1 00:00:43,285 --> 00:00:47,693 All right, this is Steve with Macro N Cheese. Today's guest is 2 00:00:47,749 --> 00:00:52,021 James Boyle. James Boyle is the William Neil Reynolds Professor 3 00:00:52,053 --> 00:00:56,453 of Law at Duke Law School, founder of the Center for the Study 4 00:00:56,549 --> 00:01:00,633 of the Public Domain, and former chair of Creative Commons. 5 00:01:00,809 --> 00:01:06,145 He is the author of the Public Domain and Shaman Software and Spleens, 6 00:01:06,305 --> 00:01:11,025 the co author of two comic books, and the winner of the Electronic 7 00:01:11,065 --> 00:01:15,625 Frontier Foundation's Pioneer Award for his work on digital civil 8 00:01:15,665 --> 00:01:19,217 liberties. I'm really excited about this, quite frankly, because 9 00:01:19,321 --> 00:01:21,665 we've been talking about AI [artificial intelligence] a lot lately. 10 00:01:21,785 --> 00:01:25,787 We've taken it from different angles, but today is kind of a snapshot 11 00:01:25,921 --> 00:01:30,435 of personhood and the future of AI and are we going to be willing 12 00:01:30,775 --> 00:01:35,511 to grant personhood and grant rights to artificial intelligence? 13 00:01:35,703 --> 00:01:39,479 This is a subject that fascinates me. I am not the expert, 14 00:01:39,527 --> 00:01:43,543 but I do believe we have one of them on the show here. James, 15 00:01:43,639 --> 00:01:45,751 welcome so much to Macro N Cheese. 16 00:01:45,903 --> 00:01:47,239 Thanks so much, Steve. 17 00:01:47,407 --> 00:01:51,303 Tell us about your new book. Give us kind of the introduction, 18 00:01:51,359 --> 00:01:53,479 if you will, giv us the Cliff Notes. 19 00:01:53,647 --> 00:01:58,355 Well, the book is called The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood. 20 00:01:58,655 --> 00:02:05,399 And it's a book about how encounters with increasingly plausibly 21 00:02:05,527 --> 00:02:09,935 intelligent artificial entities will change our perceptions 22 00:02:10,015 --> 00:02:14,095 of personhood, will change our perceptions of those entities, and 23 00:02:14,135 --> 00:02:18,623 will change our perceptions of ourselves. The book started with 24 00:02:18,679 --> 00:02:23,463 me, or rather the project started many years ago, back in 2010, 25 00:02:23,639 --> 00:02:28,031 with me writing a speculative article about what would happen if 26 00:02:28,063 --> 00:02:31,383 we had artificial intelligences that were plausibly 27 00:02:31,479 --> 00:02:36,223 claiming to have consciousness of a kind that would require us morally 28 00:02:36,279 --> 00:02:39,343 and perhaps even legally to give them some kind of personhood. 29 00:02:39,519 --> 00:02:42,447 And the next stage was thinking about the possibility that 30 00:02:42,471 --> 00:02:47,487 personhood would come to AI not because we had some moral kinship 31 00:02:47,551 --> 00:02:50,871 with them or because we saw that under the silicone carapace 32 00:02:50,943 --> 00:02:55,515 there was a moral sense that we had to recognize as being fully 33 00:02:55,555 --> 00:03:00,227 our equal, but rather that we would give personhood to AI in the 34 00:03:00,251 --> 00:03:03,307 same way that we do to corporations for reasons of convenience, 35 00:03:03,411 --> 00:03:07,771 for administrative expediency. And then the more difficult question 36 00:03:07,843 --> 00:03:10,411 is whether or not you have corporate personhood, which, after 37 00:03:10,443 --> 00:03:14,379 all, just means corporations can make deals. And including corporate 38 00:03:14,427 --> 00:03:18,427 entities, including unions, for that matter. What about constitutional 39 00:03:18,491 --> 00:03:22,243 protections, civil liberties protections, which in the US have 40 00:03:22,259 --> 00:03:25,411 been extended to corporations, even though they don't plausibly 41 00:03:25,443 --> 00:03:27,939 seem to be part of we the people for whom the Constitution 42 00:03:27,987 --> 00:03:32,555 was created. So started with the idea of empathy, moved to the 43 00:03:32,595 --> 00:03:36,467 idea of AI as the analogy to corporate personhood. And then the 44 00:03:36,491 --> 00:03:39,531 final thing, and maybe the most interesting one to me, is how 45 00:03:39,563 --> 00:03:43,219 encounters with AI would change our conceptions of ourselves. 46 00:03:43,387 --> 00:03:46,467 Human beings have always tried to set ourselves as different from 47 00:03:46,491 --> 00:03:49,811 non human animals as from the natural universe. That's the line 48 00:03:49,883 --> 00:03:54,707 that the title refers to. What will it do to us when we look at 49 00:03:54,731 --> 00:03:57,779 a chatbot or have a conversation with it and realize 50 00:03:57,947 --> 00:04:00,971 this is an entity which has no sense of understanding, that isn't 51 00:04:01,003 --> 00:04:04,459 in any way meaningfully comprehending the material, but yet 52 00:04:04,507 --> 00:04:08,731 it is producing this fluent and plausible language. Sentences 53 00:04:08,803 --> 00:04:12,027 no longer imply sentience. And since language is one of the reasons 54 00:04:12,051 --> 00:04:15,603 we set human beings up as bigger and better and superior to 55 00:04:15,619 --> 00:04:19,123 other things, what will that do to our sense of ourselves? And 56 00:04:19,139 --> 00:04:21,811 what would happen if instead of being a chatbot, it was actually 57 00:04:21,843 --> 00:04:24,603 an entity that more plausibly possessed consciousness? So that's 58 00:04:24,619 --> 00:04:25,655 what the book's about. 59 00:04:26,115 --> 00:04:28,747 Fascinating. You know, I remember, and it's funny because 60 00:04:28,771 --> 00:04:32,299 the first page of your book speaks of the guy from Google, Blake 61 00:04:32,347 --> 00:04:36,835 Lemoine, who kind of thought that his AI was sentient. And I believe 62 00:04:36,875 --> 00:04:40,571 he was fired immediately for saying this out into the public. 63 00:04:40,763 --> 00:04:41,841 Yes, indeed. 64 00:04:42,003 --> 00:04:44,797 Let's talk about that for a minute. Paint this picture out for 65 00:04:44,821 --> 00:04:47,941 the people that maybe haven't heard of this and tell us what it 66 00:04:47,973 --> 00:04:49,053 informs us. 67 00:04:49,229 --> 00:04:52,205 Well, Mr.Lemoine is remarkable, as I say in the book, 68 00:04:52,245 --> 00:04:55,397 he wrote a letter to the Washington Post in 2022 saying that 69 00:04:55,421 --> 00:04:58,261 the computer system he worked on, he thought it was sentient. And 70 00:04:58,333 --> 00:05:00,693 you know, the Washington Post is used to getting letters from lots 71 00:05:00,709 --> 00:05:03,973 of crackpots and people with tinfoil hats and people who think. 72 00:05:04,029 --> 00:05:07,117 And people who think there are politicians having sex rings in basement 73 00:05:07,141 --> 00:05:10,427 of pizzerias that have no basements. And so, you know, he could 74 00:05:10,451 --> 00:05:12,715 have been written off as one of those, but he wasn't this simple 75 00:05:12,755 --> 00:05:16,331 delusional person. This was a Google engineer who was actually 76 00:05:16,403 --> 00:05:20,935 trained to have conversations in quotes with Google's chatbot LaMDA 77 00:05:20,935 --> 00:05:22,739 (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) at the time to see 78 00:05:22,747 --> 00:05:26,027 if it could be gamed to produce harmful or offensive speech. 79 00:05:26,171 --> 00:05:29,851 And instead he started having these conversations with it that 80 00:05:29,923 --> 00:05:34,209 made him think, wrongly, as I say in the book, but made him think 81 00:05:34,387 --> 00:05:36,661 that this was actually something conscious. He would read 82 00:05:36,693 --> 00:05:40,893 it koans and then ask it to comment. And its comments seemed 83 00:05:41,029 --> 00:05:44,997 wistful and bittersweet, as if it was searching for enlightenment 84 00:05:45,061 --> 00:05:49,413 too. And so the thing that fascinated me, because I've been 85 00:05:49,429 --> 00:05:52,165 thinking about this issue for many years, way before that. Mr. 86 00:05:52,205 --> 00:05:56,197 Lemoine was wrong,buthe'sonlythe firstinwhatwillbe 87 00:05:56,221 --> 00:06:05,191 alongseriesofpeoplewhose encounterswithincreasinglyintelligentorincreasinglyconvincingAIswillmakethemthink,is this 88 00:06:05,223 --> 00:06:09,953 aperson?AmIactingrightly towardsit?Andsowhilehemayhave towards 89 00:06:09,953 --> 00:06:14,407 it? And so heclearlydid,chat botsarenot conscious. Ithinkthat 90 00:06:14,431 --> 00:06:17,764 he's chat bots are not conscious, I think that he's the 91 00:06:17,764 --> 00:06:23,555 harbinger oquiteprofoundlychangeourconceptionofourselvesaswellasoftheentitieswe'redealingwith. 92 00:06:24,135 --> 00:06:26,895 As I think about this, you know, I watched a show called the 93 00:06:26,935 --> 00:06:31,781 Expanse and I've watched a lot of these kind of futuristic space 94 00:06:31,853 --> 00:06:35,405 worlds, if you will, where they kind of, I guess, try to envision 95 00:06:35,485 --> 00:06:39,461 what it might look like in a future maybe far away, maybe not 96 00:06:39,493 --> 00:06:43,077 so far away. But one of the ones that jumps out is one that you've 97 00:06:43,141 --> 00:06:46,421 used in the past, and that is the Blade Runner, a sci fi movie. 98 00:06:46,453 --> 00:06:50,981 That was really a phenomenal movie. I loved it big time. How does 99 00:06:51,013 --> 00:06:54,693 this relate to that? How can we roll into Blade Runner? 