I HAVEN'T HAD THE TIME to look much at what Pope Leo has to say about "artificial intelligence" but thinking about the little I've heard has brought to my mind something that I haven't heard anyone address, yet. He does seem to have at least some of the problem with it that I also have, which is yet another good sign.
Talking about the product of "AI" in the context of journalism forces me to talk about the stunning amount of "AI" that presents not only fiction but lies as a highly dangerous, convincing simulacrum of fact or even truth. A HIGHLY CONVINCING PRESENTATION OF TOTAL FICTION INCLUDING SOME OF THE MOST HATEFUL CONTENT IMAGINABLE, AND PERHAPS UNTIL NOW UNIMAGINABLE. That was, of course, not something that waited for AI or the internet or even electronic media but it is possible to generate lies so fast and so fecundly lies that can be sold with the same kind of software that Google and other media use to sell. That was something done with direct mail before the internet became a thing - but it expanded enormously with the spread of low-cost computer and computing but it is something that has expanded enormously feeding off of the enormous amounts of data that People give up stupidly and willingly or that which is mined without any of them knowing their activity is being monitored and complied.
It is insane to think that the assumptions of the framers of the First Amendment and even those who developed other theories of "free speech" and "free press" in the ink on paper and through snail-mail technology can possibly match the new reality that the media of today presents for democracy, self-government, and the possibility of a decent society. It won't surprise that anyone I doubt the legal systems of old democracies or the most allegedly up-to-date law will be able to cope with it, the self-interested complicity and compliance of lawyers, law-makers, judges and "justices" are already destroying the possibility of egalitarian democracy.
The question I have yet to hear anyone ask or address is where the "right of free speech" or "press" in AI generated content is born or resides. The idea that anyone but a living being can have rights is not only absurd but it is dangerous. The criminally insane 19th century Supreme Court invented "corporate person-hood" has literally deprived real human beings of their rights, their property AND THEIR LIVES over and over again, it has been a Court erected juggernaut attacking equality and democracy. Are they going to invent such "rights" for computers? For software programs? For the inhuman production of their simulation of "speech" which appears to be being published online without so much as a human reviewing or editing or even directly publishing the content on Youtube or Google or other venues that will, also, not monitor or control their content?
I have every convidence in the stupidity of the law, the courts, the Supreme Court, the "civil liberties" industry which has a long record of cynical service to even some of the most homicidal and destructive of industries, peddling gun violence, peddling alcohol, tobacco, addictive prescription drugs, and even industries that endanger the health and minds and lives of those who are employed by them. I have every confidence that the ACLU would oppose any questioning of the idea that "AI" cannot have any of the various "rights" listed in the First Amendment.
But it's well past time someone brings up the absurdity, the superstition, the self-serving nonsense that the product of "AI" can be said to possess 'rights".
P.S. I recently listened to several novels "read" by "AI" including some phrases in French among the English text. I suppose the more than absurdly laughable "French" ("S il vou plat and other worse than an English speaker trying to phonentically render French text) and repeatedly mis-reading words spelled the same way but pronounced differently ("read" is only one of those). I'm afraid that human-read audio books are going to be a thing of the past, throwing large numbers of human voice-actors out of work. Like MP3 and online streaming destroying the recording industry and doing huge damage to the music profession, this is going to really have a bad impact on human culture.
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