#54 - Greg Lukianoff - Free Speech in the Age of AI

28:59But the way are written is essentially that if your library, essentially, if your LLM gives someone information that can then is used to justify discriminatory behavior, the LLM is responsible. And to me, this is insane because it basically means that you're telling the library, don't publish anything that could get this library sued or anything that the government doesn't approve of. So as far as something that I think is just incredibly poorly thought out, I think that that's one of the most dangerous ones because it goes at truth itself. But before I go any further, I kind of want to – you're so deeply involved in this.

29:41Since FIRE is actually trying to go deeper on our tech work and we want to expand it, but we don't have a team as big and rich as we want at this point. What are your observations and what do you think could actually help with the current arms race? You know, we have one thing in our advantage, which is the majority of the leading labs are based not only in the Western world, but they're based in the US. Yeah. They all speak English. They all share a culture. They all largely are aligned with Western values. And from sort of my conversations with various people at those labs, like they all express the same thing as like, we wish we weren't having to be so reckless.

30:21We wish we weren't having to race so much. But like we just, if we don't, that guy will. And then on top of that, there are, I think, very real concerns that, you know, we don't want to lose to China. I think the first and foremost thing, I think with any kind of like multipolar trap like that is like calling it out for what it is. Yeah. And saying, OK, we're like encouraging people to say, put their hand up and be like, I would like to slow down and not just like pointing and laughing at them being like, you know, oh, that's that's oh, you're just saying that because you're losing, which is often what people are told.

30:52Yeah. And that's how people feel pressured not to even say it. So like incentivizing people to come thinking and be like, look, we would like to actually slow down, but coordination is hard. So at least that starts a dialogue there. And then I hope that someone is doing a bunch of diplomatic backchalleling to China, for example, because they don't strike me as particularly a culture that wants to lose control to its AIs or to people, you know, empower a bunch of bad actors who will then take over, you know, cause chaos within that nation either. So in theory, those incentives should align. But there's just so much like blustering and sort of bravado going on that it's almost like laughed at if you even try and suggest, you know, and it's, to me, it's a very passive way of viewing the world.

31:41Oh, there's nothing we can do about it. It is just the techno capital machine. We must, you know, we will go as fast as possible. So I think just making it be okay to say, actually, it's okay if you talk about coordinating. And of course, coordination does not mean pure cooperation. It doesn't mean that everyone going into one entity, you can still have competition. But yeah, I think that's one thing. And then, I mean, another thing I would love to just see more of in general is transparency. You know, having, there've been very successful efforts when we were in the height of the Cold war to again through diplomacy and treaties at one point we had 70 000 nuclear weapons and we brought that down to 12 000 the game theory said that shouldn't be possible yeah right and you were in this Nash equilibrium but um through a lot of diplomacy and some like bare minimum sort of transparency just around safety protocols right now I don't think the labs are even doing much sharing of their safety protocols yeah but there's should really be they should all be incentivized to do that, you're not giving away your competitive advantage, or not particularly.

32:44So, yeah, I think those are sort of the directions we want to see more transparency and probably some kind of third party as independent as possible, dare I say it, regulatory body. Because it's true, you know, there's sort of two attractor states. We've got the – well, two attractor states are two types of dystopias. We've got the 1984 dystopia of nightmare, like no free speech or wheelian thing. But then there's the other dystopia, which is like Mad Max. Yeah. Where there's just bioweapons being let off everywhere, cyber attacks, infrastructure collapse. I thought you meant more like the Burning Man part of it.

33:25It's just the aesthetic. Inside, it's actually surprisingly coordinated. But yeah, but they're two very real attractive states and they can both simultaneously happen. Yeah. So we need to find a way to sort of find some third option and preserve free speech. And, you know, aside of the, you know, because like there are these growing catastrophic risks. If they happen one time, we're all done. So it's like how to weigh that risk off. But actually another one I want to ask you about is, you know, with LLMs now, the cost of producing and just flooding the internet, flooding the media, our information ecosystem with just garbage text.