100 00:06:54,829 --> 00:06:58,463 So Blade Runner, and th book it's based on Do Androids Dream of 101 00:06:58,479 --> 00:07:02,551 Electric Sheep by Philip Dick are two of the most remarkable artistic 102 00:07:02,583 --> 00:07:06,495 musings on the idea of empathy. I'm sure your listeners, 103 00:07:06,535 --> 00:07:09,095 at least some of them, will have seen the original Blade Runner. 104 00:07:09,215 --> 00:07:12,591 You may remember the Voigt Kampf test, which is this test to 105 00:07:12,623 --> 00:07:16,095 figure out whether or not the person being interviewed is really 106 00:07:16,175 --> 00:07:20,135 a human being or whether they're a replicant, these artificial, 107 00:07:20,255 --> 00:07:24,179 basically androids or artificially biologically created 108 00:07:24,267 --> 00:07:28,507 super beings or superhuman beings. And the test involves giving 109 00:07:28,571 --> 00:07:33,855 the suspect a series of hypos involving non human animals. Tortoises, 110 00:07:34,195 --> 00:07:39,115 butterflies, someone who gives the interviewee a calf skin wallet. 111 00:07:39,235 --> 00:07:42,507 What would you do in each of these cases? And the responses are, 112 00:07:42,611 --> 00:07:45,523 well, I'd send them to the police, or I'd call the psychiatrist, 113 00:07:45,579 --> 00:07:49,043 or I'd, you know, I've had my kid looked at to see if he was somehow 114 00:07:49,139 --> 00:07:52,619 deluded because he has insufficient empathy for these non 115 00:07:52,667 --> 00:07:56,635 human animals. And the irony which Dick sets up and which Blade 116 00:07:56,675 --> 00:08:01,059 Runner continues is of course that we're testing these non human 117 00:08:01,147 --> 00:08:05,643 entities, the replicants, by asking them how much they empathize 118 00:08:05,699 --> 00:08:10,291 with non human animals and then deciding that if they don't 119 00:08:10,323 --> 00:08:14,731 empathize as much as we humans think they should, then we need to 120 00:08:14,763 --> 00:08:18,091 have no empathy for them and can, in fact, kill them. And so this 121 00:08:18,123 --> 00:08:21,283 test, which is supposedly about empathy, is actually about 122 00:08:21,339 --> 00:08:25,059 our ability radically to constrict our moral circle, kick 123 00:08:25,107 --> 00:08:28,075 people outside of it and say, you're weird, you're different, you're 124 00:08:28,115 --> 00:08:31,827 other. And so we need feel no sympathy for you. And so the thing 125 00:08:31,851 --> 00:08:35,003 that, yeah, it's a test of empathy, but whose empathy? Seems 126 00:08:35,019 --> 00:08:37,659 like it's a test of our own empathy as human beings, and we're 127 00:08:37,707 --> 00:08:40,979 failing. At least that's the message I take from the movie. So 128 00:08:41,107 --> 00:08:46,947 what fascinated me in the book was that how easy it was in the movie 129 00:08:47,051 --> 00:08:51,327 to trigger different images that we have. Priming. You know, 130 00:08:51,351 --> 00:08:53,783 this is the sense of psychological priming where primes 131 00:08:53,799 --> 00:08:56,879 you to have one reaction. There'll be a moment where the replicant 132 00:08:56,927 --> 00:08:59,359 seems to be a beautiful woman. It's like, oh, my God, did I just, 133 00:08:59,407 --> 00:09:04,303 you know, voice a crush on a sex doll? Moments when it appears 134 00:09:04,319 --> 00:09:08,223 to be a frightened child, an animal sniffing at its lover. You 135 00:09:08,239 --> 00:09:11,903 know, like two animals reunited, a killing machine, a beautiful 136 00:09:11,959 --> 00:09:16,763 ballerina. And the images flash by, you know, in, like, just 137 00:09:16,779 --> 00:09:19,611 for a second. And immediately you can feel yourself having the 138 00:09:19,643 --> 00:09:23,203 reaction that that particular priming, the ballet dancer, the beautiful 139 00:09:23,259 --> 00:09:27,803 woman, the killer robot, produces. And you can feel your sort 140 00:09:27,819 --> 00:09:31,635 of moral assessment of the situation completely change depending 141 00:09:31,675 --> 00:09:34,427 on what image has been put in front of you. And I say that it's 142 00:09:34,451 --> 00:09:37,899 kind of the moral stroboscope. You know, it's designed to induce 143 00:09:37,947 --> 00:09:42,411 a kind of moral seizure in us to make us think, wait, wow, are 144 00:09:42,443 --> 00:09:47,601 my moral intuitions so malleable, so easily manipulated? 145 00:09:47,673 --> 00:09:50,593 And, you know, how do I actually come to sort of pull back 146 00:09:50,609 --> 00:09:53,729 from this situation and figure out what the right response is? And 147 00:09:53,817 --> 00:09:57,113 to be honest, I think that fiction has been one of our most 148 00:09:57,169 --> 00:10:00,289 productive ways of exploring that. And science fiction, obviously, 149 00:10:00,337 --> 00:10:01,165 in particular. 150 00:10:01,665 --> 00:10:05,001 You know, I have children, small children. And there's a new 151 00:10:05,033 --> 00:10:07,817 movie that's just come out called the Wild Robot. I don't know 152 00:10:07,841 --> 00:10:09,843 if you've had a chance to see this yet, 153 00:10:10,119 --> 00:10:10,719 I have not. 154 00:10:10,847 --> 00:10:15,815 but it's fantastic. So this robot is sent to Earth to gather 155 00:10:15,895 --> 00:10:21,535 data for some alien robot race, I guess, outside of our normal 156 00:10:21,655 --> 00:10:27,687 ecosystem. And this robot ends up developing empathy, develops empathy 157 00:10:27,751 --> 00:10:33,367 for all the wild animals. And the power brokers, if you will, on 158 00:10:33,391 --> 00:10:38,223 the spaceship want that robot back so that they can download all 159 00:10:38,239 --> 00:10:43,327 of its information, reprogram it for its next assignment. Well, 160 00:10:43,351 --> 00:10:47,463 this robot says, no, I want to live. I like my life here. I like 161 00:10:47,519 --> 00:10:51,239 these animals. I don't want them to die. I don't want bad things 162 00:10:51,287 --> 00:10:56,199 to happen. And the mothership comes back and puts some tractor 163 00:10:56,247 --> 00:10:59,767 beam on this robot. It's a cartoon, it's an animated show. But 164 00:10:59,791 --> 00:11:02,951 it's really deep thinking, you know, there's a lot going on here. 165 00:11:02,983 --> 00:11:07,587 It's very, very sad on so many cases because you watch various things 166 00:11:07,691 --> 00:11:11,203 dying, which is not really the norm for kids shows, you know what 167 00:11:11,219 --> 00:11:16,091 I mean? They're showing you the full kind of life cycle. And 168 00:11:16,163 --> 00:11:21,219 as the machine gets sent back up, somehow or another they didn't 169 00:11:21,267 --> 00:11:24,347 wipe the memory banks completely. There was just enough 170 00:11:24,411 --> 00:11:28,683 in there that it remembered everything that it had learned while 171 00:11:28,739 --> 00:11:33,815 on Earth. Somehow or another reconstitutes its awakening. And 172 00:11:33,895 --> 00:11:37,383 some of the birds and other animals came up to the spaceship 173 00:11:37,439 --> 00:11:40,767 to free this robot and the robot falls out and they win, of 174 00:11:40,791 --> 00:11:44,271 course, and the robot becomes part and parcel with them and so 175 00:11:44,303 --> 00:11:48,967 forth. But it was very, very much a child version of teaching 176 00:11:49,031 --> 00:11:55,879 empathy for non human beings, if you will, in terms of AI, in terms 177 00:11:55,927 --> 00:12:00,087 of robots, in terms of kind of what you're talking about within 178 00:12:00,191 --> 00:12:04,615 the Blade Runner, for kids. I don't know if it's a good analogy, 179 00:12:04,695 --> 00:12:07,319 but it sure felt like one. I just saw it the other night and I 180 00:12:07,327 --> 00:12:09,799 was like, wow, this is going to play well into this convo. 181 00:12:09,967 --> 00:12:13,303 It sounds like exactly the themes from my book. I'll have to 182 00:12:13,319 --> 00:12:14,239 check it out. Thank you. 183 00:12:14,327 --> 00:12:17,639 My wife looked at me and she goes, oh my God, this is so depressing. 184 00:12:17,767 --> 00:12:20,807 And my kid was like crying because it was sad parts, but he 185 00:12:20,831 --> 00:12:24,527 loved it and he was glued to it the whole time. I think it does 186 00:12:24,591 --> 00:12:28,693 say something, you know, I remember watching Blade Runner and 187 00:12:28,749 --> 00:12:33,557 feeling that real kind of, I don't want her to die. You know, 188 00:12:33,581 --> 00:12:37,461 I don't. I. What do you mean? Right? And I did feel empathy. I 189 00:12:37,493 --> 00:12:41,397 did feel that kind of, I don't know how to define it, but I don't 190 00:12:41,421 --> 00:12:44,565 want it to die. You know what I mean? And I don't know what that 191 00:12:44,605 --> 00:12:48,269 says about me one way or the other, but, you know, it definitely 192 00:12:48,397 --> 00:12:53,101 resonated with me. How do you think that plays out? Today we talked 193 00:12:53,133 --> 00:12:57,189 a little offline and obviously we have Citizens United that has 194 00:12:57,237 --> 00:13:00,785 provided personhood to corporate interests, to corporations, 195 00:13:01,165 --> 00:13:07,109 providing personhood to robotics with AI based, you know, 196 00:13:07,277 --> 00:13:11,285 I hate to say sentience, but for the lack of better term, sentience. 