“I’m sorry Dave,” Hal, the legendary talking computer, asserted in 1968’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
That breakthrough film raised the startling specter of sentient machines capable of speaking intelligently and outwitting their masters—at least until their plugs are pulled.
Even in 2012, we’re still quite distant from the world of 2001, but computer speech has emerged as a fascinating new issue at the intersection of law, technology, and politics. As more and more commercial functions and decisions become automated, a discussion has been taking place among legal and policy whizzes about whether and how to regulate and respect machine “speech.”
In a recent New York Times op-ed, Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu provocatively asked: “Do machines speak? If so, do they have a constitutional right to free speech?”
Wu’s questions seemingly answer themselves. Constitutional rights, as everyone knows, apply only to humans, not to animals, cyborgs, or computers—don’t they?
But Wu is getting at something a bit more subtle:
That breakthrough film raised the startling specter of sentient machines capable of speaking intelligently and outwitting their masters—at least until their plugs are pulled.
Even in 2012, we’re still quite distant from the world of 2001, but computer speech has emerged as a fascinating new issue at the intersection of law, technology, and politics. As more and more commercial functions and decisions become automated, a discussion has been taking place among legal and policy whizzes about whether and how to regulate and respect machine “speech.”
In a recent New York Times op-ed, Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu provocatively asked: “Do machines speak? If so, do they have a constitutional right to free speech?”
Wu’s questions seemingly answer themselves. Constitutional rights, as everyone knows, apply only to humans, not to animals, cyborgs, or computers—don’t they?
But Wu is getting at something a bit more subtle:
On the drive to work, a GPS device
suggests the best route; at your desk, Microsoft Word guesses at your
misspellings, and Facebook recommends new friends. In the past few
years, the suggestion has been made that when computers make such
choices, they are “speaking,” and enjoy the protections of the First
Amendment.
What are the implications of computer speech? Wu contends:
Consider that Google has attracted
attention from both antitrust and consumer protection officials after
accusations that it has used its dominance in search to hinder
competitors and in some instances has not made clear the line between
advertisement and results. Consider that the “decisions” made by
Facebook’s computers may involve widely sharing your private
information; or that the recommendations made by online markets like
Amazon could one day serve as a means for disadvantaging competing
publishers. Ordinarily, such practices could violate laws meant to
protect consumers. But if we call computerized decisions “speech,” the
judiciary must consider these laws as potential censorship, making the
First Amendment, for these companies, a formidable anti-regulatory tool.
No comments:
Post a Comment