34:04Yeah. is approaching zero. That surely is a, you know, like, again, how do we, I don't think we have any laws that protect against that. Yeah. Or am I wrong? We don't have laws to protect against that, but that's not the, that's not the function of the law. That's actually the function of our system for knowing what is true. And this is one of the reasons why, like, so I'm working on a book called Neuroscience of Knowing. We'll probably have a more accessible title at some point, but it's all about freedom of speech and truth seeking. And I do think that that's the most important mission of kind of like why we have freedom of speech in the first place is to understand the world as it is.

34:48It's our only shot at actually understanding the world as it is. And how do we do it? We do it through competing systems. We do it through checks and balances, essentially. So Montesquieu is totally right for government. Like we need things actually, you know, bashing into each other. And that's generally how we get to some amount of expert consensus around things is actually through a ferocious fight about what usually actually about not what is true, but what isn't true. You know, truth is basically a cloud, you know, of what might be true around everything else we pulled away, but it can actually be really quite powerful.

35:24The problem we have now is that we don't trust our expert class. And that's actually how you have a shot at knowing what's true. Now, I'm, you know, I use the term elite as just, you know, kind of anybody who's kind of like even tangentially part of the ruling class of any given system. And I think, and I'm a bad member of that, because I'm constantly, I think what we're supposed to say is essentially, and it's all a conspiracy against this. This is something that Lee Bollinger at Columbia is saying. It's not higher ed's fault. They didn't do anything wrong. If it had a Princeton ice grouper, basically, I love that name, ice grouper, said something basically saying, this is totally not our fault.

36:12And I'm very much like, no, our expert class shot itself in the foot very badly. And there's lots of reasons to - COVID. Yeah. Well, COVID - I got radicalized during that. I was like, ah, I'm trusting these people don't do anymore. That was a disaster in public trust. Yeah. And I always make the point, like, listen, if one person gets in trouble for having a controversial opinion among the professor, particularly at a fancy school, they won't trust you. And we talk about like thousands of examples of it. So right now, the way we deal with slop, the way we deal with things that are BS, the way we deal with people and be able to make endless false claims is by having some authority that we actually trust.

36:52But this happened at a time when people had good reason to not particularly trust authority. So I think you rebuild that by actually having one way you could use AI, and I want to actually figure out better how you could do this technically. We should be unleashing AI on basically the entire corpus of human knowledge to look at basically every paper that's ever been written to try to figure out, is it based on falsified data? Very simple stuff. Is it based on falsified data? Is it plagiarized? Is it built on a chain of theories that actually have a rotten core? And I think that that's actually how you get closer to truth.

37:32But basically, we have an epistemic problem. I got to avoid saying epistemic as much as I do. We have an epistemic problem that is very hard to fix without better sort of like knowledge hygiene, so to speak. And similarly, the sort of dissemination platforms we're using, unfortunately, are designed to, like I go on X and the vast majority of tweets I see trending, especially in the last week, are just clearly false or at least extremely low epistemic quality, to put it again, politically correct. um i what can we because it does feel like in part yes it's the algorithms choosing that but at the same time the the algorithms choose that because the people click on it they engage in it it speaks to the amygdala which is very good at overriding the prefrontal cortex and now we're talking right and and and it but i i worry truly that we're you know we're sort of descending into this world where people truly value entertainment over truth.

38:34And so we also need to similarly design dissemination systems, social media platforms and algorithms that rectify that, or at least counterbalance that. Any thoughts on if you could wave a magic wand and design such a platform, what would be the values you would go for? Oh my God, yes. I think about this all the time. So FHIR is doing this project with the Cosmos Institute. And actually this is where we got to see each other for the second time, where we're trying to do, to fund spot grants for AI, for truth seeking. And it was so much fun, you know, for nerds, I guess, but like, but, but it was like, it was, it was tremendously fun trying to think about ways to sort of practice this sort of like knowledge hygiene.

39:16And like one, one project that you can actually go to right now is called a priori. And it's just this very simple idea that you can use any of the major AI platforms and you ask it a question and it will have like a little list of basic assumptions that are made on it. And it's like, this is based on a consequentialist philosophy. And this is assuming that this thing is true. And then you can click on those and undo them. You can unclick them and then see the different argument you get. It's so terrifically clever. There was another another one that will actually compare AI models against each other for what their alignment is, to try to figure out, like, how, basically, how are they lying to you?