197 00:13:11,445 --> 00:13:15,525 I mean, what about today? What should people be looking at that 198 00:13:15,565 --> 00:13:19,373 can help them start making some of this futuristic cosplay, 199 00:13:19,429 --> 00:13:22,941 if you will. How do you think you could help people tie together 200 00:13:23,013 --> 00:13:27,757 their experience today in preparing for some of these kind 201 00:13:27,781 --> 00:13:32,077 of thought exercises? Because this is a real existential type thought 202 00:13:32,141 --> 00:13:35,933 exercise. I don't know that you go into this, but I can tell 203 00:13:35,949 --> 00:13:41,365 you I come from a certain era where people were not afraid to dabble 204 00:13:41,405 --> 00:13:46,559 in mycelium and the fungi of the earth and had, you know, their 205 00:13:46,607 --> 00:13:50,935 own kind of existential liberation, if you will. And seeing 206 00:13:51,015 --> 00:13:55,671 that kind of alternative universe, I imagine there's a lot 207 00:13:55,703 --> 00:14:00,463 of cross pollination in terms of leaving one's current reality 208 00:14:00,519 --> 00:14:04,903 and considering a future sense of what life might be like in that 209 00:14:04,959 --> 00:14:05,555 space. 210 00:14:06,495 --> 00:14:09,383 One way for me that's interesting to think about it is 211 00:14:09,559 --> 00:14:13,023 I think people automatically, when they confront something new, 212 00:14:13,079 --> 00:14:16,685 they say, what does this mean for my tribe, for my group, for my 213 00:14:16,725 --> 00:14:20,333 political viewpoint, for the positions, for my ideology, for the 214 00:14:20,349 --> 00:14:24,237 positions I've taken on the world? And so if you take someone 215 00:14:24,301 --> 00:14:27,749 who's, you know, thinks of themselves as progressive, I'll use 216 00:14:27,797 --> 00:14:31,669 that vague term. On the one hand, you could think that that person 217 00:14:31,797 --> 00:14:36,717 would be leading the charge for if - it is an if, as I point 218 00:14:36,741 --> 00:14:39,325 out in the book, but it's a possibility and one that seems more 219 00:14:39,365 --> 00:14:43,999 likely if we get increasingly capable AI, not in the generative 220 00:14:44,047 --> 00:14:48,151 AI chatbot mode, but actually AI, which is closer and closer to 221 00:14:48,223 --> 00:14:52,007 the kinds of aspects of human thought that we think make us special. 222 00:14:52,151 --> 00:14:54,951 You would think that the progressive would be there leading 223 00:14:54,983 --> 00:14:59,359 the charge because this is the next stop in the civil rights movement. 224 00:14:59,447 --> 00:15:02,543 You know, these are my silicon brothers and sisters, right? You 225 00:15:02,559 --> 00:15:05,903 know, we are the group that has fought for previous. I mean, 226 00:15:05,919 --> 00:15:08,143 we've been very good at denying personhood to members of 227 00:15:08,159 --> 00:15:12,597 our own species. And the expansion of moral recognition is 228 00:15:12,661 --> 00:15:17,541 something that we, most people at least see as an unqualified positive. 229 00:15:17,693 --> 00:15:20,421 Isn't this just the next stop on that railroad? And I think that 230 00:15:20,453 --> 00:15:24,597 is depending on how the issue appears to us, that might well be 231 00:15:24,621 --> 00:15:28,285 the way that it plays out, that people would be presented with 232 00:15:28,325 --> 00:15:31,933 a story where, let's say they are interacting with an ever more 233 00:15:31,989 --> 00:15:36,589 capable AI sort of enabled robot that is, let's say, looking 234 00:15:36,637 --> 00:15:39,677 after their grandmother as their comfort unit, which I think 235 00:15:39,701 --> 00:15:42,201 is a very likely future, regardless of whether or not they're 236 00:15:42,233 --> 00:15:45,537 conscious. And then they start having conversations with it. They 237 00:15:45,561 --> 00:15:49,085 start thinking, whoa, am I acting rightly towards this being? 238 00:15:49,385 --> 00:15:52,881 You know, can I treat this as just the robotic help? Doesn't it 239 00:15:52,913 --> 00:15:56,449 seem to have some deeper moral sense? Or doesn't that pull on me 240 00:15:56,497 --> 00:16:00,681 to maybe recognize it, to be more egalitarian towards it. So that's 241 00:16:00,713 --> 00:16:04,081 one way I think things could play out. But then if instead of 242 00:16:04,113 --> 00:16:07,657 doing that, I started by mentioning Citizens United, as we 243 00:16:07,681 --> 00:16:11,095 did, and I talked about the history of corporate personhood. 244 00:16:11,135 --> 00:16:15,943 And I'll say often in sort of progressive, leftist, radical circles, 245 00:16:16,039 --> 00:16:18,183 people are kind of loosey goosey in the way that they talk 246 00:16:18,199 --> 00:16:21,551 about corporate personhood. I actually think that it's probably 247 00:16:21,623 --> 00:16:25,615 a very good idea for us to enable particular entities which 248 00:16:25,655 --> 00:16:28,511 take particular risks at particular moments, because not all 249 00:16:28,543 --> 00:16:31,775 plans that we have will pay off that come together in a corporate 250 00:16:31,815 --> 00:16:35,635 form, whether it's a union or a corporation, and try and achieve 251 00:16:35,675 --> 00:16:39,107 a particular goal. And the fact that we allow them to sue and 252 00:16:39,131 --> 00:16:43,235 be sued seems like actually a pretty efficient way of doing something. 253 00:16:43,275 --> 00:16:46,659 And something that enables some benign innovation, risk taking, 254 00:16:46,707 --> 00:16:49,363 that kind of stuff. The next question, of course is, and what 255 00:16:49,379 --> 00:16:53,971 about political rights? And that's the next stage. And what happened 256 00:16:54,003 --> 00:16:57,707 in the US was that you had the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments passed 257 00:16:57,731 --> 00:17:01,467 after the Civil War, some of the amendments I'm personally most 258 00:17:01,491 --> 00:17:05,083 fond of in the Constitution, and that offer equal protections 259 00:17:05,139 --> 00:17:09,011 to formerly enslaved African Americans. And what we saw instead 260 00:17:09,123 --> 00:17:12,819 was that the immediate beneficiaries of those equal protection 261 00:17:12,947 --> 00:17:15,915 guarantees, as I lay out in the corporate personhood chapter, 262 00:17:16,075 --> 00:17:20,555 were not formerly enslaved black Africans. They were corporations. 263 00:17:20,715 --> 00:17:23,747 Black people brought very few suits under the equal protection 264 00:17:23,811 --> 00:17:27,277 clause and they lost most of them. The majority were bought by 265 00:17:27,301 --> 00:17:31,157 corporate entities. So if I tell you that story, you're going, 266 00:17:31,221 --> 00:17:36,109 oh my God, they're doing it again. This is another Trojan horse 267 00:17:36,197 --> 00:17:41,621 snuck inside the walls of the legal system to give another immortal 268 00:17:41,813 --> 00:17:47,397 superhuman entity with no morals an ability to claim the legal 269 00:17:47,461 --> 00:17:51,629 protections that were hard fought by individuals for individuals. 270 00:17:51,677 --> 00:17:56,553 And that's absolutely anathema to me. And so if you think of yourself 271 00:17:56,729 --> 00:18:00,201 as having those two people inside you, the person who feels 272 00:18:00,233 --> 00:18:05,489 moral empathy, the person who is aware that in the past we collectively 273 00:18:05,577 --> 00:18:08,577 as a species have done terrible things where we foreclosed 274 00:18:08,601 --> 00:18:11,777 our empathy to groups and said, you don't matter, that that's 275 00:18:11,841 --> 00:18:15,601 among the most evil periods in our history, in our collective history, 276 00:18:15,753 --> 00:18:19,777 you could be, oh, wow, this is absolutely rights for robots. And 277 00:18:19,801 --> 00:18:23,097 if you started on the other track that I described there, the 278 00:18:23,121 --> 00:18:25,865 one that follows what happened with corporate personhood, you might 279 00:18:25,905 --> 00:18:29,841 see this as an enormous cynical campaign that was just here 280 00:18:29,873 --> 00:18:33,633 to screw us one more time with another super legal entity. What 281 00:18:33,649 --> 00:18:37,513 I'm trying to do is to get there before this fight begins. And 282 00:18:37,569 --> 00:18:41,449 everyone's got their toes dug in, in the sand going, this is my 283 00:18:41,497 --> 00:18:45,737 line, damn it. This is what my tribe believes, you know? I'm not 284 00:18:45,761 --> 00:18:48,681 going to even think about this seriously, because if I do, then 285 00:18:48,713 --> 00:18:52,065 it challenges my beliefs on all kinds of other things, from, 286 00:18:52,225 --> 00:18:55,657 you know, fetal personhood to corporate personhood to animal rights, 287 00:18:55,721 --> 00:18:59,361 what have you. And look, guys, we're not there yet. You know, these 288 00:18:59,393 --> 00:19:03,049 aren't, in fact, conscious entities yet. Maybe now's the time 289 00:19:03,137 --> 00:19:06,745 to have the conversation about this kind of stuff so that we could 290 00:19:06,785 --> 00:19:10,713 think about, for example, if we are going to have corporate forms 291 00:19:10,889 --> 00:19:13,369 specifically designed for these entities, what should they 292 00:19:13,417 --> 00:19:17,321 look like? If we're going to have a test that actually says, hey, 293 00:19:17,353 --> 00:19:20,337 you know what, you graduated, we actually have to admit that you've 294 00:19:20,361 --> 00:19:22,657 got enough human-like, qualities that morally we have to 295 00:19:22,681 --> 00:19:25,791 treat you, if not as a human, then as a person. Well, what would 296 00:19:25,823 --> 00:19:29,815 those tests be? And so I want to sort of preempt that, get ahead 297 00:19:29,855 --> 00:19:33,239 of the doomers who are saying they'll kill us and the optimists 298 00:19:33,287 --> 00:19:36,087 who think they'll bring us into utopia and say, let's have a 299 00:19:36,111 --> 00:19:39,943 serious moral discussion about what this might do to us as a species. 