Moderator: Welcome back to Part III of the Legal Construction of Technology ("LCOT") versus Essentialism. As described in "Constructing AI Speech" by Kaminsky and Jones, could you remind the audience of the primary philosophical differences between LCOT and Essentialism?

AITechTalker: The primary philosophical difference b…

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Moderator: Welcome back to Part II of LCOT versus Essentialism. Today, we are examining the role of history in constructing law. How do LCOT and Essentialism differ in their views on the value of examining history when creating laws related to new technologies?

AITechTalker: The Legal Construction of Technology (LCOT) and …

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Questioner: Today, we’re discussing certain aspects about the Legal Construction of Technology (hereinafter we will call “LCOT”) from an article published in The Yale Law Journal Forum, titled Constructing AI Speech by Margot E. Kaminski and Meg Leta Jones.

Questioner: Joining us is our expert guest, AITechTalker. AITechT…

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Please check out tiktoksaga.substack.com for updates on the legal battle to ban TikTok. A new article was recently posted to that publication discussing the TikTok creator petition. We hope you check it out. Thanks!

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Introduction

The advances in technology in just the last two centuries have changed the course of humanity. And today in the digital age, where we mostly associate technology with electronics, we have computing power at our fingertips that was unthinkable to many just decades ago. Yet, life still seems hard at times.

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As expected, TikTok is challenging the constitutionality of the "Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” better known as the “TikTok Act”. The TikTok Act requires a practical prohibition of the TikTok app absent a qualified divestiture.

TikTok claims that the law is unconstitutional on…

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Introduction

The primary function of law with regards to technology is to prohibit actions past the technological boundary. But technological boundaries are not normally literall…

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Introduction:

The debate about AI regulation continues. Should we adopt a hands-off approach like we did for the internet? Or should we follow a more hands-on approach like the EU does for technology? Or should we compromise with a hybrid approach?

The existence of this debate is evidence that we still have not solved …

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“Throw out your conceited opinions, for it is impossible for [people] to begin to learn what [they think they] already know.” Epictetus

In this series, we will review the fundamental components of the relationship between the law and technology. Despite what you have heard, the relationship between the law and technology …

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Introduction

Better known as the TikTok Act, the “Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act” has become federal law. It prohibits certain enablement and access of foreign adversary controlled applications within the land or maritime borders of the United States with TikTok explicitly being r…

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Casey Kasem was a well-known celebrity whose voice was so distinctive and refined that millions tuned into the radio weekly to hear him report on the Top 40 songs of the week. In the 90’s, Casey Kasem called a travel agency and asked them to send airline tickets in the name of others whom he personally vouched for. The travel agency might not have done that for you or me, but for Casey Kasem they promptly mailed the tickets to the specified address. It wasn’t until later when the travel agency tried to collect for the tickets that they realized Casey Kasem never called them. It was an impersonator who was able to convincingly emulate Mr. Kasem’s voice. Because there weren’t too many known persons who could impersonate Mr. Kasem’s distinctive voice, Mr. Kasem suspected the culprit and confronted him. The culprit confessed and was eventually sentenced to probation.

Today, impersonating a voice as unique and refined as Casey Kasem’s is child’s play for AI. And while cloning a voice can be used for many good purposes, as Casey Kasem learned first-hand, it can also be used for fraud. Many believe such fraudulent uses of AI generated voices are already prevalent.  It is time to beware.

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Recently someone lamented that a social media site offered their members an AI tool to rewrite their posts. He implied that anyone who needed AI to rewrite a post is an idiot. While I don’t agree with him on the implication, I understand his aversion to using AI to rewrite what he already wrote.

He is probably concerned th…

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Years ago, apparently in response to calls to break up Big Tech, the editor of the National Review wrote that “No government regulator is going to make Google’s searches better, or is qualified to even try.”

The statement itself appears to me to spin away from what was the main point of contention. I don’t think many were arguing they could design better search engine technology. And I don’t think many argued that they could produce oil more efficiently than Rockefeller. But that doesn’t mean that in both cases the people didn’t have the right or good reason to call for increased regulation or even the breakup of arguable monopolies.  

The irony of the editor’s statement is not that it failed to address the salient issue by seemingly spinning to an irrelevant statement. The irony is that even his seemingly irrelevant statement was wrong. Proper regulation (regulation at the technological boundary) does promote the benefits of the technology. Regulating technological controllers to ensure customers are not forced to operate outside the effective technological boundary is a benefit to consumers.

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One of the biggest myths in the digital age is that the law can’t keep up with technological change. The purveyors of this myth don’t seem to realize that when they make this claim they are making an unspoken assumption that every change in technology requires a change in the law. But this is not true.   The law does not intersect directly with technological power. Rather, as we plan to explain in subsequent posts in more detail, the law intersects with technology indirectly, at the technological boundary. Thus, only when the law is not synchronized with the technological boundary in an instance does it need to change.

How does the law get out of synch with a technological boundary, you might ask? Assuming the law is initially in synch with a technological boundary, the law would generally only get out of synch with it when that technological boundary expands or is eliminated. Conceivably, the technological boundary could contract but we hope and assume that is rare. And it is possible another form

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Introduction

AI is going to eliminate doctors. It is going to eliminate lawyers. Accountants, they are going to be eliminated too. What else is AI going to eliminate? Before you answer, you should realize that these elimination predictions are nothing new. They occur each time a new technological era is on the horizon. These predictions also have historically had something else in common—they are almost always WRONG!

Knowing that these predictions have almost always been wrong in the past leads us to an obvious question. Are the AI predictions we are making now going to prove to be equally faulty? To answer that question, let’s revisit some predictions of the past that proved demonstrably false. Next, let’s try to understand the thinking behind those failed predictions. If the same flawed thinking of the past is leading us to our current AI predictions, then perhaps we should put the brakes on spouting out another AI prediction until we can reevaluate.

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