39:56If I could design something, I really like this project called Integrally that Steve Evers is working on, and it's kind of a walled garden approach, where basically the idea is you get points, you get ups, you know, for showing integrity when it comes to questions. And it's evaluated in terms of people who normally disagree, both agreeing that this person, this actor is fair. And the idea is it would all be anonymous. So you would only be allowed to have one account, but you have a reputation sort of stake in that. And then it's really about sort of sorting through the stuff through persuasion and argumentation, but with actual flesh and blood people being the ones who actually show the most integrity to try to build that kind of sense of like who isn't.

40:44And here's the thing, people just want to know who isn't lying to them at this point. So I think that's one model to do it. I think there's so many different ways you could do this. You could use the AI technology to brutalize essentially what we think is true, like you should, to try to figure out what isn't true, which is how you actually... So it could be a revolution for truth if we use it in a more enlightenment kind of way personal question really here um but you know as as a brit this is pivoting away from technology although it's still related um but as a brit seeing uh the sort of seeming collapse of the ability to speak freely like there was this example of uh lucy let be I don't know if people in the audience know this who she went to jail for three years for a tweet that was up for four hours and a tweet that didn't even it was during this stock war basically it was horrible this boy went on a rampage and killed a bunch of little girls and a lady was very upset about this and there was a big rumour going around that the boy had come over on one of the dinghies and was an illegal immigrant and they were being housed in hotels.

42:03And in her rage, she said something to the effect of, this shouldn't be happening. Burn those hotels down for all I care. And anyway, her tweet went viral for a few hours. She then deleted it. And then she got put in jail for three years. Yeah. So have there been any instances? Because I just want to see, like, is there hope for a nation like that, that is going down that path? because these stories are becoming more and more common. But at the same time, there have been instances in history where nations have stemmed that tide and gone back in the direction of free speech. So what would your advice be to people who are seeing that happen in their own country or even here, as we talked about with the other example?

42:48What can people do to start fighting back against this stuff who aren't part of an organisation? And it is funny how much Britain is in just complete denial that this is a problem, partially because it's not very well covered in the British press. And I did this massive piece that I mentioned. And, you know, like finding that there was two separate cases, one in Germany, one in Britain, where a woman was raped. and her or in the other case her friend insulted one of the rapists and did more time for the insult than either rapist did for the rape and it's like just absolutely horrified me um so we have been like at this stage before and basically for the U.S.

43:40um that would be more or less where we were at the end of World War I and going in through the first Red Scare, which was about 1920. So basically 1916 to about 1920. And that's when the ACLU was founded. That's when like the real free speech movement began in the United States, the modern one. There was one before it by the Free Speech League who was all like defending nude bathing and this guy Theodore Schroeder just freaking loved, like just a bunch of weirdos. Like they're more my speed, but like, but, but the, but the political, you know, the ACLU was really important, you know, in the 1920s, really, really brought free speech home, got one in the courts, like all this stuff.

44:22Um, and I hope that for Britain, I hope that for Europe, but when I did my due diligence and I asked chat sheet GPT, you know, like who, who's out there, who's actually doing the kind of work that fire does. Cause people always ask fire to come over. Um, and it was like, no, we're busy enough in the United States. I don't know, give me a trillion dollars and maybe I could help. But we're so freaking busy in the United States. And we don't even have full coverage here before we could ever think about it. But we do write a fair amount about what's going on over there. And I think of groups like Spiked.

44:58I think of Index on Censorship. I think of groups like one other group, the Free Speech Union. But when I was asking about this to Chad GPT, the answer I got, and Chad GPT expected me to accept this. It's like, well, but it can't be seen as conservative because if it's seen as conservative, it's just dead on arrival. And I was like, that is childish. And this is something I say in my most, actually not most recent book now, my book, Canceling of the American Mind, which is my follow-up to Coddling of the American Mind. This anti-intellectual technique that if I can call you, so basically you make an argument and say something that is critical of the current system.

45:44And I go, oh, so you're a right winger. And you go, no, I'm not. And it's like, nope, sorry, I don't have to listen to you anymore. That is exactly the way we argue now. We're doing slightly less of it in the United States now, but in Britain, this still works. In the UK, in the EU, this still works. And it is the way children argue. It's like, if I can label you something I don't have to listen to anymore. So that has to be scoffed at because it will never get fixed. Because basically the trick is, because a lot of the issues that are very hot in the EU and the UK, sometimes they're about transgender issues, and that's gotten a little bit less crazy.