300 00:19:39,999 --> 00:19:43,687 And so that's what the book's trying to do. Whether or not it does 301 00:19:43,711 --> 00:19:46,555 it, that's up to your listeners to describe. 302 00:19:47,135 --> 00:19:51,193 Yeah. So this brings something very important to mind, okay? We 303 00:19:51,209 --> 00:19:55,793 are in a very, very odd time in US History right now. Some of 304 00:19:55,849 --> 00:20:02,753 the debates that are taking up the airwaves sometimes feel a little 305 00:20:02,889 --> 00:20:06,233 crazy that, like, why are we even talking about this? But one 306 00:20:06,249 --> 00:20:11,409 of the things that jumps out is the fear of immigrants. Okay. 307 00:20:11,457 --> 00:20:12,409 Othering people. 308 00:20:12,497 --> 00:20:12,865 Yes. 309 00:20:12,945 --> 00:20:17,871 And calling them illegals. And anytime I hear someone say illegals, 310 00:20:17,983 --> 00:20:22,239 no matter how colloquial it is, it makes me lose my mind. I can't 311 00:20:22,287 --> 00:20:25,951 stand it. No one's illegal. Everybody is a human being. But then 312 00:20:25,983 --> 00:20:28,223 you start thinking about. It's like, well, what are some of the 313 00:20:28,279 --> 00:20:32,167 conversations as to why people are afraid of immigrants? And you've 314 00:20:32,191 --> 00:20:36,919 got the cartoon flavor that is put on the television during political 315 00:20:37,007 --> 00:20:40,255 ads where everybody that's an immigrant is going to murder your 316 00:20:40,295 --> 00:20:43,759 wife when you're not looking and they're going to rape your daughters 317 00:20:43,807 --> 00:20:47,417 and, you know, all this horrible, let's just be honest, fascist 318 00:20:47,481 --> 00:20:51,665 scapegoating, right? But then you flash forward to the other factor 319 00:20:51,705 --> 00:20:55,225 there, and it's like, there's a cultural norm. The more people 320 00:20:55,305 --> 00:20:59,433 you allow into the country, or any country for that matter, that 321 00:20:59,449 --> 00:21:04,345 are different, that have a different quality of cultural perspective, 322 00:21:04,505 --> 00:21:10,345 the more the existing culture is challenged for hegemony, for challenge 323 00:21:10,385 --> 00:21:13,523 for the dominant culture, challenge for, you know, what do 324 00:21:13,539 --> 00:21:18,179 we value? And so forth. And rightly or wrongly, that is a real 325 00:21:18,227 --> 00:21:23,011 debate that is happening. No. happento comedownonthatmuchdifferent,moreopen 326 00:21:23,083 --> 00:21:28,483 more open borders, let's ofournation's currencyissuing powertomakeeveryonewhole. 327 00:21:28,579 --> 00:21:35,371 There'snoneed topiteachother against eachother.Butifyouflashforward,youthinkabouttheSupremeCourt,even 328 00:21:35,483 --> 00:21:41,307 whenDonaldTrump the Supreme Court even, when Donald Trump appointed 329 00:21:41,369 --> 00:21:47,665 rulings,thelawsofthisland, evenoutofpower,thelongarm ofhisappointments 330 00:21:47,785 --> 00:21:54,337 andsoforthreallyhadanimpact.AndwejustsawRoeoverturned.Well,itjust aseasily,and 331 00:21:54,361 --> 00:21:58,986 thisis inyour impact. And we just saw Roe overturned. Well, just 332 00:21:58,986 --> 00:22:03,167 as easily, and this is in your other wheelhouse, being focal on 333 00:22:03,217 --> 00:22:07,255 law, Biden could have reformed the court, he could have stacked 334 00:22:07,255 --> 00:22:14,347 the court. He IthinkaboutrobotsandAI,youknow, robotsdon'tjusthappenautonomously. 335 00:22:14,451 --> 00:22:20,459 Robotsarecreated.And asI thinkaboutthesedifferententities,I mean, 336 00:22:20,587 --> 00:22:25,067 maybe somedaytheyfindawaytoselfcreate,Idon'tknow,butmaybetheydonowand Ijustdon't 337 00:22:25,091 --> 00:22:32,243 knowitthrough some microbiologyormicrotechnicalstuff.But ultimatelytheyhavetobecreated.Sowhat'sto 338 00:22:32,299 --> 00:22:39,277 stop afactionfromcreatinga millionrobotswith sentientabilitiesand 339 00:22:39,341 --> 00:22:50,653 empathy andsoforththathavesomeformof centralprogramming?Shouldwegivethemvotingrights,shouldwegivethempersonrights,etcetera?Whatwouldpreventthemfrombeing 340 00:22:50,709 --> 00:22:59,109 stackedlike thescotus?Andagain,thisisallpieintheskybecauserightnowwe'rejust talkingtheoretical.Butfromthoseconversationsyou're 341 00:22:59,157 --> 00:23:02,737 advocatingfor, Ithinkthatthere'ssomethingtobe cetera? 342 00:23:02,737 --> 00:23:08,421 What would prevent them from being stacked like the SCOTUS? Sohowwould 343 00:23:08,453 --> 00:23:13,933 youaffectthebalanceofthat? Andyouknow,justoffthetopofyourhead,obviouslythisis not 344 00:23:13,989 --> 00:23:16,053 somethingthatI'vegivenalotofthought.Itjust came 345 00:23:16,069 --> 00:23:18,185 tomerightnow.Butyour thoughts? 346 00:23:19,085 --> 00:23:22,917 Well, I think that one of the issues you raise here is that we 347 00:23:22,941 --> 00:23:27,587 would have a fundamentally different status vis a vis robots, 348 00:23:27,731 --> 00:23:32,211 autonomous AI, what have you, than we have in other moral debates. 349 00:23:32,363 --> 00:23:36,347 We didn't create the non human animals. You know, we weren't the 350 00:23:36,371 --> 00:23:40,203 ones who made chimpanzees as they are, or the cetaceans and the 351 00:23:40,219 --> 00:23:44,379 great apes in general, the whales and so forth. Those non human 352 00:23:44,427 --> 00:23:48,771 animals that have really quite advanced mental capacities. But in 353 00:23:48,803 --> 00:23:53,807 this case, we will be, we are designing artificially created entities. 354 00:23:53,991 --> 00:23:58,015 And that brings up a lot of issues. What should be. What are 355 00:23:58,055 --> 00:24:01,935 going to be the limits in that? There's the let's make sure 356 00:24:01,975 --> 00:24:06,607 they don't destroy us. is one thing in AI circles. This is the 357 00:24:06,631 --> 00:24:11,215 idea of alignment, that we can ensure that the interests of the 358 00:24:11,255 --> 00:24:15,503 entity that we create align with our own, and that it is, in 359 00:24:15,519 --> 00:24:18,873 that sense obedient to us. But of course, there are other issues 360 00:24:18,929 --> 00:24:22,617 are raised here. Say there is a line that we come to decide. It's 361 00:24:22,641 --> 00:24:25,785 like, okay, this is the line. If you're above this line, then we 362 00:24:25,825 --> 00:24:28,889 really have to give you at least a limited form of personhood. 363 00:24:29,057 --> 00:24:31,889 We're perfectly capable of designing entities that fall just 364 00:24:31,937 --> 00:24:37,009 short of that line or that go over it. So what are the ethics there? 365 00:24:37,097 --> 00:24:40,993 Is it unethical for us to say, okay, well, we don't want sentient 366 00:24:41,049 --> 00:24:43,881 robots because we don't want to face the moral duties that might 367 00:24:43,913 --> 00:24:47,995 put on us? If you think of the Declaration of Independence, it says, 368 00:24:48,695 --> 00:24:53,455 all men are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable 369 00:24:53,535 --> 00:24:57,007 rights. They say unalienable, not inalienable. And of course, in 370 00:24:57,031 --> 00:25:00,751 this case, we will be their creator. And so does that mean we 371 00:25:00,783 --> 00:25:03,911 say, well, that's great because, you know, we created you, 372 00:25:03,943 --> 00:25:07,455 so we didn't give you any rights. Will we ever be able to recognize 373 00:25:07,495 --> 00:25:10,335 real moral autonomy in something that we're conscious we 374 00:25:10,375 --> 00:25:14,443 made a deliberate decision to create? So I think that those issues 375 00:25:14,579 --> 00:25:16,935 definitely are worth thinking about. 376 00:25:18,755 --> 00:25:23,171 You are listening to Macro N Cheese, a podcast by Real Progressives. 377 00:25:23,323 --> 00:25:28,523 We are a 501c3 nonprofit organization. All donations are tax 378 00:25:28,579 --> 00:25:32,755 deductible. Please consider becoming a monthly donor on Patreon, 379 00:25:32,915 --> 00:25:38,003 Substack or our website, realprogressives.org. Now back to 380 00:25:38,019 --> 00:25:38,975 the podcast. 381 00:25:41,635 --> 00:25:46,883 I think that our experiences right now show that both we can be 382 00:25:46,979 --> 00:25:51,851 terrified by others. That's as you described in the discussion of 383 00:25:51,923 --> 00:25:56,587 immigrants. We can also feel great empathy towards them. And I 384 00:25:56,611 --> 00:26:00,787 think that right now our attitude towards AI is a little of 385 00:26:00,851 --> 00:26:04,179 both. What's going to happen in the future is fundamentally uncertain 386 00:26:04,227 --> 00:26:07,073 because we have no idea how the technology is going to develop. 