI that go far beyond the printing press and/or the reproductions of human communications and art. These have to do with imitation and fooling humans. I am grateful to FIRE for its protections of free speech for humans. I am concerned about free speech for AI and bots.
I’ve always respected the work of FIRE, even when I, as director of religious life at a major university (Vanderbilt, 2012-2018), was caught in the crossfire between the administration I represented and the student organizations who were disenfranchised because of perceived principles of non-inclusion in their bylaws and behaviors. As a center-left Protestant minister who had been impacted, for good and for ill, by the Christian fundamentalism of my youth, I was always open to the free exercise of religious belief, especially when misinformed by questionable theology, as the only way to advance the educational goals of a free thinking society that any credible university should inspire (and not dampen). My only concern at this moment in history is about how, in practical ways, we have allowed major social media platforms to “flood the zone” with disinformation in the name of free speech protections. While all human beings should be allowed to say what they want from any digital megaphone at hand, should that same right be given to bots? Does the First Amendment extend to AI generated speech that’s facilitated entirely by non-human agents? If not, who needs to be held accountable and how should it be done?
Alternative possibility -- institutions are weakening their protections for speech and free inquiry **because** they are now in the public eye. The declining acceptance of ideological diversity in the academy seems to have mostly been imported from social media and amplified by the sense that the public is listening creating the suspicion that you might be advocating an idea because you support the side of the argument it will help.
If you accept that free speech is (like the heading suggests) relatively unpopular at all times and places then it has to be institutions which protect it against elimination. But if the idea is often publicly impossible why would greater public oversight/influence over/etc not further endanger the principle?