46:27And a lot of times they're about immigration, crime, sexual assault, all of these things related to that. And if it becomes a situation where I'm increasingly seeing in some of these cases that it becomes by definition an offense to basically point out some of these, in many cases, real and existing problems that they're facing, you're never going to fix it. So it will require something pretty dramatic because right now, sort of like the, I'll just say it, I say like the arrogance of like the European Union of thinking that there's nothing wrong and that we're just going after the bad guys and we'll be totally fine if we just don't talk about certain very important things at the dinner table.

47:08It was my mom's theory and I love her very much that it's a bad theory. All right well we've got about five ten minutes left and I'd love to open it up to you guys. I noticed like J.K. Rowling kind of stands up and says things you know eloquently that other people being thrown in jail in Europe. Absolutely. And I just want to talk to what do you think the role and responsibility of people in her position of power to advance free speech? Because they won't arrest her because she has resources and she's famous and she has friends. And I think that you know, she single-handedly is carrying kind of the free speech and also her positions forward.

47:50Yeah. And so, you know, I guess this might even be a you know, softball for you to pitch for funds, et cetera. What are the roles of leaders in the United States of America or people in a similar position in the United States of America to stand up here? I, you know, I think that in order to be for free speech, you have to come out and say, that person who's getting in trouble who I don't like right now, they have freedom of speech. And I do actually think JK does a good job of that. But I think the most, because everyone's for their own free speech. And that's one thing that has been disappointing, both on right and left, is watching people who say you are so great when it's free speech they agree with or free speech, but not when it's free speech they disagree with.

48:36And the most powerful statement you can make is to come out and use that power and say, people should not be punished for their opinion. I want to know their opinion. I might even hate their opinion, but I'm not safer for not knowing it. And I think that we have so much influence left on the table right now in the United States, so many powerful people who could be helping the cause so much more than they are. And in an unapologetic way for free speech, because there's nothing to apologize for, it's valuable to know what people really think. Absolutely full stop. So I do think there are a lot of people, I think that's one of the reasons why you saw a lot of Silicon Valley kind of swing a little bit more or actually a lot more conservative in the past couple of years.

49:19Because I know, I went to Stanford and I know like a lot of like, there was a lot of frustration in the Valley of a pretty inherently sort of libertarian town for a long time, felt like it couldn't actually say what it was thinking and it was not like it. But I do think that because the political winds are shifting again, there's a little bit more self-consciousness about it. So, but I do think that people in positions of influence coming out and being principled about it could be an absolute game changer. That'd be a really cool prize to give. By the way, imagine if we could create some way of scraping the internet and people who've clearly got one particular opinion, but go out and defend someone that's far, far away from their normal views and just give an award.

50:04I don't know, the counter defender or something. Second question, I'm just wondering. How much do you think that speech control is thought control? I think that my, that's a great question and I could talk about it for a really long time. I think that anytime, if you've ever taught a class, you don't realize how little, there's this thing in cognitive science called the illusion of explanatory depth. Like we are incredibly self-deceiving. Like you ask some people, like the classic example is you ask people to draw me a diagram of how a bicycle works. and either and even pretty intelligent people will blow it on various details of how a bicycle actually works because we actually oftentimes don't really think things through until we start talking about them until it becomes social until it becomes um something that like so having to teach a class for example is the best way to learn something we learn best through teaching so i really do think that not being able to talk about things means it's always going to be a weird little incoherent thing in your head that might sound brilliant to your mind ears, but hasn't really been tested yet.

51:14So I actually do think that speech control is very similar to thought control. And one thing that I think is very much like thought control, almost identical to it, is when someone takes great efforts to make sure that they were just talking in their own house, for example. And there were some cases like this 12 years ago where people were getting canceled for stuff that they said, not knowing they were being recorded. And I found that that is a lot like policing thought outright, because like this is someone trying to keep it to themselves, trying to process through something and just saying it to someone that they thought they could trust.