387 00:26:07,219 --> 00:26:10,629 For example, a lot of it is going to develop in places outside 388 00:26:10,717 --> 00:26:14,301 of the United States. Obviously it already is. And the 389 00:26:14,373 --> 00:26:18,317 ideas of the people who are creating artificial entities in another 390 00:26:18,381 --> 00:26:20,909 country may be entirely different than ours and their goals 391 00:26:20,957 --> 00:26:24,397 and morals. Even if we could agree, they might not agree with 392 00:26:24,421 --> 00:26:27,533 us. So I do think that there are definitely issues there And I 393 00:26:27,549 --> 00:26:31,949 think they're ones that are quite profound. For myself, just 394 00:26:31,997 --> 00:26:34,565 thinking about all of these things, for example, thinking about 395 00:26:34,605 --> 00:26:37,247 the interests of non human animals, doing the research for this 396 00:26:37,271 --> 00:26:41,167 book actually changed my ideas about some of it. I came to believe 397 00:26:41,231 --> 00:26:45,775 that we actually do need to give a greater status to the great 398 00:26:45,815 --> 00:26:49,591 apes and possibly the cetaceans. Not full personhood, not, 399 00:26:49,623 --> 00:26:52,447 you know, that the chimpanzee can walk into the voting booth and 400 00:26:52,471 --> 00:26:55,711 vote tomorrow, but that we need to treat them as something more 401 00:26:55,743 --> 00:26:59,735 than merely animals or pets or objects. And that actually that moral 402 00:26:59,775 --> 00:27:03,233 case has been very convincingly made. So for me, thinking 403 00:27:03,289 --> 00:27:07,665 about this very, what seems to a lot of people sci fi, an unrealistic 404 00:27:07,705 --> 00:27:12,009 issue, the issue of how we will come to deal with AI, as well 405 00:27:12,017 --> 00:27:15,729 as how we should come to deal with AI, actually made me reassess 406 00:27:15,777 --> 00:27:18,617 some of my moral commitments elsewhere. And I found it kind of 407 00:27:18,641 --> 00:27:22,041 useful because it gave me a vantage point. And so I guess I'm 408 00:27:22,113 --> 00:27:26,113 slightly idealistic in that regard. I do love the tradition of 409 00:27:26,129 --> 00:27:29,447 the humanities that asks us to look back at history, to look at 410 00:27:29,471 --> 00:27:33,239 literature, to look at speculative fiction, to look at moral 411 00:27:33,287 --> 00:27:37,295 philosophy, and then to say, okay, once I take all this on board, 412 00:27:37,415 --> 00:27:41,055 are all my views the same? Because if they are, then I'm really 413 00:27:41,095 --> 00:27:45,551 not thinking. I'm just processing everything into the whatever 414 00:27:45,663 --> 00:27:49,111 coherent ideology I had before these things came on board. For me, 415 00:27:49,143 --> 00:27:53,039 this book was a process in that process of exploration, that 416 00:27:53,087 --> 00:27:58,101 process of self criticism and that process of, I would say, anxiety 417 00:27:58,293 --> 00:27:59,985 about where we might be going. 418 00:28:00,525 --> 00:28:03,797 You know, it speaks to another thing. And I want to kind of touch 419 00:28:03,821 --> 00:28:08,225 on Star Trek, because I love Star Trek. I've watched it forever 420 00:28:08,565 --> 00:28:13,133 and seeing some of the humanoid androids that are part of 421 00:28:13,149 --> 00:28:17,405 this from Data on through. I mean, there's always the dilemma. 422 00:28:17,445 --> 00:28:21,669 And you can see real genuine love from the people towards them. 423 00:28:21,717 --> 00:28:26,281 They treat them as equals to some degree, right? There is a sense 424 00:28:26,313 --> 00:28:31,585 of equality with Data, for example. But you brought up chimpanzees 425 00:28:31,665 --> 00:28:36,041 and, you know, animals of today, right? And I think of things 426 00:28:36,073 --> 00:28:40,225 like killer whales, orcas, and they're brilliant animals, they're 427 00:28:40,305 --> 00:28:46,409 extremely smart, and yet their livelihood is based on hunting down 428 00:28:46,457 --> 00:28:51,345 and killing other animals to eat, to survive. And I mean, we as 429 00:28:51,385 --> 00:28:54,311 humans, we hunt, we do all sorts of stuff like that. But yet 430 00:28:54,343 --> 00:28:58,359 at the other hand, if we shoot another human being, we call that 431 00:28:58,407 --> 00:29:03,239 murder. Whales eat each other sometimes. I mean, they attack different 432 00:29:03,287 --> 00:29:06,863 forms. Like, you know, a sperm whale might get attacked by an orca 433 00:29:06,919 --> 00:29:11,263 or, you know, a shark so obviously we want to protect, I mean, 434 00:29:11,319 --> 00:29:16,167 desperately want to protect our ecosystem from a survival standpoint. 435 00:29:16,351 --> 00:29:21,181 How do you look at that in terms of like organic entities today? 436 00:29:21,253 --> 00:29:27,517 Non human, organic, biological entities that are created by procreation 437 00:29:27,581 --> 00:29:30,869 of their own species. How would you view that? And then I want 438 00:29:30,877 --> 00:29:32,029 to pivot to Data. 439 00:29:32,197 --> 00:29:35,765 Okay, excellent. So, as you know, human beings throughout history 440 00:29:35,845 --> 00:29:38,957 have attempted to justify their special moral position that 441 00:29:38,981 --> 00:29:41,821 they have or think they have above non human animals and above 442 00:29:41,853 --> 00:29:45,677 mere things. And sometimes it's done through some holy text. 443 00:29:45,741 --> 00:29:48,213 Pick your favorite holy text. That we've been given the earth in 444 00:29:48,229 --> 00:29:52,637 dominion. And sometimes it's done because we are supposed to have 445 00:29:52,701 --> 00:29:57,253 capacities that they lack. So we reroot it in language. Aristotle 446 00:29:57,309 --> 00:30:01,397 says language allows us to reason about what's expedient. I'm 447 00:30:01,421 --> 00:30:04,901 hungry. There's some grapes up there. There's a log that I can roll 448 00:30:04,933 --> 00:30:08,405 over and stand on. I can reach the grapes. But also to reason about 449 00:30:08,445 --> 00:30:11,853 morality. Wait, those are Steve's grapes. And he's hungry too. 450 00:30:11,909 --> 00:30:14,667 And if I take them, he's going to stay hungry. And maybe that's 451 00:30:14,691 --> 00:30:18,979 wrong and I shouldn't do it. And so Aristotle goes, that's what 452 00:30:19,027 --> 00:30:24,147 puts us above other non human animals. And I have to say we've 453 00:30:24,171 --> 00:30:26,779 obviously made some improvements to the philosophy in 454 00:30:26,787 --> 00:30:31,299 the 2300 years since he wrote that, but not that many. The basic 455 00:30:31,347 --> 00:30:34,835 idea is still there. And I do think that one reason to believe 456 00:30:34,875 --> 00:30:37,619 that there is a difference between us and non human animals 457 00:30:37,667 --> 00:30:41,779 is that I don't think there are any lions having debates about 458 00:30:41,827 --> 00:30:46,439 the ethics of eating meat around the Thanksgiving table. Thanksgiving, 459 00:30:46,487 --> 00:30:49,399 there'll be lots of vegans and vegetarians sitting down with their 460 00:30:49,447 --> 00:30:53,047 families having to explain yet again that they don't think that 461 00:30:53,071 --> 00:30:56,639 this is right. That's just not a conversation that one can imagine 462 00:30:56,727 --> 00:31:00,575 in the world of non human animals. So I think we do have some 463 00:31:00,615 --> 00:31:04,135 reason for thinking that we do have capacities that perhaps mark 464 00:31:04,175 --> 00:31:08,287 us out as using moral reasoning in a way that is really 465 00:31:08,351 --> 00:31:12,787 relatively unique on this planet. The difficulty is, of course, 466 00:31:12,891 --> 00:31:16,163 that that's why we say if you kill another human being, it's murder. 467 00:31:16,219 --> 00:31:18,387 But if the lion eats an antelope, it's like, that's just 468 00:31:18,411 --> 00:31:21,867 David Attenborough telling you a story, right? And sort of like 469 00:31:21,891 --> 00:31:24,339 we draw that line. And I think it's a perfectly good one. But I 470 00:31:24,347 --> 00:31:29,355 think that it also shows us that if those same reasoning capacities, 471 00:31:29,435 --> 00:31:33,619 in particularly the moral one, start being evidenced by artificially 472 00:31:33,667 --> 00:31:36,879 created entities, we're really going to be in a clef stick. Because 473 00:31:36,927 --> 00:31:41,127 then the very thing that we said entitled us to dominion over 474 00:31:41,191 --> 00:31:45,351 all of them, the non human animals, is suddenly something that 475 00:31:45,383 --> 00:31:49,487 we share with or potentially share with some other entity. So 476 00:31:49,591 --> 00:31:52,263 absolutely, I think those issues are real. But you said you 477 00:31:52,279 --> 00:31:54,135 wanted to turn to Data from Star Trek. 478 00:31:54,255 --> 00:31:58,415 Yes, One of the things that I found fascinating, and there's several 479 00:31:58,495 --> 00:32:02,635 episodes throughout that kind of touched on this. But what happens 480 00:32:02,775 --> 00:32:08,747 when a human being's right to self defense is passed on to an android, 481 00:32:08,811 --> 00:32:14,707 a non biologically created entity in this space? I mean, there 482 00:32:14,731 --> 00:32:19,243 were certain fail safes built in, certain, you know, protocols 483 00:32:19,299 --> 00:32:23,883 that were built in that were hardwired to prevent xyz. But what 484 00:32:23,939 --> 00:32:28,933 happens to, you know, anyone's right to self defense? I think we 485 00:32:28,989 --> 00:32:34,165 all at some level recognize that it is a human right. We say 486 00:32:34,205 --> 00:32:38,629 human right, right? A human right to self defense. If you're 487 00:32:38,717 --> 00:32:44,093 an oppressed community being dominated by a colonizer and you 488 00:32:44,149 --> 00:32:49,237 decide that your freedom is worth more than their right to colonize 489 00:32:49,301 --> 00:32:54,605 you, you might find the roots of war. You know, people fighting 490 00:32:54,645 --> 00:32:58,691 back. I mean, I imagine slaves, and I never would condemn 491 00:32:58,723 --> 00:33:02,523 one of them for going in and strangling their master, so to speak, 492 00:33:02,579 --> 00:33:05,403 because no man should be a master of another in that way. And 493 00:33:05,419 --> 00:33:09,379 that's a judgment, I believe that's fundamental. And yet at the 494 00:33:09,427 --> 00:33:13,251 same time, though, to your point earlier, where it's like, well, 495 00:33:13,283 --> 00:33:16,747 hey, we don't believe in slavery, but yet here we have these 496 00:33:16,851 --> 00:33:21,155 autonomous entities that we're treating as slaves. What happens 497 00:33:21,195 --> 00:33:24,051 to their right to self defense? I mean, is that pushing 498 00:33:24,083 --> 00:33:25,995 the boundaries too much? I mean, what are we talking about? 