The constitution does not have to be rewritten for every new communications technology. supreme court It has been confirmed This established principle during his last term in applying the First Amendment to social media. The late Justice Antonin Scalia put it cogently in 2011, Pointing “Whatever the challenges of applying the Constitution to ever-evolving technology, the basic principles of freedom of expression and the press…are no different.”
These principles should be at the forefront of the minds of Republicans in Congress and David Sachs, Trump’s recently chosen AI czar, as they craft policies on this emerging technology. The First Amendment standards that apply to legacy communications technologies should also apply to artificial intelligence, especially as it plays an increasingly important role in human expression and learning.
But revolutionary technological change breeds uncertainty and fear. Where uncertainty and fear prevail, unconstitutional regulation inevitably follows. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, lawmakers in at least 45 states have done so foot Bills to regulate artificial intelligence This year, 31 states have adopted laws or resolutions on the technology. Congress is also considering artificial intelligence legislation.
Many of these proposals respond to concerns that artificial intelligence will increase the spread of misinformation. Although the concern is understandable, misinformation is not subject to any categorical exemption from First Amendment protection. And for good reason: as Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson Notice In 1945, “the Framers had no confidence in any government capable of separating right from wrong for us,” and thus “every person must be his own guardian of the truth.”
However, California was enacted law In September it targeted “deceptive” and digitally edited content about political candidates. The law was prompted in part by an AI-edited video mocking Vice President Kamala Harris’ candidacy that went viral earlier in the summer.
Two weeks after the law entered into force, the judge banned it. writing And that “the principles that protect people’s right to criticize the government… apply even in the new technological age” and that penalties for such criticism “have no place in our system of government.”
Ultimately, we don’t need new laws to regulate most uses of AI; Current laws will do just fine. The laws of defamation, fraud, false light, and forgery already address the possibility that a deceptive expression could result in actual harm. It applies regardless of whether the deception is made possible by radio broadcasting or artificial intelligence technology. The Constitution should protect new communications technology not just so we can share AI-enhanced political memes. We should also be able to freely harness artificial intelligence in the pursuit of another fundamental concern of the First Amendment: the production of knowledge.
When we think about guarantees of freedom of expression, we often think about the right to expression. But the First Amendment goes further than that. Like the Supreme Court It was held in 1969“The Constitution protects the right to receive information and ideas.”
Information is the basis of progress. The more we have, the more we are able to propose and test hypotheses and produce knowledge.
The Internet, like the printing press, was an innovation that accelerated knowledge. But Congress nearly blocked the development of the Internet in the 1990s over concerns that it would enable minors to access “inappropriate” content. Fortunately, the Supreme Court I stood in her way By repealing much of the Communications Decency Act.
In fact, the Supreme Court’s application of the First Amendment to that new technology was so complete that it left Electronic Frontier Foundation attorney Mike Goodwin out He wonders “Whether I should retire from civil liberties work, since my job is mostly done.” Goodwin will continue to serve as general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, the nonprofit behind Wikipedia — which, he wrote, “could not exist without the work done by cyberliberals in the 1990s to ensure freedom of expression and broader access to the Internet.” “.
Today, humanity is developing technology that has greater knowledge generation potential than the Internet. Knowledge production is no longer limited by the number of people available to propose and test hypotheses. We can now enlist machines to enhance our efforts.
We’re already starting to see the results: a researcher at MIT recently I mentioned Artificial intelligence enabled the laboratory that studies new materials to discover 44% more compounds. Dario Amodei, CEO of artificial intelligence company Anthropic, He predicts “AI-enabled biology and medicine will allow us to compress into five to ten years the progress that human biologists would have made over the next 50 to 100 years.”
This promise cannot be fulfilled unless America continues to view the tools of knowledge production as legally inseparable from knowledge itself. Yes, the printing press has led to a wave of “misinformation.” But it also enabled the Enlightenment.
The First Amendment is America’s great facilitator: because of it, the government can no more regulate the printed press than words printed on a page. We must expand this standard to include artificial intelligence, the arena in which the next great battle for freedom of expression will be fought.
Nico Perino is Executive Vice President of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression and host of So To Speak: The Free Expression Podcast.