51:50So I do actually think the line between controlling speech and controlling thought, I think there's a lot of, I think it's interrelated. I know that you and Ken White, of Pope have debated about the importance of which one is more important, having a legal culture of free speech and a free speech culture and I think you make the more persuasive argument about having the correct argument. Because places like Russia can also promise freedom in the Constitution, but we all know that's not true. We know that's not true. So I'm curious to know what are your thoughts on the current legal front? Do you see the current Supreme Court, you made the argument that we do have more legal protection for free speech than any time in history compared to another era.

52:36So do you see free speech doctrine within the current Supreme Court changing? And also with Gen Zers and millennials, I don't know if you've been following any of those. They've made it into the federal courts yet, but do you see young people in this generation into the federal judiciary? Do you see that? Do you see free speech protections regressing if that were the case, if we lose the culture war. Yeah. Okay. So this is Ken White. He's a former friend. And he's a lawyer and advocate who

53:14he's very angry about this idea that me in particular argues that there is such a thing as free speech culture. And actually, I go even further. I think free speech culture is more important than free speech law, also because we're in a common law country. So actually, where do you think our laws are from? They come from our culture. But he gets very angry about this. And I usually try not to address it. So thanks, Aaron. But my friend and FIRE senior fellow, Jacob Mishangama, just wrote a piece being like, I've had it. Like, this is a ridiculous... He basically at first claimed that free speech culture doesn't exist, which doesn't make any sense.

53:50And then the argument changed to free speech culture is incoherent. And it's like, No, we had like little sayings growing up. I mean, to each their own is a free speech culture argument. Everyone's entitled to their opinion is 100 % a free speech culture argument. And our laws and our regulations come from our culture. It's a straight line. And if you start having a culture that doesn't appreciate freedom of speech, I mean, you can have every beautiful free speech law on the books, but if nobody actually is willing to say what they think. Um, yeah. And you know who actually also thought this? John Stuart freaking Mills.

54:27In 1859, when he wrote that book, he said the state of the law in Britain was actually really good for free speech. It was the, it was a stifling Victorian culture that was the problem was his entire argument in, in, um, uh, in on Liberty. So I do think free speech culture is essential to actually keeping free speech alive. Am I worried about the younger people not having a free speech culture and having a very hostile to free speech culture? I think it tends to be very different depending on what economic class you're talking about. I'm very class conscious, which is partially having a British mother and being poor when I was a kid.

55:02But I do think our upper classes, our ruling classes, are very hostile to freedom of speech. When you look at the fire polling, how many students think it's okay to engage in violence in rare cases, to be clear. In rare cases against speakers, it's something like 33 % overall with like 50 % at Oberlin thinking that it's fine. Something like 80 % of students thinking shout, shouting down a speaker you don't like. Like this is all dangerous stuff. And it does scare me, the idea that these are people coming out of our law schools who are going to be judges, you know, one day. And that spells, you know, some very dark things for freedom of speech.

55:46So our fight and the fight of everyone in this room is all that much more important. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a graduate of Texas A &M University, which may be on fire's radar for whatever reasons. Most recently, the president and being ousted for, you know, a video that was about controversial topics, what have you. If you're an alumni of a university that seems to be going into a liberal direction, you know, what is some advice you would give? Like, what can alumni do if they, you know, care about a university, care about the way it goes? But, you know, what can we do? So I just have to give a little story here.

56:27So Texas A &M, I'm taking – so if I do my job, I get hate mail from the right and the left, sometimes in the same 10-minute period. and this is definitely an example where I do. There is a law on the books that I think is very badly written about not being able to teach anything related to gender ideology at state schools in Texas. And I know the people involved in this, and I wrote about it for the New York Times, where a professor wanted to challenge it. And he'd say, listen, I'm going to talk about, how many scenes did Hedwig and the Angry Inch? They have the story from the Plato's Symposium of the myth of the androgyne of Aristophanes.

57:13And this is this beautiful idea that once humans were perfectly circular beings, Zeus tore us a thunder, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to find our perfect way of reuniting, our perfect kind of wholeness that we can potentially get to. It's a beautiful, beautiful idea. And they are even speculating on some of them being, two male halves or two female halves or male and female. Now, that is about gender ideology. And a professor said, I'm going to teach that through the lens of that. The head of the department said, well, if that's what you're saying, then you're violating this law. And I have to tell you, you can't actually do that.