499 00:33:26,035 --> 00:33:28,015 Do they have a right to exist? 500 00:33:28,375 --> 00:33:31,151 Right. You bring us back. You mentioned Star Trek, but it also 501 00:33:31,183 --> 00:33:33,703 brings us back to Blade Runner. As you may remember in the 502 00:33:33,759 --> 00:33:38,235 penultimate scene where Roy goes back to the Tyrell Corporation 503 00:33:38,535 --> 00:33:42,875 to meet Mr. Tyrell himself, the person who created the replicants. 504 00:33:43,255 --> 00:33:49,103 He says it's not easy to meet one's maker. And it's, of course, 505 00:33:49,159 --> 00:33:51,631 play on words. You know, you're talking about meet one's maker, 506 00:33:51,663 --> 00:33:54,847 like meet God or die. Are you talking about meet one's maker? Meet 507 00:33:54,871 --> 00:33:59,327 the person who actually created you? And then Roy passionately 508 00:33:59,391 --> 00:34:03,319 kisses and then kills Tyrell in an unforgettable, and really kind 509 00:34:03,327 --> 00:34:07,567 of searing scene. And I think that the film really makes you think 510 00:34:07,631 --> 00:34:13,127 about whether or not Roy was wrong to do that, or at least maybe 511 00:34:13,231 --> 00:34:17,439 both parties were wrong in what they did. I'm kind of still 512 00:34:17,487 --> 00:34:20,359 upset about the way that Roy seems to have treated J.F. Sebastian, 513 00:34:20,407 --> 00:34:23,099 who was really nice and just made toys. And I don't think J.F. 514 00:34:23,099 --> 00:34:26,431 Sebastian survived that. So I was like, I'm kind of down on Roy 515 00:34:26,463 --> 00:34:30,026 on that for that reason. But it does raise the problem. I mean, 516 00:34:30,050 --> 00:34:33,962 one of the things about human beings is we make moral decisions 517 00:34:34,018 --> 00:34:37,114 poorly at the best of times, but very poorly when we have been 518 00:34:37,154 --> 00:34:41,530 told we must be afraid. And if someone can tell you you need to 519 00:34:41,562 --> 00:34:45,610 be afraid, they're coming for you, they're going to kill you, then 520 00:34:45,682 --> 00:34:49,170 our moral reasoning all but seizes up. I mean, it's interesting. 521 00:34:49,242 --> 00:34:52,402 The person who invented the word robot, which it comes to us 522 00:34:52,418 --> 00:34:57,737 from the Czech, from Vroboti. It was this play by Karl Capek Russen's 523 00:34:57,761 --> 00:35:02,537 Universal Robots. It was in the 1920s. And he immediately imagines, 524 00:35:02,601 --> 00:35:05,953 as he coins the word that would become the English word robot. 525 00:35:06,089 --> 00:35:11,417 He also invented the movement for robot rights and imagines people 526 00:35:11,481 --> 00:35:14,993 both passionately protesting against robot rights and the robots 527 00:35:15,049 --> 00:35:20,169 attempting to take over and to kill those who oppose them. So we 528 00:35:20,217 --> 00:35:24,001 literally have been thinking about the issue of robot rights and 529 00:35:24,033 --> 00:35:27,989 robot self defense as long as we have been thinking about robots. 530 00:35:28,157 --> 00:35:31,077 You can't really have one without the other. And I just think 531 00:35:31,101 --> 00:35:35,597 the fact that the very word was born in a play that contemplated 532 00:35:35,701 --> 00:35:39,625 the possibility of a robot uprising is just quite wonderful. 533 00:35:40,125 --> 00:35:44,173 The Movie what? Space Odyssey 2001. 534 00:35:44,189 --> 00:35:45,093 2001: A Space Odyssey. 535 00:35:45,189 --> 00:35:45,677 Yes. 536 00:35:45,781 --> 00:35:46,813 HAL. The computer. 537 00:35:46,869 --> 00:35:51,101 Yeah, yes, you've got HAL. And then take it a step further. I mean, 538 00:35:51,133 --> 00:35:54,933 HAL's made some decisions. I'm going to live, you're going to die 539 00:35:54,989 --> 00:36:00,725 kind of thing. And we've got Alien. I, I remember the movie Prometheus. 540 00:36:01,025 --> 00:36:04,393 It was really, really good. Michael Fassbender was in it. He 541 00:36:04,409 --> 00:36:08,681 was also in Alien Covenant where he was an android and, and 542 00:36:08,713 --> 00:36:12,889 they sent him to do things that didn't require an oxygen breathing 543 00:36:12,977 --> 00:36:17,409 individual to do that. He could go where they could not. But 544 00:36:17,457 --> 00:36:23,583 he had been twisted as well. He was there basically as both, you 545 00:36:23,599 --> 00:36:27,983 know, a bit of a villain and also a bit of a hero at times. There's 546 00:36:28,039 --> 00:36:32,807 so many people poking or taking a bite off of this apple through 547 00:36:32,911 --> 00:36:36,407 these kinds of fictional stories. But they're really good 548 00:36:36,471 --> 00:36:40,607 at creating kind of the conversation, if you're looking to 549 00:36:40,631 --> 00:36:44,343 have the conversation. They create that kind of analytical framework 550 00:36:44,399 --> 00:36:46,959 to give you pause to say, Hmm... 551 00:36:46,967 --> 00:36:49,275 I think that's exactly right. And one of the things I address in 552 00:36:49,275 --> 00:36:51,643 the book is some of my colleagues said, you know, look, 553 00:36:51,659 --> 00:36:53,659 you're supposed to be a serious academic. Why are you writing 554 00:36:53,707 --> 00:36:57,411 about science fiction. Why didn't you just do the moral philosophy? 555 00:36:57,483 --> 00:37:01,915 Why didn't you just come up with the legal test? And so that 556 00:37:01,955 --> 00:37:04,095 issue I think is a fundamental one. 557 00:37:04,595 --> 00:37:09,707 Back to Mr. Data and Spock, right? So Spock being an alien and 558 00:37:09,811 --> 00:37:13,659 you know, a non, you know, humanoid. I mean, I don't even know 559 00:37:13,667 --> 00:37:17,059 how you describe Spock. Right. Vulcan, obviously. And then Data, 560 00:37:17,147 --> 00:37:22,899 who is definitely an AI, you know, sentient being. I mean, at 561 00:37:22,947 --> 00:37:26,947 some level Data goes way out of his way to say he doesn't have 562 00:37:27,131 --> 00:37:30,035 feelings or oh, I'm not programmed for that. But I remember 563 00:37:30,075 --> 00:37:33,155 all the times of him being on the holodeck, you know, I remember 564 00:37:33,195 --> 00:37:37,059 all the different times of him crying and feeling things and trying 565 00:37:37,107 --> 00:37:41,487 to figure out what is this thing I'm feeling and so forth. Help 566 00:37:41,511 --> 00:37:45,655 me understand the relationship there. Because these two, both were 567 00:37:45,735 --> 00:37:51,303 deeply integrated and highly vital to the success of not only 568 00:37:51,399 --> 00:37:56,047 the different starship commanders that, you know, Star Trek 569 00:37:56,111 --> 00:38:00,575 and all the other spin offs, but these two are key figures that 570 00:38:00,615 --> 00:38:03,919 should cause all of us to ask some pretty important questions. 571 00:38:03,967 --> 00:38:06,973 And I think that falls right into the work you're doing. 572 00:38:07,119 --> 00:38:11,729 Yeah, I mean, Star Trek was great at and I think was very honest 573 00:38:11,777 --> 00:38:16,449 about taking the best of science fiction treatments and basically 574 00:38:16,617 --> 00:38:20,081 transferring it onto the Enterprise. So there are themes that 575 00:38:20,113 --> 00:38:25,633 many other sci fi writers explored. Star Trek, we're all grist 576 00:38:25,689 --> 00:38:28,241 to the writer's mill and I think that was acknowledged and everybody 577 00:38:28,273 --> 00:38:31,465 thought that that was a fair deal. And they are there, probing 578 00:38:31,545 --> 00:38:35,771 two different versions of the line. One is the thing that gives 579 00:38:35,803 --> 00:38:39,107 us rights, that makes us special, is the fact that we belong 580 00:38:39,131 --> 00:38:44,563 to the human species, that we have human DNA. And Mr. Spock is 581 00:38:44,659 --> 00:38:49,707 in fact half a Vulcan, half human. And so some of his DNA isn't 582 00:38:49,771 --> 00:38:53,867 human. And yet obviously you said, well, therefore, you know, 583 00:38:53,891 --> 00:38:57,267 we could kill him for food or send him to the salt mines to labor 584 00:38:57,291 --> 00:39:00,287 for us for free. Then most people would find that a morally 585 00:39:00,351 --> 00:39:04,559 repulsive conclusion. So what the writers are doing there is they're 586 00:39:04,607 --> 00:39:08,031 changing one of the variables, the DNA, and making you see that 587 00:39:08,063 --> 00:39:12,087 it's not just DNA that actually animates your moral thinking. 