57:53So everybody in Texas right now thinks this was like a complete setup or didn't really happen. And I'm like, I'm sorry, this really did happen. And it is an artifact of the fact that the law is badly written. So that's Texas A &M. So what can you do? I mean, trying to bring more alumni along is huge because they have a lot of influence. We have alumni groups at schools all across the country. They've made a difference. You can get rid of speech codes. You can actually stand up for individual professors and students. You can withhold your money. There are so many things that people can do, you know, that it's amazing to me to see alumni, particularly people who are big donors at some of these schools, feel like they're hopeless.

58:43And that's just completely crazy. One thing that I love, and this is, you know, I obviously would love this, but we do really appreciate it when people write us checks and send a letter to their alma mater saying, I have instead sent my money to fire until you clean up your act. And we're happy to help publicize that as well. Awesome. Time for one more question, if anyone has. Question for those that have family members, friends that might not appreciate free speech that aren't here today that value free speech. I think all of us have those family or friends. What are some common, what's the advice or tips or tricks to start opening the conversation up when it might feel a little bit uncomfortable to do so?

59:32That's a great question. I think it depends on if you're talking about a free speech critic from the left or the right, what will appeal to them. But I did try to put like as many of my arguments as possible in my TED talk where Liv and I first met. And I do think that one of them that I always talk about is speech is not violence. Speech is the best replacement for violence ever invented. Speech makes you safer because you're not safer for knowing less about what people really think. There is a value, and I mean a deadly important value in knowing what people really think because there's this idea that somehow we're safer about it.

1:00:12There is something called group polarization, that essentially if you talk only to people who are radical in a direction, you get more radical in the direction of the group. One of the best things for actually peace and moderation is talking to someone you disagree with. We are intentionally, without realizing it, we're speeding up radicalization in the United States and Europe by thinking this naive idea that if we don't talk about it at the dinner table, they'll just not believe it anymore. Or no, they just go and talk to other people who believe it and it gets worse. But I'd say the thing that I find so frustrating and people know so little about history in so many cases is people, I talk about this in my TED Talk about, I started seeing students come to fire who seem to believe that free speech was the argument of the three Bs, the bully, the bigot, and the robber baron.

1:01:04And by robber baron, I mean rich and powerful people. And I always have to just explain, I'm sorry, that's just incredibly bad history. Because the rich and powerful historically didn't need a special protection for freedom of speech. Because they were rich and powerful. That's what protected their rights. You can look at the Medici's. You can look at all sorts of powerful and wealthy families all across the world. That's the rule. And by the time you get to democratic societies, if you're the bully or the bigot and you have the votes, you win. So why on earth would a bully, like a bigoted country, you know, decide to protect freedom of speech?

1:01:44Well, we actually decided to have it to protect unpopular minority opinions. Because you only need a special protection of freedom of speech for things that are unpopular with the majority or things that are unpopular with the powerful elites. And this is one of the reasons why, particularly on the left, you end up with a lot of people who are educated at fancy schools and they think that they're on the side of the little guy when they argue against freedom of speech. And they forget who's actually going to be enforcing it. And they also forget that their opinions are generally very popular with the actual powerful.

1:02:23So pointing out that every single leader of the, well, the leaders of the gay rights movement, the women's rights movement, and the civil rights movement, all credited freedom of speech with how they were able to succeed. I mean, John Lewis, who used to live in my neighborhood, he would say that the civil rights movement without freedom of speech would have been a bird without wings. And the idea that we're forgetting to benefit from that, that's something that, yeah, like a certain amount of insulation and privilege can give you the idea that freedom of speech has passed its time, but that's more for being set in our way is just like people used to accuse, you know, the powerful of.

1:03:04And when you hear about it from the, you know, when someone from the right, you know, makes these criticisms, I mean, I do think it's one of our most, one of the things I'm the most patriotic about is the fact that we have this brilliant document that actually says, no, this government's power is to protect your rights. That's the whole reason we set it up. That's why we gave it checks and balances. That's why we gave it a special Bill of Rights and we put number one at the very first, freedom of speech. What a wonderful note to end it on. Thank you so much. Thank you.