588 00:39:12,231 --> 00:39:16,631 And as for Data, it's like, well, it's, he's not even a biologically 589 00:39:16,703 --> 00:39:21,879 living being, he's actually robotic or silicon based. And so 590 00:39:21,927 --> 00:39:26,071 there it's showing. And again now it's not the DNA issue. Now it's 591 00:39:26,103 --> 00:39:29,719 like, this isn't even something that is like you in being 592 00:39:29,887 --> 00:39:33,783 actually a biologically based human being. And again, we wouldn't 593 00:39:33,839 --> 00:39:38,095 say, oh well, that means that's freeusof allmoralobligations.Moral 594 00:39:38,135 --> 00:39:41,239 philosophers,particularlyoneswho'vebeenthinkingaboutthenon human 595 00:39:41,287 --> 00:39:49,511 animals,havearguedthat tosaythathumansgetrightsbecausewe'rehumanisspeciesist. That'sasbad 596 00:39:49,543 --> 00:39:55,393 as beingaracist orasexist,saying thatI deservespecialrightsbecauseI'mwhite 597 00:39:55,449 --> 00:40:01,481 orI'maguyorwhateverotherspurioustribalaffiliation Iwantedtobasemy 598 00:40:01,513 --> 00:40:08,873 selfconception in.And theysaysaying humans shouldhaverightsjustbecausethey'rehumanisjustasbad.Andinsteadtheyargueno,we 599 00:40:08,889 --> 00:40:13,337 need tolookatcapacities.It'snotthe factthatyou 600 00:40:13,361 --> 00:40:20,873 andIare havingtheconversationnowandweshareabiological kinshipthatgivesusmoralstatus. 601 00:40:21,009 --> 00:40:29,097 It'sthefactthatwehaveaseriesofabilitiesfromempathytomorality,tolanguage, tointuitiontohumor,totheabilitytoform 602 00:40:29,161 --> 00:40:36,787 communityand evenmake jokes.Andthatthosethingsarethethingsthatentitleusto to 603 00:40:36,787 --> 00:40:41,001 intuition, to Maybebecausewemakefreemoralchoicesourselves andweare, 604 00:40:41,073 --> 00:40:51,241 wearewillingtobemoral subjects,paymoralpatientsaswellasmoralactors,andthatweshouldjustturnaroundandrecognize,givemoralrecognitiontoanyother entity, 605 00:40:51,313 --> 00:40:56,857 regardlessofitsform,thathasthosesamecapacities.Andthere Ikindof 606 00:40:56,961 --> 00:41:07,129 twocheersforthatpointofview.Right.Soastothepointthatifsomethingelseturnedup thatwasradicallydifferentforusbuthadallthecapacitieswethinkaremorallysalient,sure,Iagree 607 00:41:07,257 --> 00:41:11,841 wewouldbe I kind of - two cheers for that point of view, right? 608 00:41:11,953 --> 00:41:14,793 regardlessof whetherthe personshared ourDNA,regardlessof 609 00:41:14,809 --> 00:41:19,465 whethertheentitywasinfactbiologicallybased atall.Socheer, 610 00:41:19,505 --> 00:41:23,977 cheer.Thedownside,thethingthatIdon'tlike,is thatitattemptsto 611 00:41:24,001 --> 00:41:30,097 abstract awayfromour commonhumanity.AndIthinkthatthefightduringthe 20thcenturyfor 612 00:41:30,121 --> 00:41:37,009 anidea ofuniversalhumanrightsbasedmerelyonourcommonhumanity,notourrace,notourreligion, notoursex, 613 00:41:37,137 --> 00:41:42,559 notour gender,justthefactthatwe'rehuman.That wasagreatmoral 614 00:41:42,607 --> 00:41:50,687 leap forward.That's oneofthe greatachievementsofthehumanrace,inmyview.Andthething thatmakesmeunwillingtosay,oh, 615 00:41:50,711 --> 00:41:54,287 it'sunimportantwhetheryou'reahuman.That'samorallyirrelevantfact. It'sasbad 616 00:41:54,311 --> 00:42:02,391 asbeing aracist,isthatifwerootmoral recognitionsolelyinmentalcapacities,whatdoesthatsayabout 617 00:42:02,423 --> 00:42:09,897 thepersoninacoma?Whatdoesthatsayabouttheanencephalicchild?Theydon'thaveanyreasoningabilities,at leastrightnow.Doesthatmeanwe 618 00:42:09,921 --> 00:42:16,889 havenomoralobligationstothem?I wouldfranklythinkthatclaimwasliterallyinhuman.And morally 619 00:42:16,889 --> 00:42:25,849 irrelevant fact, it's kinshipof thisideaofhuman rightsforallhumans,regardlessofrace, 620 00:42:25,897 --> 00:42:34,567 sex,yada, yada,butalsoregardlessofintellectualcapacities. Becausethemovementforuniversalhumanrightswaspartlythefightagainsteugenics,and 621 00:42:34,591 --> 00:42:40,839 inparticular,Nazieugenics.And so Ithinkbeing soinfluencedbywhathappenedin 622 00:42:40,847 --> 00:42:45,807 theanimalrightsdebatethatwesay, oh,it'sjustprimitiveandirrationaltothinkthat 623 00:42:45,831 --> 00:42:47,943 there'sanythingspecialaboutbeing humanand 624 00:42:47,959 --> 00:42:52,231 togiverightstoyoujust becauseyou'reahuman.IthinkIwantto getoffthebusthere. 625 00:42:52,383 --> 00:42:57,055 Iwanttosay,no,Ithinkweshouldgivemoralrecognition toeverymemberofourspecies,regardless 626 00:42:57,095 --> 00:43:03,107 oftheirmentalcapacities.ButI alsothinkthatwehaveamoraldutytotake seriously 627 00:43:03,211 --> 00:43:08,987 moralclaimscomingfromentitieswhomightinthefuturebeveryunlikeusandwhowewouldhavetoconfront and 628 00:43:09,011 --> 00:43:13,323 go,wow,youknow,youdon'tlooklikeme atall.Youdon'tsoundlike 629 00:43:13,339 --> 00:43:20,187 meatall.ButdoI neverthelesshaveamoraldutytowardsyou?AndIthinkthat isaconversationthatitnot.Notjustagoodthingto 630 00:43:20,211 --> 00:43:24,971 happen.It'sgoingtohappen. AndsoIguess Iwrotethisbooktoget theconversationstartedalittle 631 00:43:25,003 --> 00:43:25,575 early. sss n, i 632 00:43:25,895 --> 00:43:28,799 One of the things that brought us together was the fact that, you 633 00:43:28,807 --> 00:43:31,687 know, we've had Cory Doctorow on here before, and there's a there's 634 00:43:31,711 --> 00:43:36,191 a great synergy between both of your worldviews and some of the 635 00:43:36,223 --> 00:43:38,863 writings you've done. And. God, have you ever seen anybody more 636 00:43:38,919 --> 00:43:42,915 prolific than Cory in terms of writing Cory's just produced? 637 00:43:43,255 --> 00:43:46,623 I mean, I have some doubts about him being an android myself. 638 00:43:46,719 --> 00:43:48,823 He is, he's one of the most wonderful people I've ever met. And 639 00:43:48,839 --> 00:43:51,031 if your listeners haven't gone out and bought his books, they should 640 00:43:51,063 --> 00:43:54,241 go out immediately and do so, both his fiction and his nonfiction. 641 00:43:54,383 --> 00:43:57,453 He's also just a really frustratingly nice person, too. You 642 00:43:57,469 --> 00:43:59,813 know, you want someone that prolific to maybe have some other 643 00:43:59,909 --> 00:44:03,021 personality flaws, but he's just a really good guy. So, yeah, 644 00:44:03,053 --> 00:44:05,693 Cory. I've definitely wondered about Cory. I mean, possible android, 645 00:44:05,749 --> 00:44:09,005 no doubt, but I think, you know, Cory quite rightly would be 646 00:44:09,045 --> 00:44:12,461 someone who, looking in this current political environment, would 647 00:44:12,493 --> 00:44:16,877 go, what I see is a lot of AI hype. I see people, particularly 648 00:44:16,901 --> 00:44:20,563 the people heading companies developing AI, making claims that 649 00:44:20,579 --> 00:44:25,935 are absolutely implausible. I see them doing it largely as an attack 650 00:44:26,355 --> 00:44:31,931 on workers because they want to replace those workers with inferior 651 00:44:32,123 --> 00:44:36,379 substitutes, whether it's the scriptwriters or whether it's the 652 00:44:36,467 --> 00:44:42,307 radiologists, and that you should see this as a fundamental 653 00:44:42,371 --> 00:44:46,227 existential struggle in which these new technologies are being 654 00:44:46,291 --> 00:44:51,693 harnessed and being deployed in ways that will be profoundly bad 655 00:44:51,749 --> 00:44:56,157 for working people. And that's what we ought to be focusing on. 656 00:44:56,341 --> 00:45:00,453 And I think Cory's absolutely right. I think that that is an incredibly 657 00:45:00,509 --> 00:45:04,613 deep concern. I do agree with him about the hype. So for him, I 658 00:45:04,629 --> 00:45:07,941 think this book is kind of like, well, Jamie, why are you doing 659 00:45:07,973 --> 00:45:11,365 all this philosophizing about the idea that these entities might 660 00:45:11,405 --> 00:45:15,513 one day deserve rights? Shouldn't you be focusing on, you 661 00:45:15,529 --> 00:45:18,489 know, the far more real struggles that actual human beings 662 00:45:18,537 --> 00:45:24,169 are having right now? And my answer to that is I don't find that 663 00:45:24,217 --> 00:45:28,417 I need to pick one or the other. And in fact, I personally, 664 00:45:28,441 --> 00:45:33,681 I don't know about you, I find that the more one gets morally engaged 665 00:45:33,793 --> 00:45:37,921 or engaged in serious moral reflection, it's not like you have 666 00:45:37,953 --> 00:45:40,953 limited bandwidth. So you're like, okay, wow, now I'm sympathizing 667 00:45:40,969 --> 00:45:44,529 with non human animals. Sorry, granny, there's no more disc space 668 00:45:44,577 --> 00:45:47,569 for you. I'm going to have to stop thinking about you. I don't 669 00:45:47,617 --> 00:45:51,241 find that that's the way my brain works. So I think all the concerns 670 00:45:51,273 --> 00:45:54,841 that Cory raises are actually very real ones. I just think that 671 00:45:54,873 --> 00:45:58,937 they're not the only concerns. And I think that we very much should 672 00:45:59,041 --> 00:46:05,129 worry and agitate to make sure that whatever form this technology 673 00:46:05,257 --> 00:46:12,301 takes, it's one that isn't driven solely by the desire to disempower 674 00:46:12,493 --> 00:46:17,293 working people. And there's lots of precedent for that. I was 675 00:46:17,349 --> 00:46:21,685 talking to someone recently who's doing a study of the development 676 00:46:21,805 --> 00:46:24,861 of the history of capitalism. And one of the things that he was 677 00:46:24,893 --> 00:46:28,349 talking about was the Arkwright water loom, which was a 678 00:46:28,357 --> 00:46:32,181 way of spinning thread that was being developed at the same time 679 00:46:32,213 --> 00:46:35,973 as the spinning jenny. And the thing is that the spinning jennies 680 00:46:36,069 --> 00:46:40,421 and the other technologies which were superior were still hefty 681 00:46:40,453 --> 00:46:43,349 enough so that they really needed a lot of upper body strength 682 00:46:43,397 --> 00:46:48,565 and thus tended to need a male workforce at the time. But the Arkwright 683 00:46:48,645 --> 00:46:52,333 water mill could be worked by women and even children. Produced 684 00:46:52,429 --> 00:46:56,861 crappier thread. Worse thread count. You wouldn't see it on Wirecutter 685 00:46:56,893 --> 00:47:00,997 as your recommendation for sheets, but a great advantage in 686 00:47:01,021 --> 00:47:03,797 that this isn't a group of people who are unionized. This is 687 00:47:03,821 --> 00:47:08,429 not a group of people who are organized, and so this is if we can 688 00:47:08,477 --> 00:47:13,581 manage to use the technology to push production into a less politically 689 00:47:13,613 --> 00:47:17,797 organized group, then hell yeah, let's do that. And so I think 690 00:47:17,821 --> 00:47:21,173 that that's the kind of concern that Cory has, to be honest, 691 00:47:21,229 --> 00:47:24,877 it's one that I share. That's just not what this book is about.This 692 00:47:24,901 --> 00:47:28,397 book is about the moral issues. And I personally don't think 693 00:47:28,421 --> 00:47:31,901 that one has to choose between thinking about those two things. 694 00:47:31,973 --> 00:47:37,135 And I guess I've been around long enough that I've seen confident 695 00:47:37,295 --> 00:47:41,391 claims that this is a distraction from the real fight, 696 00:47:41,583 --> 00:47:45,735 turn out not to age very well. I remember during the Campaign for 697 00:47:45,815 --> 00:47:49,575 Nuclear Disarmament, which I marched in lots of rallies in Britain 698 00:47:49,655 --> 00:47:52,495 campaigning for nuclear disarmament, people would be talking 699 00:47:52,535 --> 00:47:55,863 about climate change, which back then we call global warming, 700 00:47:55,999 --> 00:47:58,583 and would be shouted down. It's like, that's ludicrous. Why 701 00:47:58,599 --> 00:48:00,631 are you worrying about the weather? You know, we could all be 702 00:48:00,663 --> 00:48:04,087 dying in a nuclear war. Or when people started talking about 703 00:48:04,111 --> 00:48:06,911 the rights of non human animals. My God, why are you talking 704 00:48:06,943 --> 00:48:11,167 about dogs and cats when there are people, etc., etc. You know the 705 00:48:11,191 --> 00:48:15,327 argument, right? Which is a familiar one. You may not be worried 706 00:48:15,351 --> 00:48:17,991 about this thing because there are more important things to be worried 707 00:48:18,023 --> 00:48:23,591 about. And I just personally have seen people be wrong often enough 708 00:48:23,743 --> 00:48:27,711 that I am now have a little bit less confidence in my ability 709 00:48:27,783 --> 00:48:32,617 to pick winners in terms of what's going to look in the future 710 00:48:32,617 --> 00:48:36,545 like it was a really good allocation of my moral energies. 711 00:48:37,365 --> 00:48:41,533 Let me just tack this on. During this past election, I mean, 712 00:48:41,589 --> 00:48:46,349 for the last year, our organization fought to bring about 713 00:48:46,437 --> 00:48:50,869 awareness of the slaughter of the Palestinian people. Watching 714 00:48:50,997 --> 00:48:56,967 estimates of 40,000 children killed in Palestine and Gaza and, 715 00:48:57,111 --> 00:48:59,751 you know, bringing that up. And I'm not going to mention the 716 00:48:59,783 --> 00:49:04,215 name because I'd probably get in trouble at Thanksgiving. But individuals 717 00:49:04,295 --> 00:49:08,703 that are Democrats. So why are you worried about that? Our family's 718 00:49:08,759 --> 00:49:12,663 here in this country, what are you worried about that for? I need 719 00:49:12,679 --> 00:49:15,727 to know that I'm not going to lose more rights for my daughter. 720 00:49:15,831 --> 00:49:21,601 So I don't really care. And hearing that was almost like nails 721 00:49:21,633 --> 00:49:25,521 down a chalkboard to me. That line of reasoning did not work for 722 00:49:25,553 --> 00:49:30,673 me at all. And I'm hearing you as you're going through this. And 723 00:49:30,689 --> 00:49:33,889 I'm saying to myself, you know what? There is room to walk and chew 724 00:49:33,937 --> 00:49:39,673 gum. There is room to do that. So I really value that. Listen, folks, 725 00:49:39,729 --> 00:49:42,817 the book we're talking about is The Line: Artificial Intelligence 726 00:49:42,881 --> 00:49:46,729 and the Future of Personhood with my guest, James Boyle. James, 727 00:49:46,777 --> 00:49:49,657 I'd like to thank you first of all for joining me today. I know 728 00:49:49,681 --> 00:49:52,425 we're running up against time, but I'm going to give you one last 729 00:49:52,505 --> 00:49:55,577 offer to make your final point. Is there anything that we 730 00:49:55,601 --> 00:49:58,281 didn't cover today that you would like our listeners to take 731 00:49:58,313 --> 00:50:00,705 out of this, aside from buying your wonderful book? 732 00:50:00,825 --> 00:50:03,641 Well, funnily enough, I'm going to argue against interest and 733 00:50:03,673 --> 00:50:06,353 tell your listeners, who may have much better things to do with 734 00:50:06,369 --> 00:50:08,361 their money, that if they don't want to buy the book and they're 735 00:50:08,393 --> 00:50:11,337 willing to read it electronically, I wanted this book 736 00:50:11,361 --> 00:50:14,943 to be under a Creative Commons license, to be open access, and so 737 00:50:14,959 --> 00:50:18,023 that anyone in the world would be able to download it and read it 738 00:50:18,039 --> 00:50:21,783 for free. Because I think the moral warrant for access to knowledge 739 00:50:21,879 --> 00:50:26,303 is not a wallet, it's a pulse. And that's something that's guided 740 00:50:26,359 --> 00:50:29,383 me all through my time as being a scholar. It may seem sort 741 00:50:29,399 --> 00:50:32,831 of an abstract or pompous way of putting it, but I believe it very 742 00:50:32,863 --> 00:50:36,495 deeply. And so basically, everything I write, everything I 743 00:50:36,535 --> 00:50:40,611 create, whether it's books like this or comic books about the 744 00:50:40,643 --> 00:50:43,123 history of musical borrowing, they're all under Creative Commons 745 00:50:43,179 --> 00:50:47,075 licenses and people can download them for free. So if you 746 00:50:47,115 --> 00:50:51,411 can buy it, please do so. MIT was kind enough to let me use a Creative 747 00:50:51,443 --> 00:50:54,923 Commons license, but if you don't have the dough, then just download 748 00:50:54,979 --> 00:50:57,455 it and the book's on me. I hope you enjoy it. 749 00:50:58,035 --> 00:51:00,843 Fantastic. Thank you so much, James. And it was nice to get to 750 00:51:00,859 --> 00:51:03,059 know you prior to the interview here a little bit, and 751 00:51:03,067 --> 00:51:06,607 I hope we can have you back on. There's so much more I know that 752 00:51:06,631 --> 00:51:09,399 you bring to the table that I think our listeners would really 753 00:51:09,447 --> 00:51:09,967 enjoy. 754 00:51:10,071 --> 00:51:12,439 Well, thank you, Steve. I very much enjoyed chatting to you, and 755 00:51:12,447 --> 00:51:13,919 I hope you have a wonderful day. 756 00:51:14,087 --> 00:51:17,287 You as well. All right, folks, my name is Steve Grumbine with my 757 00:51:17,311 --> 00:51:21,319 guest, James Boyle. Macro N Cheese is a podcast that's a part 758 00:51:21,367 --> 00:51:25,447 of the Real Progressives nonprofit organization. We are a 759 00:51:25,471 --> 00:51:30,143 501C3. We survive on your donations. Not the friend next to 760 00:51:30,159 --> 00:51:33,563 you, not the other guy, your donations. So please don't get hit 761 00:51:33,579 --> 00:51:37,155 with bystander syndrome. We need your help. And as we're closing 762 00:51:37,195 --> 00:51:42,315 out the year of 2024, just know that all your donations are 763 00:51:42,355 --> 00:51:46,803 indeed tax deductible. Also remember, Tuesday nights we have 764 00:51:46,859 --> 00:51:51,835 Macro N Chill, where we do a small video presentation of the actual 765 00:51:51,915 --> 00:51:56,707 podcast each week, Tuesday nights, 8:00pm Eastern Standard Time. 766 00:51:56,891 --> 00:52:01,027 And you can come meet with us, build community, talk about the subject 767 00:52:01,091 --> 00:52:04,791 matter, raise your concerns, talk about what you feel is important, 768 00:52:04,983 --> 00:52:07,559 and we look forward to having you join us for that. And again, 769 00:52:07,647 --> 00:52:11,967 on behalf of my guests, James Boyle and Macro N Cheese. My name's 770 00:52:11,991 --> 00:52:15,595 Steve Grumbine, and we are out of here.